Killed by bad reviews

Sega has confirmed that there will be no sequel for Alpha Protocol, crushed by slow sales and middling reviews. Because yes, reviews actually have a strong influence on sales.

I didn't want this to happen. The game is very good, but for some reason American reviewers really hated it, specially a short-sighted idiot from Destructoid with a taste for self-promotion (with features like "Jimpressions", "the Jimquisition", and probably something called "Jimbecility" in the near future) who was so off-the-mark as Tom Chick was when he "reviewed" Deus Ex ten years ago in a perfect storm of cluelessness. According to Chick, Deux Ex was a "cliché-riddled game" with "an uninteresting story", "generic soundtrack" (wait, what?!), and "isn't all bad, though; I'd say it's only 90% bad". Amazing words for what is now considered one of the best games in history (or even the best, period).

Now Alpha Protocol is getting the bad rap, even if a lot of people is really enjoying the game. This reminds me of what's been happening to M. Night Shyamalan for the last few years. All of his new movies have been torn to pieces by critics, and the last one is no exception. The Last Airbender has at this point a pitiful 8% at Rotten Tomatoes, which means 92% of the American critics hated it.

But the thing is, a lot of people went to see The Last Airbender. After earning $40 million during its first weekend, it's not a disaster. So Shyamalan's planned trilogy could very well happen, if word of mouth is good and people keep going to watch it.

It didn't go that way for Alpha Protocol. European reviews were usually kinder, and I was even considering to buy the PS3 version (I originally bought it for PC) to support Obsidian's effort. But now it's too late. I guess a future for RPGs with lots of choices is now crushed, as it was for Deus Ex, one of the few games with real significant choices. In the amazing coverage by RPS celebrating Ten Years of Deus Ex, some people express their disappointment because nobody followed the trail opened by it: "I just assumed that games were going to be like that in the future."

Alpha Protocol is truly one of the few games in which the player can actually shape the story in visibly different, complex ways, even changing your allies and foes and getting to fight different people as a consequence. Despite its few weaknesses (the actually decent combat system is hated by many), expect in a few years some articles wondering why this great game failed.

Alpha Protocol - A review (kind of)

WHAT I THINK (This review has two parts. Go to the end of this entry to jump straight to what players think)

This is not just a review. This is a defense.



Alpha Protocol is a great game. Professional troll Jim Sterling from Destructoid has decided to wage a war against it to see if the internet follows his lead. But he is wrong.

Let's be serious for a minute. Sterling claims that AP is a 2/10 game. Really?

If you read from an alleged former Obsidian worker that the game was mismanaged by Chris Parker, even if that happened to be true, it wouldn't mean that AP is a waste of your time. It may be just the opposite, depending on your tastes. This is not an AAA game that you have to like. This is a game that may interest you if your favourite games are Deus Ex and Vampire: Bloodlines.

What is wrong with this game, then? A lot of people say that AP doesn't offer great shooting and a great cover system. But, you know, GTA IV didn't either. It didn't matter because the game was cool. AP is not a shooting game. It's an RPG game with shooting.

Other people say that it's crippled with bugs (if "I don't like what they did here" or "sometimes the menu takes too long to appear" can be considered game-killing bugs). Well, in my two playthroughs I didn't find a single bug. My game never crashed, and I didn't find any weird stuff like the things that players around the world are finding in Red Dead Redemption (I'm sorry if I'm picking too much on Rockstar's stuff). I think they are prejudiced against Obsidian because of their previous games, and now "Obsidian = buggy games" is another internet meme.

About the mini-games? During the first hacking mini-game I was completely lost. But it was my fault. After that, the mini-games were fair enough. But, of course, you need to spend some points in your tech skill so they don't become a nightmare later. Same with the shooting: some reviewers/players automatically assumed the shooting was abysmal because it felt so imprecise at first. (Have you played Deus Ex lately? You couldn't hit anyone at first)

Maybe my positive opinion comes from the fact that I chose to play first the game without shooting anyone. Yes, it's possible to play this in that way. If you do that, it plays basically like Splinter Cell (why nobody hasn't declared this game a "Splinter Cell rip-off" yet?), . A couple of weeks ago I decided to try the "big" version of Splinter Cell: Double Agent (I had played the alternate "small" version using my Wii), and the whole thing is almost unplayable, either on PC or on PS3 (I own both versions). This isn't mentioned in most reviews (maybe because they played it on Xbox 360 and it didn't suck there?), but that was a mess. AP is alright.

(A brief aside (mild spoilers): It's possible to finish the game without killing anyone, with two exceptions: you throw somebody off a bridge in a cutscene and he's ran over -this is listed as "death by collateral damage" in your statistics-, and there's a boss battle against a main character who is placed in a tower that you can't reach to subdue him with martial arts. This is intended by design, because if you follow the story closely you will hear about his father, a senator, who is probably intended as a future villain if a sequel is made.)

Before you say "oh, but I want to shoot people!" I'll say that after finishing the game I started another playthrough allowing myself to shoot just everybody, and it still feels OK. The shooting in all the Splinter Cell games previous to SC Conviction was worse! I can only assume that in 2010 players are now expecting Call of Duty production values in every single game.

The music is OK but nothing special. The main theme is a blatant "James Bond Theme" rip-off, so bad that it makes you wonder how it got approved (maybe Chris Parker really liked it). Shockingly enough, there are no themes by Alexander Brandon (main composer from Deus Ex) listed in the credits, though he allegedly contributed music and audio. He left Obsidian after working in this project, like Allen Kerry, the lead character artist. (Was Parker as unreasonable as that anonymous guy said?).

Now, for the good stuff. Despite all the criticism directed at the graphics because they could look much better, the character design is actually great (every main character is instantly identifiable), and unusually for a game made with the Unreal Engine, here people don't look like action figures.

And then, the story. Well, even Jeff Gertsmann, not a forgiving reviewer, admits that the story is so good that it makes up for the less-than-stellar shooting: "There are parts of Alpha Protocol that I feel are totally amazing and absolutely worth seeing, but you'll have to trudge through a lot of very disappointing stuff just to see it."

While it's true that Mike Thorton is a bit on the bland side and not a classic character (even the name -or alias- doesn't have a ring to it), other characters are. Mina Tang is very likeable as your main 'handler', and Nolan North, usually overused as a Nathan Drake sound-alike, breathes life in the likeably psycho Steven "Don't call me Steve" Heck.

And the freedom. Oh, the freedom. There's no other game like this. When you play it a second game, you see how every decision changes everything. Other games make the script ambiguous to avoid facing the consequences of what you did, but here it's taken to its full extent, with voice over recorded for any possibility. And the game is not linear! You can visit any of the three main locations in any order, so if you go to China after you go to the two previous locations your character complains because the two previous safehouses were really nice and now you are supposed to live in a dirty apartment. In my second playthrough, I went to China first, so he just said "This place is a dump!".

You really feel like you can shape what happens around you. It will not be the same at all if you try to say something flirty to a girl when she likes you and when she hates you. Your reputation is not just a statistic: it really changes how other people treat you. This is just amazing, and you wonder why other games don't do it.

And then you realize why: because people will tear you apart if you use up your resources trying to let you be free instead of having great shooting.


If what I said make it sound at least interesting, go play this game. If you still aren't convinced, keep reading and listen to what other players thought.


WHAT PLAYERS THINK


I recommend to go to this post in Rock, Paper, Shotgun and read the comments left by users. Many of them acknowledge that the game grows on you and that it's a great experience. Here's a sample of what some players think:


"The Sombrero Kid": "if this had come out before Dragon Age and Heavy Rain it'd've been universally praised and a masterpiece of non-linearity despite it's lack of polish."

"Ihzr": "Alpha Protocol is amazing. If you'd put it next to Mass Effect, it would be the same sort of comparison like between Stalker and Crysis: big budget polished shiny sparkly mainstream mediocrity versus... something else. A pretty amazing something else."

"Mitza": "It's a strange game, but it's really enjoyable. All the extremely negative reviews I've read are an absolute shame. This is the kind of game that deserves a sequel, because they could fix the major flaws and refine&improve the rest of the game."


"jaheira": "Just played AP for another three hours and it's getting better and better. Stealth works great. Amazing silenced pistol action. Some of the best dialogues I've experienced. Might be game of the year so far for me."

"Javier-de-Ass": "loved this game. (...) I've read some impressions from across the net, especially Americans seem to despise this game, and I simply can't relate to any of the criticisms. Not to the shotting [sic] complaints, not to AI complaints, not to general jank complaints (...). I didn't come across any big bugs in the game."

"Mercurial": "By modern standards to a modern audience this game is flawed.

However, look past all that and it's a real gem. The comparisons to Deus Ex and Bloodlines (sans bugs for me at least) aren't blowing smoke, the more I play it the more I see the similarities."

"BL": "Probably the best in any action-RPG ever made, in the history of videogames, so that should get some recognition I think. But as a shooter, it's below average."


About bugs and control:

"jaheira" again: "It's not buggy. One incident of getting stuck on the scenery is the only problem I've had in 11 hours."





"jti": "I'm playing the game with keyboard+mouse and am having no trouble at all. Nothing to complane [sic] about them."


And as a summary, a guy called Wulf summarizes my opinion about the general reception for this game. Just go and read it.