Starwars

What exactly does that tweak do?

I have trouble moving both lines at the same time since I find the mousing kinda wonky. But what I typically do is just look for static numbers first and then look to see what piece of code it matches, then move the pieces of code individually. The second or third level in Sabotage also makes it easier so that might be worth investing in if you're having trouble. After learning how to do it, I've had very little problems with. It's definitely the minigame that requires the most attention though, which can be tiring on the eyes. I'm not a fan of this minigame at all personally but it's not too hard once you learn it.

As far as I understand things, uninstalling the game will get back an activation for you.

So who did everyone like or dislike? I really liked most of the characters which I didn't expect. The only one I didn't care for much was Sean Darcy. Ironically enough, I had decided to go for an almost exclusively Suave playthrough so he ended up liking me anyways. I wonder what his relationship stat affects since you fight him near the end and kill him. Marburg steals the show regarding conversations though. Seriously, that conversation when you first meet him was just beautiful. Same when you have your final shoot-out with him, after you take his health down a bit. You can call him out on some of the stuff in his dossier and the verbal smackdown that Mike gives is just glorious. Steven Heck was a lotta fun as well but it was probably a mistake to bring him along to a mission where I wanted to stealthy, haha. EDIT: Forgot about Henry Leland which was just the smug bastard I wanted him to be. The conversation when we finally "catch up" to the flash-forwards is great. And it was satisfying to put a bullet right through his eye (ouch).

The set-up for the Brayko fight is pretty much the best ever though. When the music started it was just one of those "what the ****'s going on?", love it. I still killed the bastard though.

That fight is just mad. I managed to beat it (on normal) with my stealth, pistols and sabotage guy after a few reloads. Really need to keep your head cool and really make use of all the gadgets and abilities you have. Using Overclock and then tossing fire grenades worked well for the first section of the fight, but when he's trying to slice ya, you just gotta keep moving. I Chain Shotted him to death.

Yeah. Though it deserves to be said that this game doesn't feature philosophical discussions and "flowery" writing. It's much more about hard-boiled action dialogue. I found the writing to be really good throughout, and occasionally it soars to amazing and the writing and acting just comes together in a wonderful way. In one particular encounter, the action was stopped for a quick breather and convo with the adversary, and upon my direction Mike just started *unloading*, pissing the other guy off (some of which has to do was that I had some good dossier information on the character), just verbally owning him. It was such a glorious" moment.

I'd really recommend reading and watching the 1up preview which I found to be surprisingly reasonable. I didn't have some of the problems they mention in my playthrough but they bring up both good points and bad points. Good review and good on them for mentioning the choices.

After a gaming session of epic proportions (seriously, my brain is just about fried), my friend and I went through the rest of the game today (end of Moscow, Taipei and Rome and what comes after). We played with a character focusing on Stealth, Pistols and Sabotage. Taking down bosses with the pistol is definitely viable. In fact, near the end it sorta becomes rather unbalanced where you can Chain Shot up to 6 critical head shots which will pretty much destroy (or severely wound) most bosses. On some particular bosses you need to get closer than I would assume you'd need with an Assault Rifle though, and this can really be dangerous. I am extremely pleased with the game overall though I'm not much of a fan of the endgame I must admit except for some great conversations. I also think the ending stuff could've been presented in a better way. It could've really needed an ending like Dragon Age which was both satisfying in terms of cutscenes as well as the ending slide. AP does have consequences for your actions, but the whole thing is over pretty quick. It'll be intriguing to go through the game again though. I loved how the characters sorta flowed through the game depending on how you treated them. There was one particular important plot event for example that I unfortunately didn't find in the end-game which ended up costing a lot. Something that I find really impressive in the game is the reactivity. The plot unfolds and sort of "envelops" the choices you've done and discussions on what you've done in past missions and so forth are weaved very well into the main plot, it's cut together extremely well and the voiceactors and acting director did a bang-up job on getting the contexts right and all that. Just based on this playthrough (which is not enough to really judge the game) I think I'd give it an 8/10, which I consider a great score myself.

Once I finish the game and all that, I hope to be able to contribute. There'll be a lot of stuff since there are so many small branches which carry smaller effects as well as the bigger ones.

You know, I've always loved Obsidian for having those lengthy conversations like the one with Atris in KOTOR2, the Trial in NWN2, Myrkul in MotB... And now, meeting Conrad Marburg in Alpha Protocol. That was just freakin' awesome. Razor sharp writing.

I guess the technical stuff (textures loading and all that) is more noticeable on consoles. I have seen it on the PC but it's not very noticeable. What is most baffling perhaps is how a lot of people are ignoring the *interactivity* of a game that is as story-heavy as AP. I had my suspicions of course but it seems that people really don't care that much about choices and all that. A shame, and they should because we're dealing with games and they should be interactive.

If I ever had any faith in gaming journalism, it was pretty much blown away by that. It's pretty amazing though, on one hand many of the US sites are trashing and on the other, EU seems to be liking it. Don't think I've ever seen a "split" this big before. But seriously, I just cannot see the 2/10. After playing some more today, this is growing on me even more. It's the best game I've played this year most likely. So weird.

This is what he posted guys, I'm guessing he already tried it:

I'm not at home at the moment but I logged into STEAM and the page for AP says that you can buy now rather than pre-order, and my Games list says I can play it rather than pre-load. Someone should try it.

Strange, wonder what the issue could be. On my friends computer, we had the problem of the mouse flipping around when a new section of the level loaded. But aside from that, the mouse worked just fine (had to tweak the sensitivity to my liking but that's no issue). I hope SEGA will release patches to fix some of the issues people are having. I'm not sure what their track record on patching games are.

Yeah, seriously.

I'm guessing your mileage will vary greatly in playtime depending on whether you do stealth or guns blazing playthroughs. My friend and I took a fair amount of time to get through Saudi Arabia using stealth (we didn't get keep track). If you just blast everything I have a feeling the game might feel rather short but I might be wrong.

Canard PC seems really respectable judging from what little I can remember. I know they were kinda critical towards F3 while everyone else was overlooking the flaws. That's good news.

I don't think it'll mean the death for OEI (though it will hurt their reputation as you say). But mark my words, 5 years from now we'll start seeing the occasional retrospective articles on Alpha Protocol as with Bloodlines.

Is there any review yet that has even mentioned what bugs can occur? Like I said, based on the early parts of the game I certainly didn't notice much of what I would call bugs. There is a slight camera wonkyness when the game loads something but that's pretty much it from my experience with Saudi Arabia. Others have mentioned that reloading the beginning of a mission can lead to soldiers immediately noticing you. Now that is a bug to be sure, but other than that? What exactly are these bugs? That german review looks level-headed though. Though I only found hacking to be annoying, the other two worked well on the PC though, like with Mass Effect 2, they are so easy that they really feel like a minor nuisance rather than a challenge of any kind. As far as whether the game would've had a better reception if it had been released before ME2. I don't know, maybe a little bit. But I always got a feeling ever since the game was announced that it would not a be a "hit", the skepticism was always there. I'm not sure exactly what people were expecting though. I know in the missions I had a lot more fun with AP than with ME2 because it simply feels more dynamic. I think the guns feel good to use, I got a lot of use out of stealth in Saudi Arabia. In hindsight, one thing about the AI is that I wish they were more aggressive when you're triggering an alarm. They seem to go to the place where you were spotted but if you manage to hide, they really don't search as aggressively as I would like. I wonder how different the game will feel on Hard vs Normal. Isn't Steam version up yet? Gah. EDIT: This is something I might be inclined to agree with. People seem to be feeling that guns blazing is really easy which is a valid complaint. I applaud the effort of rewarding different playstyles but I think the context of a spy-game set in the present-day is not the best fit for rambo playthrough.

For the Saudi Arabia hub, there was very little (if any) that I would put down as a bug. I'm sure there are some here and there but the game actually felt way more polished than I expected. Again, based on the Saudi Arabia hub only.

Oh I seeeeee...

A friend of mine got the boxed PC version today (bastard, can't wait until Steam unlocks it). We played through the Saudi Arabia missions together and I think it's pretty awesome. I think the tutorial feels a bit... meh somehow, I'm not sure exactly why. I was actually a bit disappointed at first but once the missions started in Saudi Arabia I was completely hooked. The conversations play really smoothly and are wonderfully written, I think they really nailed it. So many clips we've seen sounded sorta weird when out of context but when playing the game it comes together wonderfully. I have *no* idea what the bit-tech review is talking about because the characters so far are wonderful and quite likeable. Like Dan said, there are occasional bottle-necks in the levels but they often open up a few minor paths that you can choose. Not what I'd call non-linear but it gives a good elbow-room to move around I think. We played with skill points in Pistols, Stealth and Sabotage. Stealth works great, I have no idea what some people have been complaining about, seriously. Pistols work well at mid-range where you can line up the critical. I do however wonder what the real advantage vs the Assault Rifle is because I think you can use silencers and that on the Rifles as well. And the rifles just seem more powerful and can "snipe" way better at long ranges. Could be a bit unbalanced but can't say until I've tried both more extensively. I will echo that I feel the game was easy on Normal. When I played using the above build, I also didn't die once for all the time we played. It got close twice but I managed to survive. The game is still fun though and there's still a fairly good sense of danger, but I'll definitely jack the difficulty up to Hard once I complete my first playthrough. The PC version looks better than the console onces (from what I can see on the videos). We had problems with the hacking minigame though, where you have to use the mouse to move one of the cursors. It felt extremely... weird and unresponsive. We also had some slight camera wonkyness when the game loaded things, sometimes the camera sorta got turned around. Not that big of a deal but it sorta threw us off guard a few times. Really enjoyed my time with it and can't wait until Steam unlocks it at midnight.

You seem to have the gist of it as far as I can understand the hacking. You have two lines of code on top, you need to find those two lines of code in the mass of switching numbers. The two lines in the mass changes place if you take too long, I think the time may be affected by your skill level in the Sabotage (or was it Technical Aptidude) skill tree. Your level of skill also changes how long the lines of code are, a higher skill results in longer lines of code, making them easier to spot.