By the way, the patch just removes the DRM, but it turns out that the DRM was actually responsible for a lot of stuttering and jankyness, so installing the patch might help a great deal.
Just remember to install the patch for the right version, US or rest of the world.
The Vampire thread reminded me. Why hasnāt an enterprising fan given AP the Vampire fanpatch treatment?
Go figure. DRM breaking a game. Who could have predicted such a thing?!
It doesnāt need it. The game, for all of its foibles, is pretty complete and you can play through the retail release without a lot of hassle. Vampire was neither ā it was absolutely loaded with unreleased, broken content and was pretty much impossible to play through on release. And nobody plays Alpha Protocol LARP.
Iād prefer that Wesp keep pounding away on the Precursors patch.
Somewhere in this thread are some INI tweaks to improve APās performance which I found pretty helpful.
Almost done with it, got it for 5 bucks about a year ago. No where is bad as the reviews were. It has alot of issues but got WAY more out of it then I thought I would.
Most painfull thing is they way he sneaks, damn his back must be killing him.
Yeah, I need to pick this up again and give it another go. I absolutely HATE the hacking mini-game with those fast changing letters and numbers though!
I use the EMPs on that mini-game every single time, except for the one or two in the tutorial, before EMPs can be purchased.
I quite liked it. The PC implementation makes it seem like youāre hacking it with tools from a really dodgy accomplice.
āOk, we can get you in but youāll need both handsā¦ā
I love the hacking mini-game, finally a mini-game thatās actually challenging and not just a time waster. PC interface for it was terrible though.
I wanted to think that but couldnāt. The combination of the controls and the moving letters themselves (I donāt do those hidden picture things either) was just too painful. Iād just abort out of the computer until I got an easy / obvious placement of the codes.
Overall I loved the game. The camera was messed up at times but I thought the atmosphere was terrific and the shooting hit a great RPG sweet spot with me (as opposed to shooter mechanics).
Now if someone could just merge Alpha Protocol (for the conversations), The Saboteur (for the move free movement and the satisfying explosives), Just Cause 2 (for the looks and the grapple + parachute) plus even more destructible objects in the world. Iād be in heaven.
Amen!
Iāve been playing this again and I want to murder whoever designed the boss fights in their sleep.
It really breaks the immersion to have some waif in hip huggers shrugging off clips of ammo.
Plus the shitty controls are always an issue. I swear unarmed would be better if people couldnāt just step backwards and be immune to it half the time. Of course if you try to run at them and punch them, you tend to just rub yourself on them while they shoot you repeatedly.
Bleh.
Still Iām enjoying it for the most part. Just everytime I see a boss health bar I want to throw something.
I had no problems with unarmed on PC and found it to be quite powerful (you do have to be careful with it on some of the bosses, but it does a crazy amount of damage and kind of stuns them). Obviously you canāt just openly charge 10 enemies waiting for you with machine guns, but as long as you use the environment and do a tiny bit of sneaking, it can be a very powerful weapon.
You really canāt do bosses in a modern, semi realistic setting without making them able to take more shots than Grunt A. The only options are to put them in some tank/mech that can take a lot of damage (given the setting and boss fights in AP, this isnāt really fitting) or to just have āboss fightsā consist of a lot of normal guys attacking you at once (more of the same, not very interesting).
The idea of a boss āfightā is where the suckage sets in. Why does it need to be a fight? Why does it need to be a single powerful individual?
On the same note, why does there need to be no boss fights? Why canāt it be against a single powerful individual.
To me, boss fights can be fun and can interrupt the normal pace of things, throwing challenging and new elements in to the fray. Instead of fighting 9000 russian mobsters and then a group of 12 more, you fight 9000 Russian mobsters and some drug using russian crime boss in an interesting setting.
Also, Alpha protocol allows the player to not fight bosses on a number of occasions, dealing with them in other ways. The very first boss fight in the game allows the player to skip it entirely using stealth for example.
Not every game needs to be counter-strike.
I love this game. Itās just about time to fire it up for another play.
The only boss fight I recall hating was the Russian dude. He was an asshole.
I just finished reading a detective novel that lacked a dominant bad guy behind the murders and the story really suffered for it. When I finished, my only thought was, āthatās it?ā Maybe thatās why there are boss fights.
Not to mention i really liked the russian boss. Was a pretty funny and well done boss fight, in my opinion.
Spect: yes, he is a huge pain and a very hard fight normally. You can however use certain contacts to poison him, making the fight insanely easier.
Speaking of said russian boss, he is really the only boss that can take a lot more damage than normal enemies (because he heals frequently and when he does this he takes much less damage). The rest are generally only slightly stronger, except maybe for the last one too.
I think it would be possible to have interesting boss fights without breaking the worldās internal logic, but would take some creativity. Bullet sponges arenāt the best, but weak opponents who hide behind giant mechs or bulletproof glass are just as bad IMO.
Iām envisioning something like the final showdown in āThe American,ā with George Clooney. Something like that flies in the sense of video game convention, but so long as thereās substance and a real sense of danger it could work. A certain element of unpredictability and having multiple approaches would help.
It seems to me that the approved idea of ābossesā in games mostly consists of pattern recognition, usually with cues that are pretty obvious once you memorize them. For compelling yet somewhat realistic boss fights, it seems like there would have to be a move towards thinking on your feet rather than memorization.