I’m really trying to like this game, but it’s determined to make me loathe it. I was really excited at the idea of being able to manipulate people. A concept that made reading dossiers and listening to long dialogs interesting? Sounds great. The first mission had me feeling, for moments, like a real special agent infiltrating an enemy base. Some real potential. I was really getting ready to love this.
But the interface: Many redundant clicks and often counter-intuitive. I reload a game after the alerted AI saw me through the door and killed me, and I find myself at the start of the mission even though I saved it half way through. Not only that but I’m standing up instead of crouching and hidden, and the enemy who previously didn’t know I existed is now shooting at me. But the other enemies are still dead. It’s like it saved only a part of the level state.
I assume from all the love the game gets around here that it must be worth slogging through the start, but it’s putting up a high barrier to my enjoyment.
Quaro
1942
If you’re getting reloads where the enemies are dead, that’s from using the default load on death behavior. If you go forward anyway bad thigns can happen. Don’t use that button, use the regular load. The standing problem still happens though. Just charge the guy and melee him. Most ‘stealth’ failures are determined by alarms going off rather than failing from a single alert guard.
Starter tip for other new people – get over 100 on every tutorial mission. You can do this even if you are recruit (for the weapon one, go for crit headshots for bonus points). It’s not just extra experience, some of the conversations are pretty interesting. Especially Parker.
Ah the famous airfield mission. Yeah this is definitely the most buggy one in the game. The interface stays as bad as it is, but after a while you get used to it.
I would not worry too much about being as completionist as possible. There are simply too many choices to see most of the game in one playthrough. For example if you flip around between locations the game rewards that by giving you additional intel/equipment/handler options from your additional contacts that you make in other hubs. If you finish one hub first, the game rewards that by giving you additional dialogue if you meet the contacts first time, because they talk about your actions. Still you probably see the most content if you do hubhopping and do all the starter missions before going to any missions marked with the alpha symbol.
As an aside to the gameplay discussion, does anyone know if Steam tracking of time played is glitched with AP? I’ve noticed that Steam just tells me the date I last played for AP, unlike any other game which offers that and total time played. It’s as if it’s only noticing the launcher and as soon as you hit play, it thinks you’re not playing anymore because the launcher closed.
It’s not important; more of a curiosity. No mods or external patches are applied to the game.
It tells me I’ve played it for 2.6 hours.
Is it accurate and how do you launch the game?
habibi
1948
Mine shows the hours played too. It’s accurate to me :)
I launched it via the launcher which I launched from Steam.
Seems about right. I launch it from the desktop shortcut.
I picked this up largely because of the high praise some here have given it. I’m glad if you like it, but this game is a fucking lemon. Even at $7.50, I feel ripped off.
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It won’t recognize my X-Box controller on my PC. Win 7 sees it fine and no other game has had a problem, but AP doesn’t want to work with it. So now I’m stuck using the keyboard. Which might be fine, but…
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The keyboard controls are awful. For example, we’ll take gadgets. Or the lack thereof. They worked in the tutorial, but the “G” key does apparently nothing in a real mission. Therefore, I can’t use gadgets at all (and yes, they’re supposedly equipped).
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The mouse sensitivity is set too low, so it takes forever just to turn around. No problem with any other game, but I can do a three point turn in a pickup truck faster than I can get Mikey to turn around.
So with no gadgets, this becomes a poorly controlled 3rd person shooter. It ain’t winning prizes for that.
4. Whoever created the computer hacking thing should be summarily shot. I hate it and unfortunately you can’t really get around it. It makes me long for Mass Effect’s mini-games…and those are pretty bad. Not only is it seizure-inducing and too difficult, but the mouse controls make it almost impossible to actually control the right-hand side code. I’d patch that out in a second if I could.
- It’s not very stable. In 2 hours of play, it’s crashed twice at loading screens. And oh yeah, I’ve managed to get stuck on objects too.
So, let’s see…gadgets don’t work, the game crashes, the mini-games suck and the controls are hideous. Maybe there’s a good story in there somewhere, but there’s no way I’m can muster the energy to fight through all that just to try to find it. Major, major thumbs down on this one.
Wait a moment, your major problem here is that the 360 controller isn’t getting recognised. But that definitely should work. Have you googled for known bugs and workarounds?
If you put a couple of points on sabotage the whole hacking things becomes ok. But whoever thought to increase difficulty on that by adding mouse lag… I mean really. I’d get a fail because the code would jump about randomly over the target even after I’d figured out where it was. Horrible.
Quitch
1953
The minigame rocks, the controls… not so much.
Quaro
1954
I’ve grown to like the hacking minigame. My brain is adapting. I’m doing both codes at once now – finding one, keep searching for the other while moving the first in place. Or moving both into place at the same time. Took me more than 10 tries for the tutorial one.
The gadgets thing sounds like a serious bug. I ran into something similar because I used ‘reload’ rather than ‘load’ during the tutorial where they first activate the skills. That part of the game is an abomination – they really need to simply patch that damn button out.
Try in .ini tweaks and see if they fix the mouse controls for you.
I’ve been hub hobbing, doing all hubs simultaneously. Working out good.
The checkpoints have driven me crazy a few times. Save manually as often as you can, it’s easy to misclick on one conversation and have no way re load.
Telefrog
1955
The 360 controller should work. It’s good to go on my Win 7 machine. My ONE technical praise for this game is that the 360 controller works quite well. Most of your issues would be resolved if you get that fixed.
That said, I’m one of the few people on this board that did not like the game at all. I understand what Obsidian was going for, and I think in some ways they succeeded quite wonderfully, but overall I agree with you that the game was a lemon. Even when the game isn’t glitching out, all the mechanics just feel clumsy as hell.
I’ve grown to like the hacking minigame. My brain is adapting. I’m doing both codes at once now, or at the very least finding one and then searching for the other while moving the first. Took me more than 10 tries for the tutorial one.
Yeah. The concept for the hacking game is nice. I get that “minority report” feeling about it. On a touch screen it would be really cool to drag and drop the codes simultaneously. With the mouse and keyboard…well it could work if it wasn’t for the mouse jumping around and the keyboard being sluggish.
Just got through the second mission after the Saudi airfield and man what a difference! That was a ton of fun. The AI was a bit iffy, though. One guy stood staring at me while I shot him in the face - didn’t seem that he thought he had a line of sight to me nor that he was in danger of death. A couple of others spotted me when I accidentally stood up, but they both ran under me and then ran around on the spot bumping into each other until I popped them.
Still, great atmosphere and tension. It really feels nice when I’m on a roll, and it’s quite forgiving in action where the interface is sometimes baffling. It’s nice that when I sneak up behind someone and he spots me at the last moment that I can still take him down instantly with a neck chop. Because of the interface I’m only just starting to realise what powers I have - still to figure out where best to use silent running and multi-shot.
Story is intriguing too. There’s some really nice, rounded characters in there. The acting is surprisingly good, given that they aren’t big names. But the voice acting for the main character is poor. It really sounds like he couldn’t be bothered, and it’s in stark contrast to the other actors.
Hmm. Not sure what’s wrong with mine, then. I usually right-click on the Steam icon in the system tray and choose Alpha Protocol, which starts the launcher from which I choose to play. For some reason, though, Steam just doesn’t want to track the time played. If anyone has any ideas, let me know; I’ve been unable to find reference to the problem anywhere else.
Quaro
1958
Mike: Heck, do you copy?
Heck: Like a floppy!
Found this on the main character’s acting:
We worked for months, maybe even half-a-year, before a major script rewrite occurred. When we first started out, Michael Thornton was a completely different character. Suddenly, the entire project did a 180, and about 90% of what we had already recorded was thrown out the window.
It’s a real shame, too, because the first plot-line had more to do with character interactions and emotions, which were more fun to play out as an actor. Also, my performance was altered in the second go-around, which I felt gave me less to do as the character. I was at odds with the session director for most of this because she kept telling me to flatten out the performance while I was trying to inject some sort of personality into the character in a failed attempt to reclaim what we had been doing the first months of recording.
Warning
1959
His voice acting was really my major complaint about the game. It sounded like it just didn’t belong in that game.
Diddums
1960
The full interview is worth reading, also for some good voice actor vignettes.
RPGSite: Despite the extra time they had to develop the new version of the game, it still was not considered successful enough for a sequel. When did you find out and were you disappointed?
Josh: Well, I just found that out now. Thanks. And, no, I’m not really disappointed. Given the delay, and hearing from a lot of people about the quality of the visuals, it doesn’t surprise me. I had fun working with most everybody on Alpha, but I’ve moved on. I guess I’m actually glad I don’t have to reprise the Michael Thornton role. It would’ve been nice to recreate the character we originally started with, but it’s too late now.
RPGSite: The game received an average console score of 65% and average PC score of 73% which is far from terrible, so why do you think it failed to catch on?
Josh: For the most part, the visuals. Call of Duty really raised the bar, and if you can’t approximate those graphics, people won’t care what kind of game you have. It’s too bad people can’t look beyond the visuals. Also, I personally think my character fell flat, and having to do the same numeric games to unlock/disable keypads can become monotonous. Alpha had a lot of potential, but failed to deliver. And after all the waiting, and all the hype, you better be able to deliver.
I’m actually a little depressed after reading that. Alpha Protocol delivered for me, Josh Gilman! It…delivered for me. (sniffle)
