That's strange. I don't know why but I had been under the impression that Alpha Protocol was CONSENSUS AWFUL GAME. Now I am hearing that it is an all right game?!? I hope you guys aren't PULLING A FAST ONE OVER ON ME because I went out and picked it up off ebay for twelve bucks.

THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY IF I AM THE VICTIM OF DECEIT!!!!!

dummies don't like it cos the shooting doesn't work 100% (the gibs don't have VisceralBloodCRUNCH effect) and the graphics are a bit wonky. it's fine, though.

Also about deus ex human revolution:

I'm in Hengsha. The feeling I have about this game, something that became especially obvious once I got to Hengsha, is that the world is kind of generically designed. I don't mean the style of the game, cos obviously it's got its own style going on, but that when you go exploring, the kinds of things you find - down to the character models, the music/dialogue from the radio, the pizza boxes, blah blah blah - is the same stuff you find everywhere else in the game. It's kind of a bummer to see the same Imaggio's pizza box lying in a Hengsha apartment as I saw in about 40 different places in Detroit. That's one small example, and it isn't much on it's own, but there are dozens of these things. Like, there are so many American voice actors present in Hengsha and I really think this is just so they could reuse some of the character models or something. There's kind of a lot of laziness present in the world and it makes it feel a bit lifeless after a point, not that much fun to explore. Then there is the absolutely inane dialogue you hear from people on the streets. At best you might hear someone talking about something other than fucking augmentation vs Purity First (like baseball, or - like baseball), at worst you've got these ridiculous ethnic caricatures everywhere (also talking about augs, which really, this is the only thing on absolutely everybody's mind? it makes the world feel very small and limited. i'm not actually that interested in the whole aug vs human debate. actually, i don't give a shit.)

Basically, it's okay. There is a lot to dislike about this game, but actually it's kind of fun and there have been a few moments here and there when I felt happy to be where the game had taken me. I am liking it less as I play more, so I don't know what I'll end up thinking by the end.

More gaming impressions to follow...

I noticed the recycling in the game too, but it actually didn't bother me that much. I had the opposite effect, in that it has grown on me the more I have played. The pizza box thing doesn't bother me that much. I mean, in a corporate controlled future, are you surprised to see something from what could be a global fast food chain? Today we have KFC and McDonalds all over the world. With memory constraints in place, I'd rather they put resources into making the best gaming experience they can, instead of brainstorming thirty different food brands to sprinkle throughout Detroit, Hengsha, and Montreal. Although the similarity in sewer design is truly uncanny. Maybe there was a pre-storyline collapse and the damaged areas were rebuilt by a select group of ultra-rich contractors - which would explain the streamlined design theory away pretty handily.

That said, it feels like it is maybe 75% Deus Ex, 20% Metal Gear Solid and 5% other. It really hit me as I was getting a third person view of Jensen with the silenced & laser sighted pistol leaning at a corner in his "I'm on a mission so I took off my overcoat" skin... whoa, dude looks a lot like Snake. Then it clicked, the radar (especially when upgraded... which I didn't like and just went for seeing through walls instead) and the "sneak through missions but have to fight bosses anyway" definitely remind me of something.

I also notice that it has folded the first three games together, taking pretty much the best parts of the original, Invisible War (hard to put a finger on, but I did get a little IW vibe in a few places - the feeling that my choices were going to come back later, whereas in the first one except for a few areas everything was cut off and self contained) and even Project:Snowblind (some of aug visual designs and the initial premise which is actually kind of cribbed from Robocop - which they kind of lampshade at one point when some guys are talking about it). I would have really liked the spike gun, or at least a way to pull of wireless hacks, but oh well.

And yet, even though I know I'm playing a game where the basic premise is "Every Conspiracy Theory is Right and in Full Effect" I think I made a major error in judgment which could come back to bite me in the end, but if I did everything perfectly the first time through there wouldn't be much cause for repeat traffic, so I'm going to let it go and see where the ride takes me.

I think it feels more like Splinter Cell than Metal Gear.

I'm with jamie on the overheard NPC dialogue thing. There's not enough randomness and hilarity too much hammering the same point home. I did hear a hobo walking along whilstling the theme to DX1 though which almost made my day.

I can't criticise them for reusing models because there is a distinctly different feel in the different cities, yeah I notice repeated props but it doesn't ruin it at all because there's just as much new stuff too.

Also as someone who has made 3D models and tried to made scenes I realise that it's a HUUUUGE undertaking to make a 3D environment like that. All in all it's very impressive. Sarif's office is my dream office. How cool is that office? I want balls hanging from my ceiling!

I can't play it now until next Friday because I'm going away. It's gonna be a painful week waiting to get back to my beloved.

dummies don't like it cos the shooting doesn't work 100% (the gibs don't have VisceralBloodCRUNCH effect) and the graphics are a bit wonky. it's fine, though.

Oh wow, I was trying to figure out why people didn't like this game and I just never realized it was because of the gun mechanics. I just beat the game (it was pretty short but I am positive that if I play differently the game will be entirely different; everything you do leads up to the final mission) without killing anyone and I used guns maybe 10 times, mostly during boss fights. I just went back and tried it out a little and yeah, the accuracy is really strange. I can understand that criticism but the game is incredibly deep and I don't think accuracy problems should be a reason to write off the game entirely.

Also yeah, I'm not crazy about Steven Heck either, but I like the idea of him. A paranoid, delusional conspiracy theory guy who may or may not actually be an agent but who is incredibly competent is a pretty decent premise for a character, and I thought his introduction where he was torturing Wen was pretty funny (and it was also really funny when DON'T READ THIS HUNDLEY!!!!! Sung died and he pegged it on Wen (this is another example of how reactive this game is - this only happens if Heck is alive > Heck likes you > Sung dies)) OKAY YOU CAN READ AGAIN but his execution was really poor. He turned out to be over-the-top zany and really heavy handed.

Yeah, I think this game is right up your alley though Hundley. I've read that a lot of people never get past the first mission, but I enjoyed it so who knows. Alpha Protocol was definitely a platform for storytelling and narrative ideas and this was the focus at the expense of everything else in the game, but it is still a very good game that I think you'll get a lot out of.

I'm sticking to my guns on the Human Revolution/Metal Gear Solid similarity, especially considering I just fought this game's version of the Psycho Mantis bossfight... with it even going as far as taking place in a room with "statues" in it, and guess what? One of said statues can get broken. I'm seriously expecting to get into an elevator at some point that has a couple of cloaked enemies just waiting for me.

Still enjoying the game though.

Also, the last couple of posts about it have made me seriously consider picking up Alpha Protocol in the near future.

whoa statues that can be broken... i hope kojima has his lawyers ready...

SPOILARS

whoa statues that can be broken... i hope kojima has his lawyers ready...

Play the game, fight that boss, tell me it doesn't remind you of the other fight... at least a little bit. I mean, there is an achievement called Foxiest of the Hounds for completing the game without setting off a single alarm. They are wearing their Metal Gear Solid influences right on their sleeve.

Also. Spoiler Alert. This game has bosses.

do you get a skul-gun in the new deus ex?? if i could kil just by thought, it would be beter.

Spoiler Alert:

Not that I saw in my first playthrough, although it is mentioned in an email.

playing alpha protocol. i guess i can see why some people didn't really like it, but i don't think it deserved all the bad press it got. it's a pretty terrible time for videogames, and even though this game is pretty imperfect, it's still pretty good.

also i can answer a question that was posed to me:

I remember Jamie and Hundley talking about Alpha Protocol a couple months ago but don't remember what their general conclusion was. What do you think of this game? I know you're a huge fan of the Splinter Cell spy games Hundley, how does Alpha Protocol compare? I've never really played an espionage game before so I have no idea how this is in comparison to some of the others, but this is also much more of a James Bond simulator than a stealth game. So far I really, really like this. The way the missions are structured and levels are designed are very, very good and the writing is mostly very good as well. The way the game responds to everything you do, the way you complete your missions, the choices you make, the people you talk to, even the clothes you wear, is fantastic and I love the fact that there are consequences for everything and you sometimes (often) have to make extremely tough choices. It is definitely the most 'role playing' role playing game I've ever played.

to be honest, alpha protocol doesn't compare. i'm not saying this to knock alpha protocol, as it's a pretty good game, but i don't think they really tried to make alpha protocol in the mold of stuff like hitman or splinter cell. the role playing elements really are the focus of the game and everything else is really just a vehicle for what they were doing with the narrative and style. i'd call it an rpg before i'd really call it an espionage game.

if you haven't played them, you really NEED to go out and play splinter cell chaos theory and hitman blood money if you found the fundamental gameplay of alpha protocol interesting at all. what they do with the narrative in alpha protocol is kinda/sorta revolutionary and not what you'll see from those games, but everything else is superior. i didn't really care a whole lot for the other games in the splinter cell or hitman series, but chaos theory and blood money were the ones that really clicked. particularly blood money. i didn't think i'd be keen on the hitman games, but i've never seen another game come even vaguely close to how incredible the level design for blood money was. hell, just the design in general. it's an incredible game. one of the very few games that i'd insist is a MUST PLAY for anyone even vaguely interested in videogames.

splinter cell is really all about the stealth and i felt chaos theory does it better than the other ones in the series did. i felt like the other ones were kinda buggy, or there were just too many sections where they felt obligated to make it more of a shooter, or just deviate from the core design of the series to benefit the narrative(which i get, it's just the stories suck). also i'm not aware of a better game soundtrack than the one amon tobin did for chaos theory. it's legitimately wild shit. sometimes i'd let myself get spotted deliberately just so the crazy stuff would kick in. it's simultaneously warped and surreal and also a very intelligent summary of SPY MOVIE SOUNDTRACKS from the 60s and 70s. the game itself is solid and worth anybody's time, but the soundtrack is really the highlight. it's worth tracking down even if you don't play the game.

also the saboteur is along those lines as well if you find that you need a game like that. the only sandbox game where i actually completed 100% of the stuff to do in it. it's not really espionage when you break it all down, but it works in much the same way as hitman does without really feeling a whole lot like hitman. also, i don't think i enjoyed a game ending more than i did the ending of the saboteur.

all things considered though, these games aren't really that similar to alpha protocol. like i said, alpha protocol is really an rpg FIRST, espionage game second, while the other three i mentioned are definitely more gameplay centric. if the story is what got you into alpha protocol, you may be approaching these games wrong. still, all three are definitely worth playing if games in this general thematic genre intrigue you. if it's espionage storytelling you want, hit seasons 2 and 3 of mission impossible.

i really like being able to send emails in alpha protocol insisting time cube is real

the chaos theory soundtrack is on spotify if anyone has it btw

http://open.spotify.com/album/5EzESEPcpiY9chsUjWydw5

Had some time so I finished Alpha Protocol. Pretty good game, but not great. The gameplay isn't really as bad as I expected it to be, but I found most of it pretty wonky. Older games have done this much better, and in an effort to accommodate different styles of play I felt like they didn't really structure it in a way where you could practically play the game using only one of those methods. I had wanted to play as a stealth character, but I found it exceedingly difficult to really do this consistently. I'd be ok for a while, during sections where they lay out methods for you to play it stealth, but then you run into sections where you oughtn't even consider using stealth. Could have been a lot better, and I could tell this was something they were probably half-way committed to but more or less failed, but I don't think this ruins the game.

I liked a lot of ideas in the story, but I can't say I was particularly impressed with much of the execution of it. Some of it is just the fact that the ideas are pretty damn complicated and generally difficult to flesh out into convincing characters and scenarios. Steven Heck is an awesome idea for a character, but I don't know how you really do that and make the character sober and easily digested. He's like the worst conceivable outsider, and you can actually find the character vaguely convincing if you've seen that people like this actually exist and can actually get worse. I'm kinda back and forth whether I think he was the best character in the game or the worst. Most of the other characters were pretty goddamn boring.

Also, I really liked that they did not make too many of the characters in the game particularly transparent. Many of the characters were pretty empty, so there wasn't a lot to think about, but there were a few that you really never do understand particularly well. I did as much as I possibly could with G22 just to try figuring out what the deal was with the organization, Albatross, and Sis, and the game never really reveals much of anything about their agenda and even less about their backgrounds. All this was probably the strong spot of the game, even if very little of it was specifically done very well. Usually if there's an angle or a motive in a story, it's made clear at some point, but the writers knew when to keep you thinking about it. Leaving things ultimately unknowable takes a lot of restraint as a writer, and it's always pretty impressive when I see that with characters or situations that are intrinsically interesting. I never really knew where I stood with most characters, figuring the like/dislike function wasn't a direct reflection of allegiances(which was correct as it turned out). I went through most of it funneling information to Scarlet rather than cashing in on the black market, and got to the end of the game thinking Mina was just too damn helpful and had to have some angle, not even bothering to look for her at the end of the game. Probably wouldn't have done either of those things if I had a better read on the characters. That's a good thing though. I don't think clarity is necessarily a good thing to employ in storytelling.

Overall I really wanted to like this game a lot more than I did, since I think the idea is really cool, but I found the story kinda superficially fun and not particularly rewarding. The liked the idea of getting to decide the outcome of virtually everyone in the game, and how you create this remarkable web of connections, but I felt like it spread the core storytelling kinda thin. I went back and played some sections a couple times, just to see if I missed anything interesting in bypassing certain routes, and occasionally there was some gem in one of the routes you can take, but this was too sporadic for the story to really be very genuine. A lot of the choices don't really lead anywhere particularly interesting. It's tough to get particularly invested in any of the characters, and Thorton himself is rather boring much of the time. I didn't find myself caring too much about anything that happened in the game.

I don't hold any of this against Obsidian though. This was a phenomenally difficult concept for a game, and it'd have been a truly tremendous game if they had done everything right and kept the storytelling of the game gripping and worthwhile. The game was fun, had some interesting ideas that sometimes worked well. More than I can say for a lot of games out there right now.

I started playing Mother 3 a couple days ago and I'm on Chapter 2 now. It's pretty rad. I've played the first two for a combined total of like 30 minutes, but this one grabbed my attention better. I'll definitely give Earthbound another shot after I'm done with this.

I totally wasn't expecting as heavy of themes in this game from the goofy sense of humor and cartoony graphics, but I was kind of amazed how well they pulled off characters dying and family issues. The music is pretty good, but I remember Earthbound's seemed a bit more innovative and disorienting (in a good way.)

I finished Deus Ex Human Rev.

It's a shame really because I doubt there will be anything AS GOOD for a long time. I do have a few complaints about the game (i.e. some of the mechanics got a bit stale towards the end, progression in mechanics dropped off after the first area). The boss fights were characters that you can't empathise with at all and therefore seem throwaway, they're just there because someone said they had to be there.

I think the game lacked a bit of length. The central hub areas in the game were huge and well designed but there were only two and anything else was a mission location. I heard they chose to not include Montreal in the final game in order to give more to the two hub areas. I think they could've done more, especially since they've been working on it since 2007 with a team of 200 people.

It could've been bigger. What we got was really good for sure but I sense that a bit may have been trimmed for the missing link (DLC) which is coming soon.

This is slightly annoying.

It took me 39 hours to complete on the hardest setting. I didn't choose any particular strategy, just what I felt like at the time. There are some events that occur in the game that can be prevented by quicksaving and acting quickly with a sniper rifle. Those sequences were rewardingly difficult.

The hacking minigame got kinda old toward the end. That's the kinda thing that they should've changed specific to the hub-area or perhaps the stage in the game. It irks me that the same UI is used in China that is used in Detroit.

I still think by today's standards that DX3 was incredible. Things have really gone down the crapper quality wise in the past ten years so to have a game that is genuinely awe inspiring in places is a real treat. I think the last time I got this feeling was in the later stages of Bioshock but even that was a little TOO repetitive in nature.

Throwing vending machines at people never gets old either.

I just beat sparkle hd on the hardest setting. Now I'm playing Atlantis sky patrol which is basically the same game but with a steampunk skin