Alpha Protocol is a cool game

Jim Sterling from Destructoid is an idiot. He gives a 2/10 to Alpha Protocol, so you would assume the game is broken and unplayable.

You would be wrong.

I'm playing it right now. It's a compelling game, with decent stealth gameplay and a great dialogue system. For me, it feels like a decent Splinter Cell-like game (I've decided I'm not killing anybody and the game lets me do just that, just stalking everybody and knocking them out) in which I can make a lot of choices, developing further the black-and-white "kill this guy or let him live" mechanics from Splinter Cell: Double Agent. There are no other games like this right now.

The game accomplishes what it tries to do. So what if there's a texture-loading problem (Is that something you never see in a game? Have you played any game made with the Unreal engine lately?), if Mike Thornton seems to be a bit unlikeable (well, he is not, if you choose the right dialogue options.) and if the shooting is not as good as in other games? I don't remember Vampire: Bloodlines for it's great shooting or Deus Ex for its compelling, superbly voice-acted protagonist, and they are both classics. There's something else at stake.

Alpha Protocol is a good RPG, but of course it won't look good if you compare it (from a technical standpoint) with the big boys. I'm sure Sega, being as cheap as it is this days, didn't give them a huge budget for this, but the results are still decent. So don't believe what Destructoid and Joystiq say, and give this game a chance. I'll let you know what I think after I play it longer, but it's not a terrible game.

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But I'm not going to stop reading Destructoid yet! They are still a cool site. And thanks to them, I learn that Ubisoft has probably cancelled Beyond Good and Evil 2. If that is true, well... That's it, I'm done with Ubisoft. It was one of my favourite developers ever, but they've made huge mistakes one after another, ruining the Prince of Persia franchise with each new game, forcing the worst DRM possible on players and just being cheap for the sake of it. Where's the innovation, the support for different games? Beyond Good and Evil is a classic, and Michel Ancel is one of the best game designers around. Is he really gone from your company now, or is it just a nasty rumour?

Ubi, don't disappoint me.