For anybody who doesn't own Alpha Protocol I recommend it (so far, started playing it Saturday and am like 4 hours in). It's a stealth action rpg that got fairly middling reviews which I think was due to bugs on release (no idea if this is true, but it's Obsidian and the game itself is good from what I've played so just assuming) but I've only run into one bug so far (my character got stuck and couldn't move so had to restart from a checkpoint but the checkpoints are relatively frequent so it wasn't a big deal). Really the crappiest part so far are the hacking minigames, the minigame to turn off alarms is relatively inoffensive but the minigame to hack computers is really horrible. But if you don't own it I feel confident in saying it's worth 3.74
I'll also vouch for
Alpha Protocol. It's really good and re-playable as hell.
So, Alpha Protocol is one of those games that might rely on dice-rolls too much for a game w/ shooting elements, as shots you fire could miss or do weak damage - similar to older games that felt more RPG than shooter. This game feels like it should've came out before Mass Effect 2, which is the shooter/RPG that made other games using upgrading-RPG elements and mouse-aiming for shooting look bad w/ their clunky combat. This game would've been raved about more so, if it came out around the time other games w/ some clunky-ness b/c of their systems like Vampire: Bloodlines.
You really need to sink points in pistols for them to become effective, as they're useless until points are sunk into them. Also, some other guns, even if you don't sink much or any points, feel overpowered - such as machine guns and assault rifles. And you can sink not much into hand-to-hand combat, spam the buttons in fights, and still come away like a champ. Some skills, like the one where you call shots like in Splinter Cell (mark and execute type of skill) can instant kill or do insane damage on bosses. The game is quite unbalanced. If you can get by all of that stuff, everyone's in for something special.
But, I'll be damned: there really is something special and quite underrated about this espionage RPG/shooter/stealth hybrid. There's not many other RPG's using this spy setting, first off. Second off, choices really do matter like crazy in this game. Hell, just taking on one mission or section before another, you can wind up w/ crazy different results. You might meet one character, but not another. You might wind-up in one side of the game-area, instead of another. This doesn't even include choices, when you're given one situation or NPC to deal with - and you have to decide what to morally do there. Things can literally pan out so many different branching ways, which makes the game very re-playable.
Should take most somewhere in the 15-20 hours ballpark, per play-through. But, I suspect most that dig this underrated cult classic are going to replay the hell out of this.
Oh, and the Brayko mission and psychopathic Steven Heck are awesome as can be.
This game's a steal at around $4, if anyone didn't get this in one of the
Sega Humble Bundles or buy it before when it's been
dirt-cheap.
, really sick, somewhat sick, or not sick at all.
