1701

So I finished Taipei and am having a great time. I’m doing the stealth-pistol-tech route and really haven’t had much trouble so far. Now I have to go to either Rome or Moscow. Any suggestions on where to go next?

1702

I usually do Taipei-Moscow-Rome. If you detour through Rome long enough to bug the NSA and CIA listening posts, then head to Moscow, you’ll get intercepts from them for the rest of the game; if you complete everything except Rome first, I think there isn’t enough time left to get all of the intercepts from the bugs, but I’m not 100% certain.

1703

I didn’t know you could do the embassy from the roof. Cool :)

Also, game needs more Sis. Feels like a side-plot intended to go further than it did, unless I missed something.

1704

I always got this impression as well. Maybe they planned to use her more in the sequel?

1705

I started playing the game yesterday and initially it was horrible, lots of stuttering and mouse issues. After applying the tweaks I found here it’s much better now and I’m really digging the game so far, just finished the Saudi Arabia missions and I’m starting Moscow now.

I have a little problem though, I’m not trying to play a stealth character (I have only one point in this skill) but it seems that the enemies always see me even when they’re really far from me and I’m hiding behind a cover and things like that, it’s basically impossible for me to go through any section of the map without it becoming a war.

I wasn’t planning on finishing entire missions without being noticed or anything like that but I find it pretty weird that even when I’m crouched behind a enemy trying a silent takedown they always hear me and start firing, ringing the alarms and etc.

1706

Good news is that I got the hang of weapon use pretty quickly after going through the range testing and actually using aim. Bad news is that AP is one of the few games that causes me motion sickness. If I play for a half hour, I feel ill for several hours afterwards. Gah. I guess it’ll just take me a long while to finish the game since there won’t be any long sessions.

And yeah, I see now why people say bad things about the hacking mini-game. My first couple of tries weren’t an issue (I was, in fact, wondering what the complaints were about), but then I had one where the right code was somewhere on the left side of the board and I couldn’t get the damn thing to follow the mouse cursor far enough over.

1707

I’m not using a 360 controller. I appreciate that is the standard suggested fix, and I categorically reject it. I need to remove the hacking minigame entirely, or stop playing AP. Since nobody has come up with any way to do that, I guess I’ll shelve it. Only $8, no biggie.

If I had paid $50 upon release I would be pissed.

1708

Well Malkav already said it, but the way to remove the hacking game entirely is to simply stock up on emp grenades and put 1 point into sabotage. That gets rid of all hacking terminals except for the two in the tutorial area for a price of ~900 each. Remember that you can put Emps in different slots, so using three of your gadget slots netting you 6 emps should be more than enough for any mission. (And after using 25 emps you can put three EMPs into any gadget slot, so you will soon need only 2 slots)

1709

Ignore the position of the mouse cursor, even when it’s on the edge of the screen you can still move the code sequence that way. The exception to this rule is when the mouse cursor is over cancel, man is that ever a pain in the ass.

1710

Yep, that’s what I ended up doing (ignoring the mouse cursor) but I do get the feeling I’m going to go the EMP route a lot (since I’m building a stealth/pistol/sabotage/tech sort of guy); I don’t like alarms.

1711

It doesn’t do that for me.

1712

Stealth (as well as a few perks linked to stealth and items like digital camouflage give you concealment, which shortens the distance at which enemies can see you. Without anything, it will be line of sight with most low cover still giving you away.

The other big variable is sound. If you are wearing anything other than civilian attire or stealth armor, you will be heard on approach without the stealth ability that silences movement. It gets exceptionally bad with the heavier armor/gear combos.

I have never tried to play the game without the stealth skill, and I don’t recommend that for a first playthrough. On the bright side, you’ll probably find the boss fights relatively easy and the ending a piece of cake.

Yeah, it stopped resetting once I got out of the tutorial mode. I think the checkpoints there are so annoyingly far back for each of the training exercises that they undid that setting.

1713

Got this game during last week’s Steam sale and I am enjoying it so far. I’m still pretty early in the game (in Saudi Arabia) but I thought that it was quite well done. I have the impression this game will be bad (based on reviews) and I am pleasantly surprise. To me, the graphics look good. Hacking mini-game is a problem and I also faced the screen freezes for a while in certain scenes but they didn’t bother me much.

So, tell me, does the game gets bad further in? I still don’t get the negativity surrounding it.

1714

No, if anything it gets better. Saudi Arabia is the least interesting mission hub.

1715

That is good to hear. I just got that one perk for the pistol that read a lot like Fallout’s VATS - can’t try it at the moment as I am trying to infiltrate the Saudi palace and want to do it stealthily - and then I have to go to work! Grr… This will be interesting if it is anything cool like VATS.

1716

I’ve done Saudi and Taipei, and am enjoying the hell out of this game. What were the reviewers thinking? Unless I am part of a very small minority of users to enjoy no bugs, I don’t see why the game was scored so consistently average (on the 7-9 scale). I feel bad for only paying $7.50 for this game.

1717

Check your inventory. You should already have a wimpy silencer ready to be attached to your barrel. Just be aware that tranquilizer headshots (critical, ideally) are usually quieter than regular ones, but ammo is sometimes scarce for tranqs so feel free to blow away members of factions you don’t give a damn about. Silencer makes stealthy playthroughs a differently paced run and gun, if you want them to be.

1718

I’ve certainly run into my fair share of bugs (Mike’s mouth hanging open during combat/normal gameplay, a magazine from his gun getting glued to his hand, dying and reloading from the checkpoint not respawning enemies which can prevent advancing (If this or other weirdness after checkpoint loading happens to you, quit to the main menu and load from there. Loading in-game apparently will give you the bug, main menu loading won’t)) but it is a pretty entertaining game.
For some reason I absolutely love the dialog in this game, possibly because I can’t remember any point where you obviously go up to an NPC and mine them for dialog while they stand around. Whereas in Mass Effect 2 for example you’ll plod through all the available options (Or at least I do. Force of habit), in Alpha Protocol the dialog tends to flow at a more natural pace. Both because of the timed dialog selection and in the way it’s layed out.

Probably the first Obsidian game that I don’t feel burned by*, and has helped restore some of my faith in them after KotOR2 and NWN2. I know Sega said no Alpha Protocol 2 after the poor reviews and sales, but now I sorta wish we’d get a sequel.

*Haven’t yet tried Fallout New Vegas since I asked for it for Christmas. I’ve got really high hopes for that.

1719

When it came time to choose my specialization, I chose the one that let me pick 3 areas to max out. I did pistol, stealth and tech. I’ve put as many points as possible into pistol but there are still two slots that are greyed out, preventing me from maxing out pistol. Is this a bug or do I just need to wait for the game to give me those later?

1720

IIRC, the final slots unlock at a certain level.