Alpha Protocol

Alpha Protocol is an amazing game. It lasts long enough to have some substance, but short enough as to make a replay plausible - which you should absolutely do, because people are still discovering things in this game today. You can kill basically any NPC you wish (and you will certainly have to), and there are some you can persuade to kill each other. Even the order in which you meet NPCs will impact your relationships and the way certain missions go down. Piss off the wrong NPC, and your next mission site might be aware that you're coming - but if you show up in full combat gear, but just talk to the guard, they might assume that you're additional backup sent their way. The order in which you do missions will impact what appears in a given mission, as will the choices you made, and may influence the way in which you first encounter a given faction or NPC. Your relationships with NPCs will influence their behaviour, be they friend or foe. Alpha protocol is a terrible game. Stealth is effectively a required skill to purchase because it gives you a wall hack. The pistol is by far the best weapon in the game, because with a high investment you can do incredible amounts of damage to various bosses; far more than you could with any other weapon. The AI isn't great, the gunplay is awful, the stealth is laughable, and the mini-games are at best boring and at worst infuriating. Alpha protocol is both of these games. If the action elements were removed entirely, you'd have the best CYOA ever written. If the NPC dialogue and relationships were removed, you'd have the worst stealth action game ever made. I love this game, and yet there are few I can truly recommend it to.

As Above so Below

back in 2010 when i bought this game from store shelves,i bought it as an alterantive to the then still popular and very much obessed over mass effect trilogy. i didn't jive with space aliens or the annoying DRM mass effect had at the time so i decide to go for this as an alternative to that classic experience,kinda the same way i played rise of the argonauts around the same time. little did i know that my desire to have the toshiba handibook to my ipad would go from simple subsitute to a 14 year long obession with a game that,up until now,was painfully underated. alpha protocol,as its tagline "Espionage RPG" suggests,is essentially what happens when you bake a modern day action RPG into the mold of a "from russia with love" or a "casino royal": if you ever wanted to be the secret agent man who makes life alterting decisions on the fly,consults with top secret files or applies his clandestine trade anywhere from arabia to china to italy,all the while getting the exotic love interest with your smooth talking ways,without having to live vicariously off a pierce brosnan or daniel craig film.this game is ther closest gaming has ever gotten to that being a reality,all the while reinventing the wheel and creating gaming mechanics most of the industry is still using as a guidlines for games of this kind. the game was janky,not all the features the development team wanted to have in it ended up being there and a lot of it is clearly a product of its time in terms of how the storyline is structured(you really do feel that late first decade of the 2000's action flick vibe in some of the story beats) but after playing this game for about as long as some people on planet earth are old enough to drive,i have nothing but a highest endorsement for this game: whenever i have that dialogue wheel,fast paced RPG itch,Alpha protocol has been the scratcher for that itch with a day at the spa like result. in summation: buy it,buy it,buy it.

I have played this game on my PS3 years ago, I have also bought it on steam, before they took it down due to some song copyright. I'm not gonna buy it again, but I will happily write a review for it! Has it fun gameplay? I'd say yes. Has it meaningful choices? Yup. Different playstyles? Yep. Potential for decent roleplaying? Yep. Is it perfect? No. Is it still worth buying? Absolutely yes.

Good work, G.O.G.! Could you make the same for the SEGA PC classics that came along since the 90s, like Bug?