Review Alpha Protocol Reviewed

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Works for me.

Guy's isn't this basically what they were saying about dragon age? Dated graphics but replayability and AWERSONE ROWALL PLAYANG. The middle of the line score just means they didn't bribe as well.

CDA gave it 10/10 and fapped all over it and it was when their review scores actually meant something.

Ion Storm couldn't into UE1.

I would find it more rewarding if stealthing was actually hard.
I stealthed Agroprom and military outpost in Cordon in STALKER and this game was far more forgiving in firefights than in stealth.

@ Heartwarden

"Not sure what to expect on AP. It's Obsidian"

That should be enough for you to know what to expect.

"Difficulty determines a good game, now?"

Yes, up to a point it does. For it to be a game it has to challenge and test your skills, otherwise what's the point? Remove the challenge and what's left is masturbation and escapism and delusion, not gaming.

"I don't recall any instance of LARP"

Any choice that doesn't have gameplay consequences can count as LARP. Do you save your brother or do you escape through the window? Do you kill that guy in the plane or do you not? Do you talk with the journalist or do you not? What consequence does any of this have? You end in the same place and situation, just with some extra flavour text, so what's the point of the choice other than to, like, express yourself or express your character just like in Bioware games with their fake choices and six diferent ways of saying okay i'll do it? It is pretty amusing they give you many choices that mean nothing and do nothing other than so called mood, but the choices that would actually change something the game makes for you.

Other than that, sure, whatever floats your boat. I don't hate Desu Ex. Or, well, I did not hate it until I came here and noticed people who think themselves elitists of gaming were talking of it like it was the best game ever when there's no game at bloody all. But since the same happened with Arcanum, Planescape, and several other games I guess it's just the Codex's power to change a relatively mild individual into a raging taliban. And people should play and win some real games before starting to talk about best game ever and stuff. You know, games where you have to, like, do something to win, and sell your soul to get anything but the worst ending. Meh, bloody casuals everywhere.

Oh, so in other words. You were just trolling.

6/10, move along now ktxbye

It would be nice to see someone actually refuting her points instead of engaging in fanboi denial like "you didn't play it", "you played it wrong", "ignore" and "you're trolling", you know. If it's plain bullshit, it should be easy peasy to prove her wrong

just a thought

My guess is that AP will be an over-the-top shooter-LARP fest with a decent inventory, and mediocre graphics and mediocre voice acting and mediocre AI and mediocre animations; kids will think its cool and to be taken mostly seriously and like the fact that it's an 'RPG'; older kids will think it's slightly lacking but XXXTREME and funny-- they'll get a real kick out of the guy with two dual-wielded gold-plated mini-shotguns and a thick Russian accent, for instance.

Whether that will carry over and grown-ups will find that it has an eye on them and is a disposable but good-time campy romp with some interesting RPG-style choices, well, I dunno.

It may be just too ridiculous to appeal to them (us), but developers don't care about that demographic anymore, of course.

And the fact that Mass Effect's illusory choices and shooter-ness qualifies as a nonpareil example of the RPG helps AP, and Obsidian, quite a bit.

ME + James Bond = AP.
next plz

well, tbh "ur doing it wrong" in and of itself was a troll. it just didn't sound like we both played the same game.

*shrugs*

i'm not a huge gamer so if there's another game you can point out i'd love to hear it, but i'd not played a FPS game before or after Deus Ex which had such a multitude of ways to stealthily solve missions and upgrade your character like that...and not feel like a hand-holding piece of juvenile shit. i thought the story was pretty fresh, at least for a video-game at the time it came out.

and for the record...i'm not an elitist. i just hate 99% of every game i've ever played.

I just find it weird that people will gladly go into 40 + threads arguing about FO3 / Oblivion / AP / DA, but show little interest in defending games they actually like

I was browsing the Obsidian forums and, apparently, two more reviews have popped up. First one's from a mag called GameStar, and the bottom line goes like this:

And the other one's from a Spanish mag, which ends up giving it 8.5 for graphics and sound, 9.1 for gameplay, 9.4 for replay value, and 8.0 for optimization. And the overall score is 8.9. Apparently, they reviewed the PS3 version.

Here are the scans:
http://www.subirimagenes.com/otros-reviewpsop1-4533073.html
http://www.subirimagenes.com/otros-reviewpsop2-4533074.html
http://www.subirimagenes.com/otros-reviewpsop3-4533076.html

A translation from Spanish speaking codexers would be nice. Or at least a general rundown of the review.

Proof we're all fueled by Hate.

I will repeat verbatim, "Isn't that what they said about Dragon Age, pre-release?"

When MCA is involved, this could actually mean something beyond mere hypetalk. I am positively intrigued!

@ Fastpunk

There you go. There are some parts where i did not know how to translate a given figure of speech and had to improvise, but otherwise is pretty literal and there are no nya to be found, though maybe some stuffies and thingies sliped through. Typos and the like haven't been corrected because I'm a lazy as fuck Neko Nya.

Edity Edit: Corrected one or two really messed up way too literal moments.

>no multiplayer

hurpadurp.jpg

You're not 'creating tension' when you introduce time limits to conversations.



All you're doing is making the player spazz out and probably pick something that doesn't really fit what he wanted.



Which goes along with the 'you don't know what that option will make him say until you use it' problem.


Combined, they're a perfect fail storm of innoVASHUN.

BUT BUT THEY WANTED TO HAVE A NATURAL DIALOGUE FLOW MAN

WHEN YOU TALK DO YOU STOP AND THINK WHAT YOURE GOING TO SAY?

DIDNT THINK SO MOTHERFUCKER

OBSIDIAN 4EVA

In that case, I really hope you're willing to admit that nearly every recent game to come out including ME, ME2, DA are all escapism and delusion.

Now, about DE, I wouldn't call it the most challenging game, but it has challenges in what choices you make as well as tension in what you need to do and how much time you have to do it. Infiltrating the Illuminati complex in China was pretty intense, at least for me.

I think it's a mistake to consider a game challenging only if you die a lot. A challenge can also include botching quests, finding out you missed something, finding out you did something the hard way. Puzzles, timed quests, etc.

@ Phelot



"In that case, I really hope you're willing to admit that nearly every recent game to come out including ME, ME2, DA are all escapism and delusion."

Totally escapism and delusion, and more so with Bioware games as you mentioned, that seem to be built around making you feel you are awesome and the center of the entire multiverse, and that the eyes of every individual with power in creation is set upon you, and that the survival of love and friendship and justice and honour and the joy of fluffy, cuddly things everywhere rests solely on your shoulders, without gameplay to support it as everything is retard proof and so easy it hurts. The more time passes the more the pretty funny cat is starting to more and more play only dungeon crawlers and roguelikes and arcade games, as even adventure games are for retards now, because people who wants to, like, enjoy the story and, say, explore a pretty looking world without being sidetracked by evil puzzles. :evil:



"I think it's a mistake to consider a game challenging only if you die a lot. A challenge can also include botching quests, finding out you missed something, finding out you did something the hard way. Puzzles, timed quests, etc."

Totally, sure. But there has to exist the outcome of just failing, either by making the wrong choices and botching the wrong combination of quests so you can't go any further, or because your adventure comes to a halt and moves no further until you solve this puzzle. It doesn't need to kill you, it needs to stop you from advancing any further, or to reaching a good ending, until you raise to the skill level needed to solve that challenge, be it a boss fight or an infiltration segment or a hard puzzle or simply navigating the story in a way that doesn't suck.

A good set of examples of a game presenting challenges that don't kill you but totally screw you over is to be found in Devil Survivor. The game is about tactical battles divided by visual novel segments where you have a limited amount of, like, actions to use to visit places and talk to people, and in those places and with those people you get choices. Mess some of those bad enough in the first two thirds of the game with one particular character and she, as many others may, will die, but, though you may not know it so early without paying a lot of attention, she's really plot relevant, and then when you get to the last part of the game you can't pick any ending other than the worst one, since one of the archdemons you need to fight to have a claim will never appear, as she was the one and only catalyst for its appearance and thus he no longer has any reason to do so. And two of the most awesome endings, Haru's and Gin's, require such a precise navigation of the choice-and-consequence tree that a single mistake can spell doom to your effort and make that ending impossible to reach in that one playthrough.

Those examples aren't battles that you must repeat over and over and over, though the game has its share of that, but are challenging all the same, and are satisfying to think through and pull out. And reaching a perfect ending, that being the ideal ending plus no character deaths along the way, is so bloody hard you need to plan every single action taken in every single visual novel segment in great detail, as you have very little free actions to maneuver around. Again, that's hardcore and doesn't kills you, and is based around the same concept of interactive storytelling as part of the game mechanics we are discussing, but it turns it into part of the challenge and the game instead of just window dressing and LARP.

But it is japanese so it surely sucks.

That was dick move in Indigo Prophecy, indeed. It all came down to random choosing from things you've managed to read. With little or no thought.

But I can see it working just fine in AP. You've 3 stances to choose from, sooner or later you should be familiar what you can expect from each one - I assume it could take from one to few conversation, depending on how well it is all written, consistent and thought out.

ME2 had something similar with paragon/renegade choices. Player faced time limit to make decision just the same. Worked fine if you ask me, even amazing at times, I personally really liked it and thought It adds a lot to the experience. Of course AP is more complex (3>2 duh) so it might be not valid comparison, the answer will come with practise. Time will tell.