Broken Busted and Buggy. Belongs in the recycle bin

User Rating: 1 | Alpha Protocol PC
Well, I read the reviews (good and bad) but since this game looked so intriguing I had to check it out for myself. Good thing, then, that it was on sale from Steam for less than the cost of a six-pack. Although this utter piece of crap COULD have been a decent (if not great) game, it is completely ruined by a plethora of poor design decisions, psychotic camera, and general lack of polish. In fact I just spent the last hour or so trying in vain just to get past the intro section due to the craptastic camera and general gameplay issues. Dealing with the guards was easy, dealing with the game mechanics was maddening. Lets talk about the dialogue system; cool idea but WTF are those buttons?? No indication of what they do or what they're for (ie: no description). You can find out the hard way like I did. I missed an important section just because the damn button wouldn't respond to my mouse press, and once gone it's gone, baby.
I'm not going to get into a detailed description of the numerous technical failures since other reviewers have done so at length. Here is the bottom line; it has the POTENTIAL to be a great game, but instead it is a chore just to play. That translates to 'NO FUN AT ALL'. I realize the fan boys won't like this, but broken is broken. If another developer were to re-do this monstrosity and re-issue a properly coded and optimized version, I might be inclined to give it another chance. As it stands now, Alpha Protocol should never have been released. Pity those poor gamers who paid the full retail price. AVOID AT ALL COSTS