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.

I don't want to join that club

Hi SuperViv,

I'm really sorry that I can't say anything about Rise of Nations. I never play any strategy games whatsoever. They are just not made with me. Maybe it has to do with the fact that my brother is the king of strategy games at home, and I just don't want to compete with him.

And I guess I'm really unlucky, because the last "strategy" game that I tried to play was the abysmal Stalin vs Martians, easily one of the worst games ever made. I think they were going for the high camp seen in some of the Command & Conquer games, but obviously they didn't even try. The final result is something like a fan-created, horrible Cannon Fodder-like arcade game. You just move your units around, trying to shoot martians with a non-existing interface (just point and click, no statistics whatsoever) and dying arbitrarily. Oh, and you are forced to listen to god-awful techno tunes.

I bought this game because the viral campaign for it was so insane I thought maybe it would be fun. But it wasn't. This game was so bad that it was pulled from Steam after a few months. Or maybe it was because some of the martians in the game were ripped off straight from Toy Story, Pikmin and Doom. Look it up, it's true! Sadly, this is not a case of "it's so bad, it's awesome". This is just soul-crushingly bad.

Now, to GTA IV... Well, I played that game on my PS3, and of course taking your friends out is a chore, but... you know, the game doesn't exactly force you to do it. You know, it's a bit like real life: you neglect your friends, you lose them, and that's it (hey, that's what I usually do in real life!). Just consider this option an "extra" advantage, in a purely pragmatic way. You know, the conversations and stuff get old quickly, but it's still good to date that "Lawchick" you meet on the internet ocasionally to get your "Lose police heat" free card.

I also have the PC version. I bought it on Steam as it was part of a "all GTA" package, but I never even installed it. The Rockstar Social Club and Windows Live membership requirement is one of the most stupid ideas ever. I've been a PC gamer all my life, but I've jumped ship and become a console gamer because I just hate those intrusive "activate the game on the internet" schemes. They are really stupid, and only punish those who buy the game (you won't find any of this crap in the pirated versions!). The same happened to me when I bought the House M.D. DVDs and I had to suffer through that annoying (and unskippable) "Piracy is a crime" video in every single disc. But I already bought the DVDs and I'm not a criminal! Hello?

I have many of the Unreal Tournament games. I even played intensively the first one (offline!), but a couple of weeks ago I tried playingg UT 2004. It didn't help that I never played when it was first released, so I lasted ten minutes before I uninstalled it. I have UT III, so what's the point?

Speaking of the Unreal engine, I'm currently playing Batman: Arkham Asylum, and in my opinion it is very good, but not amazing. And it's ugly as sin. It's really sad that this game is regarded as A+ material; it indicates that video game design has been slowly declining into mediocrity. For me, this game can be accurately described as Metal Gear Solid with Batman.

Hear from you later!

- Danda