Proof that you can make a good game even without good gameplay
There is no denying that this is a game of many flaws, from the very beginning it's obvious that this wasn't meant to be played on a keyboard and mice. How Obsidian, a traditional PC developer managed to mess up the controls so badly is beyond me, but they did. You better be equipped with a gamepad, or be prepared for unplayable minigames and quirky and unresponsive camera movement.
But even a gamepad can't hide the horrible shooting and stealth mechanics present throughout the game. Underneath the game is a RPG, coverned by numbers, but on the outside it plays like an action game. Unfortunately in this case that compomise failed miserably. The combat is unsatisfying and clunky, but next to the broken stealth mechanics, shooting your way through the levels is still the preferrable course of action.
One of the things people like to point out is the great dialogue and npc interaction the game presents, as if it would negate everything else that is wrong with the game, unfortunately in my eyes it does not. Alpha Protocol features a dialogue wheel similar to Mass Effect, but whereas other games have suffered from bland responses, or from too black and white options, Alpha Protocol suffers from the opposite. The dialogue wheel in AP does result in a variety of different responses and reactions, unfortunately they often aren't what you wanted, you might choose to be "suave" but end up directly insulting the person instead. Too much is left to chance, there is no way of knowing what you're really gonna say and you're left wondering what kind of a frog is gonna escape your mouth the next time. The whole dialogue system could had been replaced by randown wheel of fortune and it wouldn't have made any difference to me.
And while the characters are interesting the socialising aspect is pretty hollow, much of the communication is done via tv screen without you actually meeting the person, and most characters just pass by in a scene or two. In one occasion I was excited to get a npc in my safe house, like a party member in many other RGPs, but in this case I wasn't even able to talk to her outside scripted events. You don't really become attached to anyone, which is why I was somewhat amused when one of the bad guys threatened that I would start losing people close to me..I'm sorry, who are these people again...
And if combat, stealth and dialogue..the three main aspects of the game being messed up isn't enough, AP makes sure to throw in some extra annoyances. One of the main ones being the minigames. You will be hacking, lockpicking and bypassing alarms in a collection of some of the worst game design in history. Now the lockpicking isn't so bad as it's rare and quick enough. Bypassing alarms isn't too hard either but what makes it aggravating is the frequency you need to do it, which is every time you set off an alarm, and thanks to the sloppy stealth mechanics that's quite often. Thankfully you can just ignore it and shoot your way through, which is what I did, but you'll always hear that alarm ringing on the background reminding you that you're doing it wrong. The hacking minigame is a beast of it's own though, I strongly belive the designer of this particular part of the game was a dyslexic who wanted to share his pain with the rest of the world. To top it off it's literally broken if you try to play it with a mouse.
Despite all this I managed to enjoy the game, it's hard to point out why exactly, it doesn't seem like it gets anything right, the gameplay defies human logic and the plot is a convoluted mess, but somehow it manages to pull you in and make you keep playing. It's a shame the gameplay doesn't do justice to the rest of the game, because it could had been a great experience, now it's something I can't really recommend.