Alpha Protocol™

My time on Steam does not do this game justice. If this was on a platform, I've played it on that platform. This was almost pure perfection. Everything has it's own quirk, the combat isn't 100% straight forward, the hacking, bypassing, and lockpicking are all their own unique systems. And when you start playing all of it feels awful. For the full experience start with the "rookie" profile. You start with zero skill points and zero skills. It's ridiculous. You can't shoot, can't fight, can't sneak. You are rougher around the edges than a Sea Urchin. (bonus, finishing the game starting with Rookie unlocks Veteran and lets you basically have an NG+ in a game where NG+ didn't exist in the first place). And then you hone yourself into the kind of, "spy" you want to be. The "tutorial" chapter does not do this game justice either. Getting through Saudi Arabia is a big teaser. But let's talk what you are actually doing, sneaking (or Rambo'ing) both have their trade offs. How often you are seen or not seen, how many alarms, knocking out or killing enemies, it all effects how people will perceive you and talk about you as well as to you if you meet them. Some people love ghosts, others lov…

old but gold. best to play it with a controller though. 10/10 have played and beaten multiple times

A flawed but brilliant spy RPG. Great choices, interesting characters, and a story that changes based on your actions. A true hidden gem.

An excellent spy thriller game with an awesome choice-driven story, great level-design, many different playstyles, fun characters... and some of the wonkiest combat you'll see. It's got a campaign of around 15 hours and enough replayability to go for it one or two more times and still not see all of the interactions. To start, I did have technical issues with the game, on numerous missions I've suffered from frame drops, two missions had bugged pick-up icons, two instances of black-screen freezes in loading that required a restart and one mission bugging out and not display during the last chapter. I have read that the game's GoG version performs much better and would recommend folks to either check that out, or use the patch guide listed here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3465170007 Saving in the game is a little rough. You cannot do proper manual saves, only permanently saving certain checkpoints. I noticed mid-mission that saving not always reliable and sadly you are very restricted by said checkpoints. For example, if you wish to quit the game once you get back to the safehouse, you either have to save and quit immediately, or deploy to a mission bef…

I found this game to be fun, even as dated as it is.

Alpha Protocol has a lot of ambition that falls apart due to the gameplay feeling shoddily taped together. Balance and basic core gamefeel just aren't there. It still ends up being a recommend due to the quality of writing and very reactive choice systems, but I wish they had a year or two more to actually polish the game into something more enjoyable to engage with.