Tuesday, June 1, 2010

First Impressions: Alpha Protocol

I started playing Alpha Protocol this evening. I'd not really followed the development of this one but after seeing some preview videos I thought it looked interesting. I pre-ordered it but didn't install it right away as I wanted to finish some other things first. It was then I saw it only scored a 6.0 on Gamespot with the following headline: "Alpha Protocol's astounding intricacies are tarnished by bugs, clumsy gameplay mechanics, and rough production values". That got me a little worried. I've only played for an hour or two so far which includes the starting tutorial section and the first couple of missions. I enjoyed the opening, everything was new and interesting. I chose a soldier background specializing in sub-machine guns and technical aptitude. However once I was out in the world running missions I ran into some bugs and issues. I managed to get stuck in a wall at one point and had to load a previous save. Luckily I'd just passed a checkpoint. I don't like the checkpoint save system as it means there are only certain points where you can stop playing which makes it hard to plan your game time. There's also quite a few oddities in the PDA interface which don't seem very intuitive to me. I keep pressing the wrong button to close the map for example. I get the feeling this is another game which has suffered by being designed for an XBox controller and later ported to PC. It's not so bad that it will stop me playing, there's nothing totally game breaking, it's just a little disappointing after the hype. Hopefully they'll be able to patch a lot of the problems. Until then I'd only recommend it if you're really into RPGs or spy games, otherwise I'd wait a bit for patches to be released and prices to come down.

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