Alpha Protocol, with its intriguing story, multiple methods of completion, and astounding customization, is almost there
Story-wise, Alpha Protocol is hard to beat. You've got your secret agent, Michael Thorton, tasked with taking down a corrupt arms-dealer accused of selling to terrorists and starting a cold war to boost their profits. The plot might sound a little "24-ish," and certainly its been done to death before in movies and TV shows. However, in Alpha Protocol, while there is one answer, the way to receive that answer is not linear. You, as Agent Thorton, can create alliances with terrorist organizations to gain support, only to turn on them when you no longer need their services. Similarly, other characters, after offering you their help, will turn on you, making you wary of who to trust in this complex spy thriller. Speaking of spy thrillers, this game satisfies every facet of a James Bond story. You've got your maniacal antagonist, Halbech, the arms-dealers, your beautiful women, your high-tech gadgets, your martial arts, beautiful cars, beautiful locales, death-defying missions, suave-personality, and great voice-acting. It deserves at least half of the rating based solely on this atmospheric feature, which really makes you believe you're leading the life of a super-spy. The game is so intriguing and complex, you'll need more than one, even two playthroughs to explore all the possible branches of the story. Everything has a consequence, and that is what sets Alpha Protocol apart from other RPGs. This is helped, in part, by a timer on the dialogue meter, which forces you to respond quickly lest you pick an answer you didn't mean to. While choosing between a professional choice and suave choice sometimes won't make much of a difference, you will have only a few seconds to execute someone if need be, or save someone's life, for example. This system prevents you from looking up online what the repercussions would be; accurate, because a real spy wouldn't not respond for five minutes; he or she has to make decisions without asking questions. Returning to the piece about consequences, every decision you make, for the most part, has a recognizable effect. If you kill a professor based on shady intel, with only a few seconds to decide, as mentioned before, you will see news reports about the assassination, dialogue relating to your role, and long-term effects. Similarly, actions in one mission will effect those in another. If you, for instance, take out the elite guards of a Saudi prince before you meet him, you'll encounter less resistance when you do. Everything is so finely-tuned in this angle it makes me wonder why this system was mostly overlooked a year ago.
Again returning to the atmospheric part of the game, I feel the designers really did a great job making you feel part of a spy fantasy. The locations deserve a second mention. Your hideouts in the game are amazing, akin to a mansion. You get a state of the art supercomputer, ironically to check email but also to buy black market weapons, intel and armor, all of which have subcategories, such as silencers, carbon plating, and extended magazines. This customization goes well beyond the attachments in the Call of Duty games; every attachment has a precise effect that is noticeable in the missions. All the characters you meet are well-voiced, and the women you meet can be deadly but sexy, and you'll need to choose the right thing to say in order to develop a bit more of a "pleasure" relationship with them. Concerning this, every character, or at least those that are central to the story, have a meter of like/dislike for you, and depending on what you say, their opinion of you will either rise or fall. Say something sarcastic to a serious character, and that character's opinion of you will fall. With each fall or rise, you get perks for your mission, or assistance in the field. With your main handler, Mina, you can get increased endurance in the field if you befriend her to a certain level. This system ensures that everything you say does have a tangible effect, even if it is just a perk or two. Relating to Thorton's skills, you get AP points to put into a chart of skills, such as Stealth, Pistols, Assault Rifles, etc. Each rank comes with either a damage bonus, a perk, or a perk upgrade. For instance, putting enough points into stealth will allow you to automatically become invisible should an enemy spot you, giving you a few seconds to find cover before he can spot you. It's interesting to explore all the combinations of skills and potential ways of getting through missions, such as hacking the turrets so they turn on your enemy, or just blazing through the place with dual SMGs.
However, the skill system is partly where the game starts to go wrong. While the system for choosing skills is perfectly fine, after a while you'll discover that stealth really is the only option for getting through a level. Going gung-ho, despite how fun it might sound, only gets alarms raised and enemies flocking to your PRECISE position, which can get a bit infuriating at times, when they really shouldn't know where you are at every point in the mission. The stealth system isn't so robust either. While you get your takedowns and silencers, the system can be frustrating when the enemy just spots you out of nowhere, turning the whole building against you and forcing you to be aggressive, with no way out except turning off the alarm, only after you defeat the omniscient enemies. The minigame you have to complete to turn off the alarm, however, and the other minigames you'll need to do are infuriating beyond belief. To turn off alarms, you need to bypass a keypad, and match up twisty circuits, and if you fail, you have to start over, or the time will run out, and you have to restart. To lock pick, you have to line up the locks with your pick; while this may sound harmless, if you get it wrong, for some reason the alarm for the whole building starts. I can understand this in a mansion or museum, but in Taipei slums? Finally, to hack computers, you have to match up lines of code with each other, and take my word for it, it is extremely frustrating. Between the time limit, threat of alarm and constantly moving lines of code, you'll wish you didn't have to do them. Fortunately, some of these are optional, so you can spare yourself the trouble most of the time.
The biggest problem with Alpha Protocol, however, is the combat. It's so bad, you'll wonder how it made it past beta-testing. To sum it up, your guns, mainly the pistols, because everything else sucks, have to lined up with the enemy; while this may sound like any old reticule system, it's worse than that. Even if you line up your crosshairs, there's no guarantee you will hit. In fact, most of the time you won't, and if you do get a headshot, usually that won't kill the guy. To pull off a one-hit kill, you need to line up the crosshairs, and WAIT for an additional set to line up. At the worse times, like in the middle of fire, you'll find yourself standing up, trying to line up on a guy who keeps moving. Eventually, you'll just resort to martial arts, which only get you so far. I won't go into details, but the actual gameplay of combat is terrible.
You may ask, why did I give the game an 8 despite the problems with the combat and minigames. Having taken all that into consideration, I still feel Alpha Protocol deserves a better rating than a 6 or 6.5, like I have seen elsewhere. Sure, the combat is awful, but the RPG elements are a 9, maybe 9.5. In no other game are consequences so tangible, and atmosphere so grand, that you lose yourself in the spy fantasy of Michael Thorton. You'll truly feel like Bourne, Bond and Bauer playing Alpha Protocol. If you value more than combat in your purchases or rentals, do yourself a favor and try out Alpha Protocol. Stick with it, and you might just find yourself in the midst of a spy fantasy with all the workings of a great Bond movie in it.