Comparing Mass Effect with Alpha Protocol is making a disservice to Alpha Protocol. The key feature of Alpha Protocol is the sheer amount of variation and ACTUAL CHOICE, making each and every playthrough extremely different. Very, very different results from just a single different choice. Hell, it even takes your gameplay style into consideration. That being said, Saudi Arabia segment blows, but damn if it doesn't become the best thing in its category after it.

I can tell you why you should NOT buy it but there are lots of reviews that cover the matter better than I could.
Lots of people keep saying that it gets better later on and I bet it does but for it to get better you have to put up with many flaws that may discourage you from continuing.
AP was one of those games I just couldn't get into and I had to stop playing while ME kept me interested from beginning to end.

Shitty dialogue wheel? What? Okay, that is the first time I've seen someone complain about it. It doesn't try to be a dialog tree, it is a flowing dialogue and you get to choose the reaction/response, hell, I would consider the dialog system the meat and potatoes of the game, and the actual shooty part to be window dressing in AP. The dialog with Marburg in Rome is possibly the tensest part I've seen in any game. Who the hell knew that Minsc/Winnie the Pooh could be so... Creepy.

The dialog system is supposed to be a flowing conversation, thus no such thing as most cRPGs "lets go back to my other questions" or Mass Effect's "investigate"
Hell, if anything, the Mass Effect games are the ones with the shitty dialog wheel system.
And then you would just be regurgitating some possibly factually incorrect things, one of the reviews even said that pistols and stealth are completely useless. There is no wronger statement about the game at all, since pistols are hilariously overpowered even from the beginning. If anything, it was a fault of THAT reviewer since AP is, well, different. You have to take your time, line up your shots, make abundant use of all your available skills, and be CAREFUL.

In any case, I can only remember that one review, just because it was hilariously wrong. That being said, the Saudi Arabia segment does suck ass, and is not all that indicative of the full game itself. Even so, there are some interesting bits in that hub, but the game doesn't really get going until you have finished Saudi Arabia.

Because you get to play tag with a coke addict while "Turn up the radio" plays in the background.

And Steven Heck. He's reason enough.

Edit. And SIE. How could I forget SIE...

Agreed. ME's choices were also so black and white, whereas in AP it's not blatantly obvious at all, and some seemingly good choices you make could have some awful consequences.
o_O who the heck said that??? Granted some parts of the game are designed to be big shootouts so stealth and pistols won't work as well, but for the majority of the game this is what makes it fun.

The combat didn't seem as good as most dedicated shooters, so that's a bit of a negative. Also, it's pretty buggy - for example, for me whenever you died and have to pick to 'reload from last save' or 'reload saved game', if I chose to reload from last save, the game world will be experiencing a lot of script errors and missing objects (including characters). Not game breaking, since you could avoid it by loading a game manually, but it's still a pretty serious flaw.

Well, I saw one review after I had given up on the game and it was bashed to hell by the fans but to me it had many valid points:
- Shitty graphics/low productions values: the game looks barely better than a mod. It has low polygon models, bad animations (specially the stealth animation which is hilariously bad), and low res textures. AP was made using Unreal Engine 3 which has been widely used by other developer teams to achieve much better results.
- Aiming: Gun aiming was bad at the beginning but since it's an RPG I guess you can attribute that to my low level character but one thing I do remember from the review was that turret aiming was "floaty" and that part is totally true. You can't seriously tell me that turret aiming felt right because it was as if I was moving my mouse inside a water tank.
- Camera: when using K&M the camera stutters badly trying to move behind you making the game almost unplayable. I hear it is better with a gamepad but since I can't use gamepads with a shooter game I won't ever know.

As I said, you have to put up with a lot of flaws before supposedly the game gets better. I couldn't make myself do that when I could play a better game instead but I understand other people could and had a lot of fun. I'm just saying that there are valid reasons to consider the game not worth your money.

Shitty graphics, okay, yeah, it is not the prettiest game out there, that is true. The graphics are serviceable, but nothing to call home about. I personally did not see anything wrong with the stealth animation. But yeah, visually it is not impressive at all.

Aiming: It is not a twitch shooter. The game has a certain pace, and certain rythm. Lining up your shots is extremely important, even with the all-powerful Chain Shot. That's not the worst part, the game DOES have the worst aiming/handling of anything... But that is not in the pistols. It's in the sniper rifles you can use in Rome/Moscow/Taipei which are pretty damn hard to use without a pad even if the rest of the aiming can be made better by modifying a couple of ini files. As for the rest of the game, personally I thought it handled itself better than Mass Effect 1 (not 2, since 2 is a decent corridor shooter with LIGHT RPGish features), Except for the sniper rifles, of course, those were just dreadful.

As for the camera, that is very weird, I don't remember ever having any camera issues myself.

Again, it IS a very, very flawed game, but it is (kind of like a Troika game) unique in its scope, and not fundamentally broken. There is no other game with such variation due to your choices, it is a mess in gameplay, but those are not game breaking, and it provides an staggering amount of content. It is the antithesis of the "a single playthrough will show you all the game has to offer, the player must be able to not miss anything" philosophy, finishing it ONCE won't give you even half of the full story. You need to see how the different choices affect the game, in subtle and unsubtle ways,who is lying, who is telling the truth, how almost EVERYONE can die in the end, what reasons you could have to spare or to kill them, how to deal with everything, And what's best, the game does not punish you for not having a certain path. It does not lock you up for trying different approaches, hell it has ingame achievements dealing exactly with that.

I've played the game 5 times and on each one there's been new revelations about it. And in other forums there is an active thread that still makes me go "wait, what? That can happen? This fucking game" and describing other sets of circumstances that lead to wildly different results.


I had forgotten about the reload bug, yeah that was a very big detriment, if not loading the last save manually, weird stuff can happen, weird bad stuff.

Impulse:
Out of the Park 11 - $4.76
Victoria II - $7.14
Need for Speed World - $9.99
Supreme Ruler 2020 Gold - $2.37
Fifa 11 - $25.54

I despise the dialogue wheel in ME too, but no more (or no less) than AP's, chief reason being I have no idea what the option really entails.Take "Sarcastic" for example - what am I directing at? Am I going to pass a snarky remark towards the person I'm talking to, or a snide remark about the topic at hand? And "Mocking" - what exactly am i going to be say? Worse still, sometimes the direction of the options only become clear 1 second before the timer runs out; other times the outcome of the choices are simply ambiguous.

I'll give it props for being smooth and cinematic, but I want to know exactly what I'm about to say. I understand Obsidian was trying to simulate real life interaction, but it doesn't work this way. It's more complicated than just coming up with an instantaneous response, and your idea of a particular response may not always be synonymous with one single word.

Btw let's take this discussion to another thread. I'm interested in continuing it, but this is the Gaming Deals Thread after all ;)

Medieval 2 Total War Gold Edition $3.98 om GamersGate .

GetGames
Frozen Synapse €11.29 (includes an extra copy)
Worms Reloaded €9.99 (requires Steam)
Clones €4.21
Super Meat Boy €6.99

One last response here, hehe.
The dialogue wheel in Alpha Protocol was supposed to correspond to 3 JBs, left was smug asshole James Bond (though it is more Sterling Archer than James Bond, I don't think you can get good reactions from any of the women in the game using it, but it is integral to be able to fight Marburg properly), top is Jack Bauer, and right is Jason Bourne, so left is suave, smug, amused reactions, right is violent responses, anger and intimidation, and right corresponds to serious business reactions. Unless there is YET ANOTHER bug, there should be some text detailing the general tone of the responses as well.

I played through the game 4 times and I never encountered one bug. I never noticed anything with the game. IMO, people who bitch about Alpha Protocol either just repeat what they read, or they played the game expecting something other than what the game is.
It's the same type of people who bitch about hits/swings in RPGs not doing damage although they seem to hit the target etc. They don't "get it".
The game is very good and 100% worth the money.

Oooh so much praise for Alpha Protocol. I first learned about the games existence in last december when it had the first "under ten dollar" sale on GMG, but foolishly ignored the beckoning voices in my head ever since. But now i will take the risk and give 3,74 pound worth of mah precious moniehs to own the best broken action-RPG of all time. :D

Well looks like i wont.(look like i have about 1,5€ left on mah account :( ) To Plan B then.
If by any chance a kind fellow would feel charitable enough to gift me Alpha Protocol on Gamersgate i would try to repay him with a brand new Humble Frozenbyte Bundle key. Probably everyone and their dog own Trine/Shadowgrounds titles on this forum by now, but my options are rather limited at this point, so there it goes, lets hope for the best. ^.^

How is the PC version of Grid? Are the controls good? I only have two racing games, and I wouldn't mind adding another to my collection.