Got the game last night, and gotta say I quite like what little I have seen so far. Only got up where you get sent to your first safe house, mainly because I spent hours trying to do get over 100 on Parker's stealth training mission, which I failed to do, kept getting just 98 instead, argh! Got a bit obsessed with it, but I just could not avoid the last guard at the end, always got spotted, maybe because I had no points in stealth at the time. Playing as a Recruit also, so had no skills for most of playing so far (held off on spending points as I had no idea what I needed to spend them on).
The hacking is hard. I can never seem to spot the numbers, and when I do moving the password over is so slow that they reset before I get there. Having one of the passwords controlled by the mouse is rather awkward too, especially since I have accidentally clicked on abort when trying to select it with the mouse, a drawback to playing on the PC it seems. The lockpicking is also done with the mouse, moving it up and down to set it in place, but it seems to work fine there, perfectly even for me. Dumped some points in sabotage now which supposedly helps with hacking, so lets see how they affects the diffculty.
Love how the conversation system prevents you from just circling round like you do in other RPGs, once you commit to something there's none of this "Lets give them the chance to go back and fix it" malarky. Of course, this means that I get paralysed with fear everytime I get given a choice. I like the idea that people hating you can be as useful as them loving you, will have to see if that's true and implemented well, but it definitely discourages the 'min/maxing' of the approval system in DA:O, and allows people to roleplay their character without fear of ending up screwed. I also like the recruit conversation options, quite hilarious. Sometimes the choice occurs too quick for my slow brain, insulted the bossman by accident at one point!
Overall, I feel like I haven't really got into the meat of the game, but of the mechanics of the actual game I have seen so far I like.
Is that the girl with the lip piercing? Did wonder if she was actually in the game and not just early concept artwork of perhaps Mina (since they seem to have the same hair colour).

yeah, I don't know what I was thinking when I said you need to relax. You obviously don't need it.

welcome to steam. l am amazed ppl are still surprised by their shitty customer service, prices and horrible 2.0 layout. it's good for mods and the usual weekend-sales but getting a new game on steam ? rather burn my money :)
AP, for me it's in the mail (was sent out May27th) and there are many retailers in the US that broke the release date, I'm sure it will be available there as well.
And I - for my part - loved KOTOR2, the restoration mod makes it even better and it surpassed KOTOR1 with its "ok, we TRY" plot by Bioware easily. Side by Side it looks like:
KOTOR1 - ages 7 and up - features some words you might have to look up in a dictionary but it won't hurt your brain
KOTOR2 - if you don't get it we can't help you - goto KOTOR1
Let's hope AP and the upcoming Fallout:NewVegas are nothing like their counterparts and of the same quality (dialogue/story wise) than KOTOR2 was (and could have been at the same time) :)
thanks for the good and spoilerfree write-up !

When you look at the hacking screen, try squinting a bit to blur your vision, weird thing to do but it seems to make the static characters easier to see, well at least for me. I was initially convinced I'd never finish a hack but now I rarely fail them
Ooh yes she's in it and so are her guns, dangerous little bugger but she seems the decent sort overall.
The boss fight with Brayko is fucking stupidly hard. I'd suggest any upgrades with speed or resilience and get used to evading someone who sprints at you regularly. Extremely annoying

For those with the PC version, have you tried using a controller (gamepad) to see if it is much better?
From what I saw in the videos the action sequences are slower paces than in pure third person shooters, so I thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to use my 360 gamepad for this game.

Play KOTOR 1 :p
KOTOR 2's intro was a lot better. Admittedly, that is like saying it is less painful to get stabbed in your left butt cheek than your foot, but so be it.

Look, if you pre-order a game it means you want to play it on the day of release before everyone has a chance to spoil the game for you. Otherwise if time doesn't matter, why wouldn't people just wait for the game to drop in price, explain that?

Cheers I'll have to try that tonight, though I don't want to imagine the eye strain it might cause. :D
Cool, was hoping (since she looks rather cool from the artwork).
So you can't just sneak up behind him and karate chop him? Heh. ;)
I have to say I somewhat sympathise, when I preordered Dragon Age I booked the day off (incredibly sad and geeky I know, and I'm proud of it!) to play it, especially since it normally arrives a day early anyway. Except it didn't, it didn't arrive at all, and I wasn't happy. In the end I went out and bought a copy after deciding to gift it to a friend when it finally did arrive, which is a good thing I did since it never did turn up. Bloody thieving postmen.

I actually enjoyed the opening to KOTOR 1. Yes, it dragged on a bit, but I found it strangely mysterious and compelling, as well as having some nice character development, and some nice choices and effects. KOTOR 2's intro was just tedious and poorly written, ham-fistedly shoving exposition about the last game down the gamers throat, whilst the only characters present were a complete asshat WHO IN NO WAY WAS MEANT TO BE LIKE HAN SOLO, and a woman who was being cryptic and mysterious.
EDIT: To get back on topic, Joystiq have just posted their review, and it contains phrases such as, to quote:..but perhaps most damning -- considering the thing was apparently done six months ago -- It's a technical nightmare....textures take forever to pop in...to release a game that's just plain not finished and to expect people -- to expect your fans -- to pay the full $60 for it? That's where you loose me.
Anyone else having KOTOR 2 / NWN 2 flashbacks?

Ok you guys sold me the game i had a £10 discount from direct 2 drive so game only cost me £14.95. The flip side is that i have now just spent £160 on a new gfx card as my current one decided to make some weird shapes in fallout 3 then got the blue screen of death in windows 7. Now the card wont run any 3d apps gggrr.

Strange, I'm not having any issues with texture popping in my game, nothing noticeable anyway like it was with DA:O. Not that we should be accepting of bugs, but to be honest so far I have had more bug-related problems with EA releases than I am with this game. *Shrugs* Perhaps a link to the review in question?

If someone describes this as a nightmare, they have the most anal psyche going, the rest of their nightmares probably involve accidently using a red pen to fill in a form instead of a black one.
The game lacks polish, there's no question but the underlying game itself is really very good, the dialogue is sharp, the story is immersive, the gameplay mechanics are moderately inventive.
To put it another way, have you seen this video of a spoiled rich bitch getting the car she wanted but in the wrong colour and throwing a massive tantrum? That's the level of overreaction it is to describe this as a nightmare

Well it'll be better than your current one anyway. Presumably you tried driver reinstalls and everything?

I've had a few times where textures took a fair while to load the high detail versions, up to 5-6 seconds which was noticeable and a bit jarring but far from deal breaking, especially when I was focussed on avoiding fire from an IFV mounted heavy machine gun

Oh yes of course, silly me:
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/05/28/alpha-protocol-game-review/#continued

11th end of exams. purchase from d2d then as it is cheaper...