Alpha Protocol - Discussion Thread

whatsinaname

whatsinaname

Skilled
IN1Wj.jpg


Save 90% on Alpha Protocolâ„¢ on Steam

A bit late to the party, but I picked up the game for $2 on Steam the other day. It is still on sale at that price. It was an impulse purchase but it turned out to be a very fun game (with a few caveats).

The game is basically a spy RPG where the combat is a real time third person shooting mechanic. (A bit like Fallout 3).

The game has an extensive skill tree that lets you configure your character and take different approaches to how you play the game. I am two hours in and have been playing in stealth mode. Experience points let you level up various skill, as you would expect. You also have access to various black market dealers for your weapons/armour needs.

The game has a brilliant conversation system. It is a major part of the game and the fact that the conversation choices have a timer and the options are greyed out depending on the timer adds a nice mechanic to the conversations. There are various bits of intelligence you can collect during the game and build dossiers on friends/enemies/organisations. The dossiers give hints on what kind of conversation cues each character will react to.

The various missions in the game have multiple endings and your choices effect the world of the game and further interactions with others down the road. For example, I made a choice in the first mission that was morally dodgy and I saw the repercussions a couple of missions later when there was a news telecast that showed an event which was a direct outcome of my decision.

Now for the negatives. The graphics get very janky at times. The camera will spin around randomly. Player animations stutter. Getting into and out of cover is a bit jarring. If you can get over those, there is some brilliant gameplay here. Also, there is no quick save/load.

One thing you need to keep in mind is not to approach the game as an FPS. The first couple of missions (till you upgrade your weapon/combat skills) can be a bit frustrating. Don't expect every head shot to be a one-hit kill.

So, who has finished the game? Did you go for the psycho killer run or a stealth run? Have you replayed it to take alternate paths?
 
Ohh Man Nice.. =) Thanks for sharing will ask a couple of mates who might be interested in this. :) But seriously @2$ Its a steal.
 
Last bump for this thread from my side. I just finished the game, and it was brilliant. Very well paced right through to the end and I am reasonably satisfied with the ending I got. Throughout the game, I had to make decisions which kept me thinking 'Did I make the right choice?' for the rest of the play through. I don't usually replay games, but I might want to revisit this one as I can see how the other endings might be very very different. Definitely give this game a chance. If you get bogged down by the inaccurate shooting mechanic in the first couple of levels, stick with it at least till the Saudi Arabia missions are complete.
 
Woah! That's pretty lengthy campaign. Any noticeable bugs, patches or issues that I should know about for the PC? How's the performance?
 
Ethan_Hunt said:
Woah! That's pretty lengthy campaign. Any noticeable bugs, patches or issues that I should know about for the PC? How's the performance?
Click to expand...

Yep. Doesn't ever feel that it is too long though.

No patches required. There are these two fixes that I used.

In APEngine.ini (C:\Users\username\Documents\Alpha Protocol\APGame\Config), change the following settings:

UseBackgroundLevelStreaming=false

OnlyStreamInTextures=true

OneFrameThreadLag=False

MinSmoothedFrameRate=1024

MaxSmoothedFrameRate=4096

In APInput.ini (C:\Users\username\Documents\Alpha Protocol\APGame\Config), change the following settings:

Set all occurrences of bEnableMouseSmoothing variable in this file (there should be 2) to bEnableMouseSmoothing=False

The first fix is for some stuttering due to inefficient background streaming of textures.

The second is for the stupid default all UE3 ports on PC seem to have. Why the hell these game companies cannot set mouse smoothing to off on PC, I don't know.

I played at 2560x1600 on a single 6950 2GB, E8400 processor. No visible slowdowns. (I don't notice slowdowns unless the game drops below 30fps).
 
Good enough for me. I have the same processor as you do, unfortunately, the card isn't so strong. My current rig has handled almost all UE3 games with ease, unless they are poorly optimised. I also did some reading up on this game and they say it's very much like the Bourne series. I plan to play it with a controller, so the mouse fix won't be required. So yes, I'm in. I'll let you know how it goes and cheers for bringing this game up. :)

An OT question before I leave, does your processor bottleneck your card by any chance for any recent games?
 
Ethan_Hunt said:
Good enough for me. I have the same processor as you do, unfortunately, the card isn't so strong. My current rig has handled almost all UE3 games with ease, unless they are poorly optimised. I also did some reading up on this game and they say it's very much like the Bourne series. I plan to play it with a controller, so the mouse fix won't be required. So yes, I'm in. I'll let you know how it goes and cheers for bringing this game up. :)

An OT question before I leave, does your processor bottleneck your card by any chance for any recent games?
Click to expand...

I haven't felt that it does. The most recent game I played was the Deus Ex: HR leaked beta. I could run that at 2560x1600 with no issues. I haven't played any newer games that are highly CPU dependent (Civ 5, etc), so cannot comment on those. I do think I will have trouble running BF3/Skyrim etc at higher resolutions.

Edit: You can play the game as a Bourne game, but the brilliant thing is, you can also play it as Michael Western from Burn Notice. I avoided many boss fights just by building trust with the characters, talking them out of fights and having them help me in later missions.
 
I feel that this game was heavily underrated. A brilliant game IMO. I played it at least 3 times. You can be a total psycho and kill almost every damn character you come across over the course of the game or you can talk your way out of a majority of the fights. While many reviewers undermined the usage of conversation in the game, I think it has far more impact on the game play in this game than in Mass Effect even.
 
Back
Top