this is the first thing the video game industry ever had to a true game about cavemen: no superpowers or beastmastery,no fancy gliders or cartoonish club bopping: just the very scary,very true to reality story of human evolution during the late neogene and the rise of homo habilis... the game doesn't guide you well as to what you can or cant do but then again: pre prehistoric man didn't exactly have a "how to survive the baby steps of humanity guide" with them either. once you get the hang of it tho,it is a beautiful experience that feels almost romantic: your seeing the baby steps of the people who eventually became us and thats a beautiful thing to witness. i would recommend this game in a heartbeat just by how rare it is to have an honest realistic depiction of primordial man in gaming but before i go: i wanna address the desilets in the room: if your going into this thinking your getting "assassins creed primal" your dead wrong: this has about as much to do with AC as the AC series itself has to do with air conditioning: the movement is no where near as seemless,the production quality is no where near as atmospheric and any aspect of design is no where near the inflated budget of the game series the lead designer was intially famous for but,then again: empire earth had no where near the quality of age of empires and rick goodman still made a timeless classique so sometimes,less is more and more is less....just keep that in mind if your picking this us.
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.
what always won me over,if i can be perfectly honest,can be summarized in one world: perspective;unlike other RPG's where the game clearly treats your interaction with it as a game(i.e you are in a DND sesh or playing a 2004 era roleplaying game),from the moment you start playing oblivion to the very last quest you wish to complete,your character is always referred to as if you are that character yourself and unlike other rpgs: the world feels like you actually live in it: in other games,some NPC are static background props or some shelves or cuppords are just filler to give some place the "lived in castle" look,but here: if you see a cupboard or a person,you can physically interact with it as if it was right infront of you in real life:almost every piece of clothing,every static item,every pully or lever,every door and every key can be interacted with,which makes you feel less like your playing a role playing game and more like your actually in tameriel,doing the things you do. nowadays this is old hat but when i came into this game after playing diablo style dungeon crawlers and classic ARPGs like 2004's the bards tale and fable,this blew my mind and let me project myself on this game more then any other RPG i played. contrary to public opinion at the time and even since: i loved this game's DLC's: personalized homes for each style of character with their own unique feel,they honestly made hearthfire seem like a letdown by comparison. one thing oblivion does better then its older or younger siblings its two words: mercantile and speechcraft: whilst the speechcraft minigame might seem tedious,the spells for manipulating moods and opinions add alot to it and i found the bribe feature to make certain interaction that would be tedious in daggerfall or morrowind be easier in oblivion and the barter skill is something only oblivion seem to have gotten right with its mercantile skill: being able to make profit on a clay plate is always a nice challange
if you ever had a family member in the armed forces circa 1960s to late 1980s,then this concept would be rather captivating to you: you play what was essentially the role of an Operations Officer in the cold war era: you mark a physical map with information about troop deployment,hostiles,places of note etc,updating your physical marks on the map the old fashioned way,whilst keeping in unreliable contact with your troops on the ground from the safety of a logistics tent:no GPS,aircraft cameras,spy drones or shoulder cams:just a long range miltary CB,a crudly drawn paper map of the operations theater and some sharpies to coordinate and keep track of it all. much like other games of its kind like say,tom clancy's endwar: you can even play the entire game using voice commands and a single button(albeit a little less reliably): i take personal pleasure in having a retro phone handset as my microphone and sound device,pressing the horn up to my ears and issuing commands as i go...its like the gaming peripheral i never knew i had but wish i never go without. that being said: the game's depiction of the vietnam war era seems a bit too campy,even by vietcong standards but,your just not going to find anything like this anywhere else and considering how well it depicts a long outdated form of miltary operations and essentially preserves it in interactive form: i cant help but higly recommending this.
