Choices and Consequences My Friends
That is not to say that Alpha Protocol is a perfect game, it's not even really a great game due to some issues, and probably even hardly qualifies as a good game in plenty of ways. Regardless, this is one of the most complex games that has been developed or that probably will be developed for quite some time. These types of games are increasingly becoming a rare breed of game because the high level of complexity in their design invites those damned little bugs that were so prevalent when the title was released. The average game player, though they are generally willing to suspend all disbelief watching something like Transformers at the theater, will not tolerate design hiccups in their games. The point? We may never see a major developer release a game with this level of complexity again, or at least we likely won't in the foreseeable future.
Before I continue, I should mention some more common review points. The graphics, sounds, and voice acting are all quite solid. While some reviews made it a point to focus on how silly your character looks while sneaking around, this did not bother me. Now, back to the review.
The high level of complexity I mentioned earlier comes from Alpha Protocol's system of choices and consequences. Every choice you make in the game will shape the story in a radically different way. The sheer amount of choices made that will change the game is truly mind-boggling. If ten people were to play through the game once, each one would likely have a much different experience.
That's not to say the experience will always be good. As fun as it is to sneak around and take out opponents from behind, there are some irritating parts of Alpha Protocol too. Many reviews have mentioned the boss fights and unusual difficulty scaling in Alpha Protocol and these certainly stood out in my time with the game. The boss fights often border on ridiculous, and undermine what is an otherwise believable world. This archaic type of gaming imported from console games of yesteryear (NES days) is certainly not something that completely ruins the game by any means, but it dampens the mood slightly. Perhaps the most ridiculous boss fight moment was the Russian mob boss, who seemed to also have incredible strength and the ability to take bullets like Superman. I thought our goal, as a spy, was to take out these people quick and clean, but clearly some of them are not people at all, they are supervillains hailing from planet Krypton! Most of Alpha Protocol is incredibly easy and I probably only died a handful of times, but there are moments, such as the aforementioned Russian mob boss, where the difficulty will scale up surprisingly and the game can become quite hard for a moment. Again, this is not a game-breaking problem, but it will probably cause some slight frustration.
While the game is a RPG, it is only really considered one because of the inclusion of a skill system and the choices and consequences that I mentioned earlier, and mostly plays as an action-espionage game (though your shooting accuracy is somewhat governed by your skills). As with most RPG's, you gain experience from defeating enemies and accomplishing missions. In Alpha Protocol, you use this experience to gain new skills which can prove to be quite useful. There are a wide variety of skills, ranging from sneaking skills that will allow you to become invisible for short periods, hand to hand combat skills making you a deadly force in near encounters, weapons skills that will make you as dangerous as a modern day Josey Wales, and several others. Despite the RPG elements, the game plays pretty well as a standard sort of action game, just don't expect Modern Warfare type of mechanics here. The game also allows you to select missions somewhat in an order of your choosing.
The story of Alpha Protocol is framed with your character revealing the events he took part in to some nefarious stranger and will jump from moments where you are held in a detention cell of some sort to your safehouse, where you will interact with other characters from the game, equip yourself, and take on a mission of your choosing. This framing wasn't especially necessary or helpful to the story, and at some points it forces you in a position to react or respond to the stranger without really knowing how you should, since you will not know how he ties in to the story until much later. Another issue with Alpha Protocol comes in the conversation wheel. The game has adapted a method of choosing dialog options and making choices based on a conversation wheel similar to what is found in a game like Mass Effect. You must quickly select a topic from the wheel which will determine how your character will respond. This makes the game easier to play with a Xbox 360 controller (though it was not particularly advantageous for me as I used the good old mouse and keyboard) and helps keep the pacing more brisk, but it also can cause you to make a choice that you probably didn't really want to, either because you didn't have enough time to consider what would be said or because you expected your response to be different based upon the topic you selected. To explain this, I will describe a situation similar to one which I encountered that resulted in me making a game-altering decision that I had no intention to make. While talking to a potential romantic interest, she described a difficult decision she had to make in order to walk a fine line of protecting herself and protecting me. The choices I could select were something along the lines of "Pragmatic", "Accusing", "It's okay", and "get out". I assumed get out meant my character would tell the romantic interest that she should get herself out of the situation and go find a safe place to hide, so I selected that option. Instead, my character began to chew her out and threw her out of the apartment - literally saying "get the Hell out of here!" rather than "you should get yourself out of this situation". That was not the reaction I wanted and it ended up altering the game in a way I didn't want.
Regardless of some of these rather slight complaints, the game succeeds where it is most important. It provides the player with a highly malleable story and game world that can be uniquely shaped by the decisions you make. Considering the sheer amount of possibilities that are offered, this is a game that you can play through multiple times as a different personality and that makes it all worthwhile. Alternatively, you and your friends could each play through the game once and compare how vastly different your experiences were. This is "role playing" in the truest sense, and it is a game that every single person should play through *at least* once.