This game has a Metacritic score of 72 for the PC. By modern review standards with boosted scores, that’s sort of like what you’d expect to see given to Mein Kampf : The Game. Yet I kept hearing how good it was, and pulled the trigger during a sale.

I do not understand the score being that low.

You are Michael Thorton, newest member of a shadowy government organization called Alpha Protocol. Okay, so in terms of originality it’s about as fresh and new a concept as curly fries…or amateur porn (I defy you to find another blog putting those two concepts together). You’re off to take on Al Samad, a group of terrorists currently operating in Saudi Arabia. Then things take a turn towards AW SNAP, this just got REALZ.

It’s essentially a hybrid of a light RPG and a third person shooter. As you play, you level up, with each level giving you more AP points to spend on your character. Those points can be spent in 9 different skill categories : Stealth, Technical Aptitude, Martial Arts, Sabotage, Toughness, Pistols, Shotguns, Submachine Guns and Assault Rifles. You’ll grow better in each skill with every point invested (no shit), but also gain access to new Perks that can be used during missions. These cover everything from the ability to move without making any noise for a short period to the ability to instantly fire off 5 pistol shots to any 5 designated points on the screen (say, the heads of 5 bad guys) at once. More points and ability upgrades are earned simply through gameplay. For example, headshots with a rifle increase your overall accuracy with rifles.

You also outfit your character with whatever you want (and can afford. You are a black ops agent, so the money you get to spend comes from spending time searching around target objectives and stealing it from accounts). You can carry 2 different weapons, 1 set of armour and as many gadgets (everything from first aid kids to grenades to noisemakers to EMP bombs and so on) as you can carry at that time. Weapons and armour can be further tweaked and modified with attachments. Every gun can have something added in 4 different slots : Barrel (silencers, accelerators, custom rifling, etc.), Magazine (extended mags, balanced mags, internal mags, etc.), Sights (Scopes, reflex sights, laser sights, etc.) and Accessory (custom stocks, custom grips, reworked weapon frame, etc.). Every weapon and accessory affects the overall gun score in 5 different categories : damage, ammo, accuracy, stability and recoil. Armour works in a similar fashion, with different types having more or fewer upgrade slots for all sorts of things from ceramic plates to armguards to better camo to a flashbulb system that temporarily blinds security cameras. Armour is rated in Endurance (basically, recharge time for perks), Damage Reduction, Sound Dampening, # of Upgrade Slots and Inventory Space.

So it’s heaven for a gun nut (or, you know…me), as you tweak your character to your heart’s desire and run around wreaking havoc…or silently breaking necks from the shadows.

The other major piece of the game that impressed the Hell out of me was the conversation system. Imagine a convo system similar to those in most RPG games, only you have a short time limit before you have to pick a response. And every single character in the game has a persistent and ever changing score for their opinion of you based on your responses vs. their personality. And future support options and game play can be heavily affected by what support characters think of you. Adds a lot to the conversations when there are actually repercussions for every single response you utter to every single character. Maybe he’ll give you more intel or you’ll gain access to heavy support options on a future op…on the other hand, maybe a different character will give you access to those things only IF you cap the guy you’re talking to now. What to do? It’s like taking the BioWare discussion system but actually giving it a point, something that doesn’t seem to always be the case in BioWare’s games.

Is the game flawless? Good God, no. If sniping were as twitchy as it’s represented here, sharpshooters wouldn’t exist and JFK wouldn’t have ended that car ride through Dallas in 1963 with bits of his head splattered all over Jackie. And the computer hacking…ACK! It isn’t that it’s difficult to do, it’s that the game’s supposed ‘tutorial’ doesn’t explain at all how to do it. It might be the single worst description of a game mechanic that I have ever seen in my gaming life. Imagine you wanted to make Beef Wellington. You consult a recipe online which reads as follows :

Instructions for making Beef Wellington

Prepare the beef wellington by combining the ingredients in the proper way. Enjoy!

That’s how useful the instructions for this were. Luckily, I found a quick tutorial vid on Youtube that explained it, but having directions that horribly thrown together is pretty damn unforgivable.

There were also a few technical glitches where the camera would suddenly dive to look at my feet, but that’s a pretty quick fix during play and is sadly common during other games as well.

Still, the overall game is fun. If you’ve ever wanted to play a game as your own personalized version of Jason Bourne, pick it the Hell up. And if that idea has never appealed to you, you might want to check yourself for a pulse.