Alpha Protocol

Kids in New Yawk are buying this instead of Alan Wake. Kids in New Yawk will play anything with an army man in it.

I've discussed this game with a bunch of people on IRC. The consensus is that Obsidian has delivered another game that feels like it needed six more months of polishing - despite the massive delay. There's apparently a big disconnect between the background dice-rolling and the onscreen action, creating annoying situations wherein you can miss a perfectly aimed shot because the roll went wrong, or facestab a room of goons without being detected because the stealth rolls kept succeeding. It's like Obsidian tried and failed to mask all the action-based shortcomings with statistics.

I rented this tonight. Rolling like Jason Bourne, sneaking up on bitches and stabbing them in the neck, kung fuing the fuck out of anyone who sees me. The camera is shit at times and weapons suck balls early on at least, but i just finished the first "mission" and I don't see myself stopping for anything anytime soon.

$15 or bust.

Heh. So I finished my playthrough. All in all it was flawed but fun enough. Mass Effect 2 is superior, and it's about equal to what you could do in Mass Effect 1. The gun play is still less than ideal but the more you level up your weapons skills the more deadly you get.

Oh and one thing they did better than Mass Effect? I found it hilarious that I was trying to seduce 3 women in the game, expecting to only succeed with one, and found myself laying all 3 within 3 minutes. James Bond indeed.

This game has been on my wanted list forever. For some reason I've never bit, despite some pretty significant sales. However, just the headline "Alpha Protocol is the New Deus Ex" has my attention. What do those of you who have played it think about the guy's reasoning?

I keep hearing good things about this. The gist is that the combat is pretty awful but the dialogue and mission structure more than make up for it. I'd play it if I wasn't already busy with 81253892346 other games.

From what I played, the main character seemed like a douche and the whole experience came off as a poor man's Splinter Cell. Maybe I should give it another chance, though.

The non combat stuff is amazing. The actual combat and stealth is atrocious

Deus Ex's combat was eh, but the stealth worked well enough and the combat was still much

However, the PC version has gamepad support and I kind of want to give the game another go

Don't believe Joystiq's lies. This game is not good. The conversation's keyword system is unclear about what exactly you'll actually say, leading to situations where Thorton says things that you had no intention of uttering. Stealth is totally fucking broken, to the point where an assault rifle is the best stealth weapon due to its range and damage output. There are also major bugs regarding story outcomes. Remember in Mass Effect 2 how Conrad's responses to you were bugged and assumed you shot him, regardless of how you actually dealt with him in the first game? Imagine if that sort of bug appeared in main story missions and significantly affected how people treated you.