Alpha Protocol

[Commissar Draco]

Good C&C and charcters/plot don't make great CRPG out of corridor console shooter. Completed it once for story but never have the urge for doing rerun becouse the horror of minigames/dialoguewheel/corridors/closingdoors etc... Great concept fucked up execution just like... no worse than Arcanum. it's worst game of Obsiddian except NWN2 of course too consoltarded for old guard like me and too old style for consoltards to make it comercial sucsees.

 

[Sannom]

On hard difficulty:
(1) How good are shotguns, smgs and melee?
(2) What are the better grenades?

(1) SMGs are... hard. Their range is limited, as is their accuracy, the individual bullets don't do much damage and their critical is counter-intuitive. Going full automatic with a SMG is not a good idea (no matter how much you want to do it), the spread increases so much you miss everything, and you have to reload very quickly, which negates to bonus to damage you gained from the critical. You will use Bullet Storm a lot! In short, not a weapon I would recommend for something less than a Veteran playthrough with Technical Aptitude, Sabotage, Toughness (for protection and better healing abilities) and Martial Arts maxed out as well.

But managing to get many foes close to each other, then use Bullet Storm and just mows through them is really satisfying.

(2) The best grenades are hand-down the Incendiary Bombs. It really makes me wonder about how the Explosive Grenades are relevant in that game. Flashbangs are relevant for their huge area of effect and Shock Traps are silent and non-lethal, but grenades just seem useless compared to incendiary bombs. Heck, you can gain a perk to carry one more of those, and I don't think there is such a thing for grenades.

 

[Roguey]

Shotguns appear to be a critical hit weapon used for one-shotting or extreme close range, I haven't used them past trying the first couple of missions.

Phosphorous rounds combined with room sweep is almost as effective as chain shot against bosses because the incendiary damage from each shot stacks. The downside (upside if you like comedy) is that bosses don't stay down like normal enemies do and they don't have a standing up animation, so the fight looks like a Warner Bros cartoon with all that springing about.

SMGs have a large volume of fire that can be used effectively in large bursts (there's a damage multiplier that increases with hits and kills). Very powerful in late game and good against bosses.

Really? I thought they were very effective against normal enemies once you had a lot of points in them, but they always sucked against bosses even with the criticial multiplier and high velocity ammo/hollow point once their armor was removed. They're more about stopping power which is pretty useless against bosses and they're no steel core chain shot, phosphorous room sweep, or even focused aim assault rifle when it comes to damage.

Melee is primarily a backup that can be extremely useful if some sandnigger or Russian mobster rushes you, or if you find yourself face to face with other enemies. Naturally the hardest part is getting near. It's also one of your only constant means of non-lethal force. The jumping knee attack is extremely handy when you don't want to use lethal force. I think Omen Deng can be beaten with melee if you hulk out.

You can buttonmash all the bosses to death if you save all of them for the very end after you've fully upgraded the skill (with Marburg being the very last since his involves a group from the start and he has the most points in martial arts). Toughness helps here too.

 

[J1M]

On hard difficulty:
How good are shotguns, smgs and melee? On bosses? On rushing grunts? I once punch a rpg carrying arab, he block my attacks and blew me and himself up with his rpg at pointblank.
What are the better grenades?

As I said above, I played through the whole game using only melee/stealth. I guess I didn't say it was on hard, but I don't play games on anything else these days thanks to the casuals and I assumed everyone else here was the same.

The 'fury' skill can be used if too many people are blocking you, but I only found it useful on bosses.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

SMGs have a large volume of fire that can be used effectively in large bursts (there's a damage multiplier that increases with hits and kills). Very powerful in late game and good against bosses.

Really? I thought they were very effective against normal enemies once you had a lot of points in them, but they always sucked against bosses even with the criticial multiplier and high velocity ammo/hollow point once their armor was removed. They're more about stopping power which is pretty useless against bosses and they're no steel core chain shot, phosphorous room sweep, or even focused aim assault rifle when it comes to damage.

Of course, nothing is quite as effective as Chain Shot. But against bosses who get up close and personal, like Brayko and Deng, the SMGs proved very useful to me.

But I will agree that SMGs with standard ammo are much more useless than other weapons. It's pretty obligatory to stash up and use High Velocity ammo exclusively by the end of the game.

 

[Xor]

My favorite playthrough used martial arts and no other weapon skills to beat the living shit out of everything Bruce Lee style.


It's pretty fucking hard though, and you basically rely on cooldowns to clear rooms.

 

[someone else]

I like the perks you can get in the game. The mission in Rome where you play duckhunt with the sniper rifle? Got a couple of perks for shooting early and gunning down everyone including a TV set. Then watch the news as they report your kills.

Is it true that kills and KOs give 10xp but evading gives 15xp per person?
Sound dampening of 3 = no detection when sneaking? With 2, they hear me just before I stealth kill them, one -20 noise perk makes little difference.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Unless you are wearing stealth armour, you're likely to be heard.

You get the most XP from avoiding detection and stealth takedowns. Normal kills and KOs are worth less.

 

[Sceptic]

You get the most XP from avoiding detection and stealth takedowns.

I could never figure out if stealth takedowns counted as "detected" (not alarm, just that they know you're there, like when the arrow turns from green to yellow). There are conflicting reports on the internet, and my own tests were inconclusive (I stealth-KOed through the G22 warehouse in Taiwan for example yet still got the red message saying that I was detected on the debriefing).

Oh, and Assault Rifle is the best of the non-stealth weapons by far. A bit unwieldy if someone's meleeing you, but otherwise awesome damage, AND you can even get silent rounds for it.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I think that for XP, it counts as non-detected, but for the missions where you're asked to be undetected you must leave no signs of your presence which includes punching people out from the shadows.

 

[RK47]

Holy shit I finally got the game working.
What a mess. I liked the way they try to make several approaches work, but the constant pausing the game just to re-select powers and switching weapons is so counter intuitive.

Hello, Obsidian, I have a keyboard. There's 10 perfectly good numerical keys on top there for skill bars, FFS!

 

[some guy]

I'm not sure what you tossers have against the game, it was great. Not good as in moving around and feeling like a secret undercover agent, it was just functional. Not good as in upgrating different stats made any difference, they just added optional variation. But good, and awsome, in that you could really behave just like you ever wantet in your favourite b-movie flick. The options and the style they played out was just perfect and it always felt like there was a secret conversation between the creators and the player saying "hey, we now it's silly but going down the normal road is just to common so why not be random just for fun".
If random was enough I would have just liked the game. But. They took the time and made all the silly various path an extremly joyfull experience exploration. They made the silly look fun.
So, why the hate?

 

[RK47]

Heh, game could've been better, but it was a good effort. Too bad it was buggy at release and full of wasted potential.
Between DXHR acting and AP, I'd take AP anyday.

 

[The Boring Incarnation]

I Alpha Protocol. As a TPS/RPG hybrid it isn't that great (Though I wouldn't call terrible either, but opinions vary); As a Manipulating Conniving Bastard Simulator there are few who compare.

 

[racofer]

Dialog minigame, hacking minigame, blahlblablah...

 

[The Boring Incarnation]

LIES

I will say this, pretty much requiring a gamepad to play this on PC is pretty shitty. Trying to play AP with a Keyboard and Mouse is an exercise in frustration.

 

[Metro]

I'm not sure what you tossers have against the game, it was great. Not good as in moving around and feeling like a secret undercover agent, it was just functional. Not good as in upgrating different stats made any difference, they just added optional variation. But good, and awsome, in that you could really behave just like you ever wantet in your favourite b-movie flick. The options and the style they played out was just perfect and it always felt like there was a secret conversation between the creators and the player saying "hey, we now it's silly but going down the normal road is just to common so why not be random just for fun".
If random was enough I would have just liked the game. But. They took the time and made all the silly various path an extremly joyfull experience exploration. They made the silly look fun.
So, why the hate?

Joined:
Jan 10, 2012
Posts:
3

 

[RK47]

Hmm, playing with gamepad seems counterproductive. Cannot wrap that idea into my head.

 

[Jaesun]

Obvious dumbfuck is obvious. Considering the amount of praise this game has gotten from many members here.

 

[The Boring Incarnation]

Hmm, playing with gamepad seems counterproductive. Cannot wrap that idea into my head.

It makes the minigames more tolerable, at the very least. Having a mouse as that unyielding beast in hacking is terrible, and there's no sensitivity slider in the world that can forgive that. You could circumvent with EMP grenades, of course, but depending on how you're playing there's so much you can carry.

 

[Gragt]

I also found the use of the pad more satisfying with AP. It also makes the lockpicking mini-game somewhat challenging and even fun (you need to apply the right amount of pressure on the trigger) while the mouse make it simply trivial. This one should have been reworked in some way to get some difficulty with the mouse and keyboard.

Also it is silly that the assault rifle perk gives you auto-targetting, since that's not needed with the mouse, and it's broken on PC with the pad anyway.

 

[Sceptic]

The only portion of the game that benefits from the gamepad is the hacking minigame. Everything else, including the other minigames, works much better with K&M.

Hacking is probably the only element of the game that made me rage a bit though.

 

[Gragt]

Lockpicking sure works better with a mouse, to the point it's broken.

 

[Ivory Samoan]

Got this on my backlog, keen to load it up once done with current set of games.

What's the story like, work well with the action/gameplay etc.. or is it all stop/start like?

 

[Infinitron]

Got this on my backlog, keen to load it up once done with current set of games.

What's the story like, work well with the action/gameplay etc.. or is it all stop/start like?

There's one thing you need to know about this game: It's not long. It's meant to be replayed several times to explore various choices and consequences.

So don't attempt to save-scum (checkpoint-scum, really) the conversations to get the best results. Just flow with it and LARP as best you can. It's a lot more fun that way.