Tigranes

Again, did you read my first post? There is a separate run mode (LShift), which is considerably faster than the default jog/walk. Practically speaking, the normal jog/walk simply looks like he's running so that we don't have to take seventy hours to move everywhere. It would help if you made your case clearly - so you just want to be able to walk for immersion rather than gameplay purposes?

Exactly, hence why my post said "artistic direction". I don't think it was a good idea to maek the first area look so sterile, but if the game is based around several very distinct areas, then you'd want to look at more than one of them before making your call. I'm finding stuff pretty decent outside the graybox, nothing too unique or mindblowing, but certainly evokes the mood of the place well.

Calm down, people. It's a madhouse in here. deevius, so are you wanting something slower than the normal 'jog'... but not a crouch? Referring to my earlier post...

You know, if you've only spent an hour or so, you're only in the Graybox. Maybe you should go to Taipei, Rome, Moscow or Saudi Arabia before you judge the artistic direction? In comparison the starting area is really really sterile. Sort of like Deus Ex's main HQ, in fact. Devoid of life.

Actually there are 3 modes of movement: LShift = Run Nothing = 'Jog', which is what you're probably doing LCtrl = Crouch. There's no reasno for you to 'walk'... if you're wanting to be stealthy you will crouch, right? Have a little patience...

Seems to be a 64-bit issue; I'm on Win7 32-bit and there's no problem at all. Hell, Bluegrass, my specs are very very similar to yours, only difference is I'm 32-bit and not Steam. From past experience, this error is usually to do with Runtime and/or Net. Framework... though that DRM conflict seems worth looking into.

I think you can safely ignore destructoid, it's well known the guy likes his joke reviews. There is definitely a love/hate thing going on with gamespot and the like, though.

Oddly enough, my comp's not the best around and I'm not getting any texture pops or anything. I think I had a mild version of the mouse smoothing issue (looking round 360 degrees was jerky) and the frame rate fix did it. I'm now in Taipei and again, it's not that hard to get the dialogue response on time - and it does make it interesting because it does raelly make you think quickly. I think it really adds to the characterisation because you're scanning their faces and lines for what they might like or what might work with them.

Which issues would those be? Lots of people don't have the game yet, so let us know.

Hrm. I've been alt-tabbing multiple times and it works very well for me. As I say, it seems to be a luck of the draw thing....

But you don't want to play it? Naturally, you go to your games retailer for a refund.

I'm on PC and there is sometimes a 2-3 second hang when opening a minigame or entering a new area, but nothing major. How's your specs?

That's an exaggeration, honestly. I mean, GTA4 had horrendous texture errors that replaced the landscape with white. Dragon Age had gamebreaking bugs where characters disappeared or you couldn't enter the Dwarven city. Certainly I wouldn't say AP is as polished as a Halo or a Mass Effect but I don't really think its so necessary for every game to be for it to be worth playing.

Nearly done with Saudi. In short? This is an awesomely fun game and a must buy, if you take the game for what it is, and play it the way it's meant to be played. If you're just wanting to play another Mass Effect 2 or whatever, you might keep fighting it. Don't get stuck up about its small flaws (which are there) but give it a good go and it's a gem. Game runs very well in general, but there's no denying it feels 'clunky', when you move around / look around, and when you do particular things like hacking and climbing ladders. Doesn't bother me much. Might bother you if you will only accept the most polished super-AAA games around. Dialogue system - can't understand why anyone would be troubled by this unless they're not using something in their native language. The way the human brain works is that you listen to the NPC talk while reading over your choices at the same time, so you have plenty of time to decide what to do. The options aren't very informative (you get a lot of times where its just Aggressive/Suave/Professional) but you never really get unpleasant surprises of 'that's not what I wanted'. Graphics do look a few years back, but nothing amazingly bad like some people might tell you - I mean, seriously, go back and play a game from just four years ago (Oblivion) and tell me it's better than Alpha Protocol, it's rubbish. Certainly it doesn't look like a Halo 3 or whatever, but it is a current-gen game. The main reason people might not like it is because it has its ups and downs - the opening cinematic shows off some horrendously low-res textures, but when you get to Saudi Arabia the place looks quite nice with appropriate lighting. Mike looks good, too, anyone talking about Mass Effect 2 a 'piece of art'? Go look at Miranda's face, that's pukeworthy - though it was a great looking game in most other respects. Every game has its graphcial ups and downs - FO3 looked alright but had terrible animations. Ultimately you should be judging Alpha Protocol by what experience it wants to offer you, not the same standard you use to judge every other game. I mean, if you wanted a slick polished fast-hitting shooter with lots of loot you should have been looking at another game. If you wanted interesting stories, characters, dialogue, choice & consequences, atmosphere, then get it, play it (for more than 2 hours), and I doubt you'd be disappointed in that.

Well I think it's a case of hate/love... just played a few hours, Mike isn't the most interesting character in the world but he's fine for me. his VA is pretty 'realistic' as well. I like the dialogue system (it's not even that fast-paced anyway), and I think the atmosphere is great. I think it's undeniable that the game doesn't feel super-polished and slick, because there are some ups and downs with the graphics/animations and movement/interfacing is especially clunky. Hacking's quite easy for me, but the game seems confused whether you want to move with the mouse or the keyboard when you do it - only touching one maeks it better. The funny thing is, I thought the main menu was very 90's as well, but the actual game is very very fun. It's grabbing me a lot. The difference is that with Dragon Age and FO3 it grabbed me at the start because everything was clearly very well made and put together... here, not as much, but there's interesting dialogue, interesting setup and while graphics look a few years dated (Amiga? Yeah right) they do have a charm to them. I think we can all point out the flaws in the game or bits we don't like, but hey, I don't judge every game by the same standards - some games are great in some places, other games pull you in with other tricks. Dragon Age had completely horrendous dialogue and cutscenes directly ripped off Lord of the Rings, but it had great polish, great gameplay and good balance. Alpha Protocol doesn't look like it's as polished and it is sometimes clunky, but it's got a lot of other things going for it.

You might want to deactivate your first activation (you can do it online on a website, I think?)?

To clarify: Normally, the tech forums would be available by the time the game is available to everyone. However, we've had people buying the game from something like a week before now, because of various shops and online stores breaking street dates. Add this to the fact that the US release date hasn't even hit yet - theoretically nobody in the US should have it, and people in Europe should only be getting it now. In any case, the most important thing is that people now have the game and we need tech forums set up. This is being done and will be done very soon. For now please check the known issues section of the FAQ sticky, and with new problems just post here - those threads will be moved into the tech forum later.

Thread pruned. This forum is for discussions, not slapping each other in the face.

They do check the forum, for instance Josh and Alvin have been around for hours earlier today. Anyway, I don't have the game yet but that does sound rather silly - if it's editable for other UE3 games I wonder why it was hardcoded? Sounds like something we can hopefully get an official or fanmade fix for sooner or later, if lots of other people are suffering from it. I assume fiddling mouse settings in control panel will have minimal effect?

What exactly is your complaint? Mouse is too slow? I take it you've checked the .ini files to see if you can edit the string?

You won't be able to change the entire save system or dialogue system just by fiddling with the ini files, it'll be more complicated than that. if you're lucky there will be something in the files that controls how long the dialogue timer is, or such, but basically those are fairly major changes that you probably can't affect with a couple of lines.

Woohoo! This is great.

Alt tabs usually have to do with individual computers - what happens with yours? Does it crash straight away, or freeze?

We have reports of people taking 4-6 hours just to get out of Saudi Arabia. With at least 4 hubs, yeah, I'd call 12 hours lower than the average. It's too early to get a reliable estimate on game length - people who're going to rush and finish it quickly will be the most vocal ones now, those taking their time... won't be done with it yet.

Well, screw that. Despite Australia EBgames selling the game from the 26th, here in NZ they're clueless. They don't have it on the shelves or a poster or anything (though they have FO:NV and Diablo II and Sims 3, go figure) and people there are clueless. It seems it's "meant" to be here, console versions are here, but PC version is just... 'not'. Mightyape sells console versions now but PC at 4th of June, so I might just pay for extra bandwidth and download it. Seriously, sometimes being a small country is just crap edit: OK, I've decided to go for GAME.co.uk, it's only 25 pounds for download = 50NZD, half the price of ebgames, and it does work for NZ customers. It'll take me 12 hours or more to finish, but it'll still be the fastest option I guess.