Close your eyes and imagine the following: Mass Effect flirts with Splinter Cell. After a few drinks, one thing leads to another and the two get down and dirty. A few months later (what is the gestation period for games?) a little bundle of joy pops out, and the couple decides to name it Alpha Protocol. At first glance the little one seems like it has the best parts of its parents. But as with all drunken mishaps a few of the required genes never made it into the pool. Sure, it can talk the talk, but it’s a little slow, a little ugly, and ultimately the black sheep of the family. And just like the sad little runt of the litter you can’t help but feel sorry for it, maybe even love it a little.

Alpha Protocol, on paper at least, sounds like the ultimate game to me. Mass Effect has great characters and an excellent story that has your decisions in the game change the outcome of events. Splinter Cell Conviction is the epitome of one rogue spy bringing down entire governments with great controls and superb level design. I love great stories, and I love spy action movies and games in the Splinter Cell / Bourne Identity / Taken genre. Combining these into Alpha Protocol seems perfect. But like the baby analogy above (weak as it may be) Alpha Protocol is not the sharpest tool in the shed.

Allow myself to introduce…myself

You play as Michael Thornton, a new recruit to a super-secret agency named Alpha Protocol. These guys are called in to do the things that governments want to deny involvement in. You awake on a gurney to find you have been drugged and taken to the Alpha Protocol HQ. As soon as you open your eyes the tests and initiations begin. The first few missions do a great job of teaching you the different concepts of the game. Soon after you are sent on your first mission, so it’s off to Saudi Arabia with you. The mission is a success, but then things go wrong (as you would expect) and the real meat gets added to the story.

As soon as you start playing you realize that Alpha Protocol might have been better off if it stayed in the developers care a little longer. Alpha Protocol is a third person shooter/RPG. The controls are certainly a step backwards compared to many titles released recently. It feels way too jerky and I can imagine poor Mikey coming across quite spastic at times. Aiming is a trial and error affair, and the shabby camera adds nothing but frustration to the experience.

The game does have a lot in its favour though. As Agent Thornton graduates from Alpha Protocol initiation and training, he gets to decide his field of expertise. You can either pick one of three pre-configured classes, or design your character’s skills in a way that will suit your playing style. We have the usual soldier, tech and spy classes here, and their different skills can change the way you experience the game. Choose the soldier if you are going for all out warfare, or choose the tech if you want to use a manner of electronic gadgets to confuse your targets.

You can also choose the Operative class, which basically allows you to customize the different skills to suit your playing style. You can be a soldier, but still have enough sneakiness to rival the sneakiest butlers out there. If you are up to more of a challenge, then play as a new recruit with no skills yet. This will make the game quite a bit harder and, after your first play through, unlock the Veteran mode.

Shoot first, ask questions later

Alpha Protocol is primarily a shooter (which is one reason the sticky controls is such a shame) and thus weapons play a big role. Between missions that take you to various big cities across the globe, you get to hang out in an Alpha Protocol safe house. From here you can read your email, buy new equipment, upgrade your gear and increase your skills. You will have access to new weapons and ammo, but these all cost money. Money is gained by selling information on the black market, picking safes or simply picking up money clips from fallen enemies. Lock picking, hacking and circuit cracking all feature in the game as mini-games, and even though they can get predictable feel pretty accurate. I am no thief, but the lock-picking sequence feels especially close to the real deal.

You can also select your next mission from the safe house, and depending on how you play it, these missions will unlock more missions in the same city. Available missions can be played in any order, but your decisions have a real effect on your next mission. For instance, you can complete a mission and take out some guard stations, and the final mission will have less guards to deal with.

Since you are a super-spy you also have a few gadgets at your disposal. You can use proximity mines, sound distractions and EMP grenades to soften up targets or clear a few cameras. These toys all cost money and need to be purchased before embarking on your next mission. Depending on the location of the mission, one device might be a better choice than others, so a study of where the mission takes place will be a good idea.

Stats just wrong!

If you choose to do the humane thing you may also use Mr. Thornton’s martial arts ability. Taking down enemies in close quarters combat is not only silent and effective, but you also don’t kill the enemy. This being an RPG you will notice that it keeps track of quite a few stats, one of which is the amount of orphans created! I was shocked to realize that even though I was careful to kill only a few enemies, that almost every enemy had at least one child. With these children relying solely on their fathers (there are hardly any female enemies in the game) for parental affection, they are now all orphans! What a tragic statistic! I do feel that it’s more of an Austin Powers statistic than a Nelson Mandela statistic though.

It is decisions like these that really set Alpha Protocol apart from your average shooter RPG, and most of these decisions are made in the dialogue system. You get to choose from a range of responses that will either anger the person you are talking to, or soften them up to you. This changes your reputation and can affect how a person feels about you. If you make an enemy angry enough he will skip all chatter and just start shooting. If he likes you enough you can avoid all the shooting and settle on some kind of truce. With such a varied outcome in your encounters with other characters, it is worth your while playing the game for a second or even third sitting.

Graphically it feels a little let down. Some areas like the safe-houses are full of great detail, yet others lack imagination and refinement. I would often find areas where the staple of level design, the crate, have been placed so close to each other they actually clip one another. The worst graphical glitch is something that has plagued the Unreal engine ever since it made its debut on this generation of consoles: texture loading. When new levels and models are loaded, the game takes a while to load to high resolution textures, and you end up looking at a very blurry mess for a few seconds before its done loading. This is most evident in the equipment load-out screen, but rears its ugly head all over the place. Games like Mass Effect and Gears of War 2 have this problem completely resolved, why is this still a problem here?

Ultimately the good parts of the game, the dialogue system, the story and the effects your actions have on the outcome of the game, all need to face off against the bad parts of the game, the control scheme, the camera and the lack of overall polish. It’s a battle that a lot of games have to face, and in this case, the good side wins, but only just. I often found myself playing the game almost with a cringe on my face. I was playing the shooter sections only to get to the next dialogue or big decision. The sneaking does not work nearly as well as Splinter Cell, and the AI is as dumb as dirt in the wind in this game.

Yet still other times the action gets to such a frenzied chaos where either I got used to the controls, or I simply ignored them subconsciously in order to continue the game. I ignored the ugly texture loading, or the annoying camera. Underneath the ugliness lies a really good game. When all the dust has settled and the disc finally stopped spinning in the PS3, I could sit back and say that overall I actually enjoyed Alpha Protocol. Like the runt of the litter it has lots of character and is very lovable. Don’t expect a Mass Effect heir or a Splinter Cell double agent, and you will be pleasantly surprised.

The good: A super-spy of a story; decisions have real consequences; be a spy!
The bad: Controls; camera and texture loading plague the experience.
The ugly: I created over 400 orphans!? I did not need to know that!

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