Hands On Preview: Alpha Protocol

A spy action-RPG set in modern times sounds like an excellent idea on paper. Treading the fine line between Splinter Cell and Mass Effect, Alpha Protocol would allow us to live out all our James Bond fantasies. But then gameplay videos emerged and people were horrified at how clunky and bland the game actually looked. The game’s release date was pushed back and even now the game still hasn’t achieved the level of polish we hoped it would. Luckily, it’s a ton of fun as we learnt recently with some hands on time.

Like any RPG on the block, you can create your own character from a bunch of presets available. Do you want to sneak around like Sam Fisher or go in guns blazing like umm Sam Fisher (from Conviction i.e.)? It’s all possible over here. Once you choose your class you can go ahead and choose you skill sets that’ll determine how proficient you are with weapons, how fast you are with hacking, how aware you are while sneaking and so on.

The game starts off with a tutorial that accustoms you with the game’s basic controls and mechanics like hacking, sneaking, hand-to-hand combat etc. Since you are a spy, you’ll have to be proficient with hacking of various objects like door locks, computers and alarms. While all of them are simple enough to understand, they get trickier as you progress through the game and one single error sounds the alarm. This will make every enemy in the level aware of your presence till you hack into the alarm system and turn it off. Yeah, it’s kind of unforgiving that way.

Like I mentioned earlier, gameplay feels a lot like Splinter Cell, especially if you take the stealth class. And I definitely recommend you go in for that class as you won’t be powerful enough to handle an entire room full of enemies initially. And it’s a lot of fun too – learning enemy patrol patterns, avoiding cameras, taking enemies out with a silent pistol and so on. Of course when it hits the fan you’re free to use your un-silenced weapons but remember this is an RPG at heart so unless your weapon skills are high enough, your bullets won’t even touch your opponents.

As with most RPGs, dialogues play a very important role in the game too and you can choose to be professional, suave or just plain reckless. The choices you make in your dialogue tree will not only influence what people think of you in the game world but may offer you certain benefits like weapon discounts, skill boosts and so on. Just make sure you’re quick to choose as this game has a timed dialogue tree.

Visually the game’s still on the bland side and it could really do with a bit of polish before it releases. The levels that take place in the Middle East are just plain brown with a serious lack of detail. Enemy models are as generic as they come and for some reason controlling the main character feels very jerky.

Even after all the above mentioned issues, I really enjoyed my time with the game. Of course we’ll be back with a detailed full-fledged review once the game hits stands by the end of this month.