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Alpha Protocol photo depository thread

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KvP:
From what I can tell there seems to be a oceanic divide - European critics are generally giving it higher numbers than American ones. Really it comes down to the Action-RPG distinction. Those who review it as an action game have low scores and those who review it as an RPG give it higher scores. It's much easier to review as an action game, of course, given that the core game experience is TPS. There's a lot of fretting about the numbers side of the combat, but it doesn't really feel all that different from Deus Ex, for the most part. I have noticed a definite balance issue with the pistol - it's really a stealth tool more than a gunfight weapon. The Assault Rifle is very powerful, and the SMGs seem to be as useless as they are tacky, which is to say, they're pretty useless. Haven't run with the shotgun yet.

There are also complaints that the "suave" Thorton personality is oily and smug, and I agree, but that seems like a dumb criticism considering it's one of three approaches, no different from paragon / renegade in ME or any other similar RPG system. And there are the inevitable "Obsidian = good plot / RPG mechanics, lots of bugs", but as I said, the number of bugs seem to be relatively minor among people who have played it. There haven't been a lot of reports in the first 2 days of release. It seems to be more of a media narrative, a sort of meme, than anything at this point. Alpha Protocol does lack a certain amount of polish, and I think people confused "unpolished" with "buggy" (blame big game budgets) but it's nowhere near the point of, say, any of Troika's games. AP looks pretty decent for the most part, and the most glaring system issues seem to lie with the UE3 version they're using - there's very little in the way of physics and there's some texture pop-in but not much. I expect that problem to be worse on consoles, as it was with ME1.

Storm Rider:
To be honest, I haven't seen much criticism of graphical bugs or anything like that. The three issues people who dislike the game seem to be taking as far as I can see are 1) poor gun combat, 2) bad AI, and 3) poor game balance. Depending on how negative the person is, the severity of these issues can either be 'problematic but acceptable', or 'a profane crime against God'. The first two I could see myself dealing with, because honestly very few games do AI well and I dealt with bad gun combat enough to play through ME1 four times. It's the last one that really kills me, because if some builds are just crippled and can't get through the game then that's a huge problem with the basic conceptual structure of Alpha Protocol.

Johnny C:
I've been reading Tim Rogers' stuff over at Action Button Dot Net and he reins it in a lot over there, I feel, talking instead mostly about sophisticated game design. I'm way more impressed with his own stuff than the work he does for Kotaku.

Jim Sterling, though. Profound shithead.

KvP:
Running through the game again, I think the game is a lot like the first two Fallouts in terms of skill design, with Small Guns replaced by Stealth - as far as builds go, it's almost universally beneficial. Running stealth seems to have the most obvious benefits in terms of mission outcomes and the like, although I'm assured the blunt approach has its advantages as well. I haven't attempted a combat character, but I think it's turning out to be Martial Arts > Assault Rifle > Shotgun > SMG > Pistol in terms of how useful they are in combat, though martial arts are really best utilized as a fallback for stealth characters who get spotted - you don't have to clear distances and MA are incredibly powerful at high levels. At hard difficulty MA are probably less useful, as you can die more easily.

KvP:

--- Quote from: Johnny C on 30 May 2010, 11:48 ---I've been reading Tim Rogers' stuff over at Action Button Dot Net and he reins it in a lot over there, I feel, talking instead mostly about sophisticated game design. I'm way more impressed with his own stuff than the work he does for Kotaku.

Jim Sterling, though. Profound shithead.

--- End quote ---
Wow, he gave ME2 1 1/2 stars out of 5. Ballsy.

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