Have you heard of a game titled “Alpha Protocol“? If the answer is no, it’s not surprising. You see, this game was one of many that glided in under the radar almost completely unnoticed, thanks in large part to the releases of highly anticipated heavy hitters Red Dead Redemption and Alan Wake.
Although you wouldn’t guess it by the title, Alpha Protocol is actually a Role-Playing game. Imagine if you will Splinter Cell remade as an RPG. Not just any RPG, but an RPG using the Unreal 3 game engine, just like Mass Effect. In fact, go one step further and picture what might come out if you stuffed Mass Effect and Splinter Cell into a blender and mixed them together on the highest setting. If you picture that, you might get a decent idea of what exactly Alpha Protocol is like.
When you start playing, one of the first things you will notice is the graphics. They are fairly impressive, though there is room for improvement. You will also notice the film grain which should be extremely familiar to fans of the Mass Effect series, in fact much of the game, in terms of graphics should be quite familiar to those fans.
The next thing you might notice is the lack of character customisation, in fact it’s nearly non-existant. When it becomes time to personalise your character, you will notice that there aren’t very many options at all to choose from. What you are given, is the option to change the characters eye color, choose between 5 or 6 different hair styles, pick between 4 or 5 different facial hair styles and decide if you want your character wearing a hat or shades. Fans of current RPGs might be heavily disappointed since in recent years we have been spoiled with character customisation. In fact, we have grown to accept it, and take it for granted.
However, all that aside, the game has good controls, in fact, very familiar controls that shouldn’t take any time at all to get used. The story is mediocre, it’s not Fantastic, but it’s definitely not the worst you could imagine. In fact, I would go so far as to say it was semi-enjoyable.
The only real flaw that I noticed was the games difficulty. See, they attempted to give the game an open exploration feel, similar to mass effect, however the game was clearly designed to be played in a particular order, and I firmly believe that the game would have been immensely better if it was a forced order. Sure, it would have been more linear, but it would have been more enjoyable and less confusing. The game was obviously designed to be linear, and them offering a “Free exploration” style of gameplay only served to make it frustrating instead of a fun experience.
Over all though, when the games finished and fully experienced, most RPG fans will have found it an overall enjoyable game title. Yes, it had its flaws but I firmly believe the game was enjoyable enough to look past those flaws.
Made in the Shaide 