Alpha Protocol – Review

Alpha Protocol was developed by Obsidian Entertainment and released in 2010. At its release it was plagued with bugs, and took somewhat of a pounding in some reviews. However, now that it has been out a while is it worth picking up?

The story revolves around the character of Michael Thornton, an CIA agent whose background is chosen by the player at the start of the game, varying from a spy type who is good at stealth, to a weapons expert, gadegets expert, etc. Each “class” has different abilities already leveled some, based on the style of that class. There is also a “rookie” option where Thornton is a blank slate, and his skill can be more tailored, and also has unique dialogue options. Beating the game using the rookie options will also unlock a “veteran” option with unique dialogue options in a certain places and a few other special perks. Thorton is chosen to be part of a highly secret, elite group of spies called Alpha Protocol. You assignment starts out straight forward enough, but very soon your world is turned upside down, and things are not as they seem.

The gameplay is third person shooting/stealth. There are multiple classes of weapons available to become proficient in. However, the controls in this game are one of it’s weakest points in my opinion. Mass Effect has been criticized at times for its shooting controls not being extremely strong, but this game at times can make ME feel like a COD game as far as controls go. I find it very hard to play it in a run and gun, rush into the firefight style, the controls are just way to imprecise for me to do that. The stealthier, picking people off with a silenced pistol way was a bit better suited to the controls, though even the stealthy way was difficult at times due to sluggish and imprecise character movement. These things made for some very frustrating sections early in the game, until I got the hang of the controls. In adition, the tutorials for a few things in the gameplay, such as the hacking, were very vague on exactly how you are supposed to do it. I had to go online and look up exactly what you were supposed to do and how in the world you were supposed to do it while hacking. Additionally, the controls while hacking terminals are extremely sensitive for the parts that used the mouse, making them additionally challenging. However, once I understood what I was supposed to do and how to do it I found that I actually kind of liked the challenge of hacking.

Graphically, the game looks decent. I did see a number of clipping issues in cut scenes, such as clothing clipping through body parts. I have heard a number of people who did not like the way the faces were done, though I personally did not mind that much, they didn’t seem as bad as people made them out to be.

As far as content, this is a M rated game, there is blood during gunplay and melee combat, though not extremely excessive. I was supprised at the language in the game, other than a couple of characters there was not an extreme amount of bad language that I noticed. However, I do tend to play the “good guy” in these types of games, so the content might be worse if playing the other side of the spectrum.

Lastly, the bugs. When this game released it was very buggy, I heard horror stories about trying to play it from a few people. However, now that it has been out for a while and been patched up it was not that bad. I had a couple of times where I ended up glitching against something, and the camera did have a tendency to be a little wonky when trying to do a 180 quickly when in a smaller sized room, but other than that is was pretty uneventful.

Overall (3/5)
Definitely check it out if you like spy thrillers, solid game, I personally loved it, though it is definitely not for everyone.
Gameplay (2.5/5)
Less than supurb controls do make it tough at times.
Content (3/5)
Strong language and blood, though not extreme amounts most of the time.