Alpha Protocol as a concept? Fantastic. Alpha Protocol as a game? Incredibly average.
Even in spite of that, though, it's still absolutely worth a playthrough.
I must give credit where it's due, however: Obsidian clearly had a vision for Alpha Protocol, and for the most part, it's been executed decently well here. However, the speedbump that many encounter when it comes to this game is its banal moment-to-moment gameplay and combat. That's not exactly ideal when that all takes up the majority of your playtime.
To clarify, it's not strictly bad, and for a studio with little-to-no experience in the third-person shooter genre, it's actually impressive that it gets by enough as it does. However, despite some of its mechanics having decent reasoning and motive behind them, it does manage to get in its own way with how frustrating they are in practice.
A key example of this is how shooting accuracy works in Alpha Protocol. Again, it's conceptually sound—to start with, all of your guns have massive reticules to denote your current proficiency (or lack thereof) with the weapon (much like the original version of Mass Effect 1). That's then supposed to incentivize you to invest in that weapon's respective skill tree and attachments to make the reticule smaller, thus making it easier to shoot.
It sounds fair enough in theory; however, even if you do so, it still doesn't look or feel satisfying enough to get by, especially with the pistol, the weapon you will likely be using the most if you're trying to be stealthy. To be fair, if you focus the reticule on an enemy, it will turn red and a crosshair will appear for you to take a 'critical hit'.
However, even taking all that into consideration, the gunplay still doesn't click as much as it should, especially given how many mandatory firefight sections you're thrown into throughout the campaign. Adding to that, the shoddy stealth mechanics make enemies spot you all too easily, pretty much ensuring the alarm goes off and even when it does, there are basically zero penalties for giving in and going loud once you've been spotted, rendering stealth effectively pointless much of the time.
So yes, in essence, Alpha Protocol's gameplay is an attempt at Splinter Cell-esque stealth shooter gameplay that never really feels satisfying at any point during its ~13-hour campaign and largely just feels like fodder to stretch out gameplay between the dialogue and story segments.
Speaking of which, Alpha Protocol's biggest highlight and by far what turned it into the cult classic that it is today are its dialogue trees and choice-and-consequences storyline. As a whole, Alpha Protocol's narrative is a pretty generic spy caper that doesn't really do anything new unless you've never encountered the works of Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum. However, the game's writing, characters, and the surprising depth of its storyline variables more than make up for this. It's perhaps not to the level of Detroit: Become Human in terms of how different the story can be when certain choices are made, but of course, since this came first, credit should be given where credit is due for how impressive its differing narrative branches can be.
The protagonist, Michael Thorton, is, again, a pretty generic spy guy, but that's mostly by design, as you can shape his personality much in the same way as in Dragon Age 2 and your conversational tone will greatly determine your standing with the game's revolving cast of friends and foes. The voice acting is also fairly decent, although some of Michael's line reads can be quite dry, which, once again, could be by design instead of an error in voice direction.
All in all, without sarcasm, I can declare that Alpha Protocol is one of the better 6/10 games money can buy. I acknowledge that proposition doesn't sound attractive on paper but there's no denying that AP's narrative ambitions surely exceed the faults of its gameplay, and it's for sure worth a look even in spite of them.
6/10
Even in spite of that, though, it's still absolutely worth a playthrough.
I must give credit where it's due, however: Obsidian clearly had a vision for Alpha Protocol, and for the most part, it's been executed decently well here. However, the speedbump that many encounter when it comes to this game is its banal moment-to-moment gameplay and combat. That's not exactly ideal when that all takes up the majority of your playtime.
To clarify, it's not strictly bad, and for a studio with little-to-no experience in the third-person shooter genre, it's actually impressive that it gets by enough as it does. However, despite some of its mechanics having decent reasoning and motive behind them, it does manage to get in its own way with how frustrating they are in practice.
A key example of this is how shooting accuracy works in Alpha Protocol. Again, it's conceptually sound—to start with, all of your guns have massive reticules to denote your current proficiency (or lack thereof) with the weapon (much like the original version of Mass Effect 1). That's then supposed to incentivize you to invest in that weapon's respective skill tree and attachments to make the reticule smaller, thus making it easier to shoot.
It sounds fair enough in theory; however, even if you do so, it still doesn't look or feel satisfying enough to get by, especially with the pistol, the weapon you will likely be using the most if you're trying to be stealthy. To be fair, if you focus the reticule on an enemy, it will turn red and a crosshair will appear for you to take a 'critical hit'.
However, even taking all that into consideration, the gunplay still doesn't click as much as it should, especially given how many mandatory firefight sections you're thrown into throughout the campaign. Adding to that, the shoddy stealth mechanics make enemies spot you all too easily, pretty much ensuring the alarm goes off and even when it does, there are basically zero penalties for giving in and going loud once you've been spotted, rendering stealth effectively pointless much of the time.
So yes, in essence, Alpha Protocol's gameplay is an attempt at Splinter Cell-esque stealth shooter gameplay that never really feels satisfying at any point during its ~13-hour campaign and largely just feels like fodder to stretch out gameplay between the dialogue and story segments.
Speaking of which, Alpha Protocol's biggest highlight and by far what turned it into the cult classic that it is today are its dialogue trees and choice-and-consequences storyline. As a whole, Alpha Protocol's narrative is a pretty generic spy caper that doesn't really do anything new unless you've never encountered the works of Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum. However, the game's writing, characters, and the surprising depth of its storyline variables more than make up for this. It's perhaps not to the level of Detroit: Become Human in terms of how different the story can be when certain choices are made, but of course, since this came first, credit should be given where credit is due for how impressive its differing narrative branches can be.
The protagonist, Michael Thorton, is, again, a pretty generic spy guy, but that's mostly by design, as you can shape his personality much in the same way as in Dragon Age 2 and your conversational tone will greatly determine your standing with the game's revolving cast of friends and foes. The voice acting is also fairly decent, although some of Michael's line reads can be quite dry, which, once again, could be by design instead of an error in voice direction.
All in all, without sarcasm, I can declare that Alpha Protocol is one of the better 6/10 games money can buy. I acknowledge that proposition doesn't sound attractive on paper but there's no denying that AP's narrative ambitions surely exceed the faults of its gameplay, and it's for sure worth a look even in spite of them.
6/10