HoonDing

Greg Kasavin, where art thou?

^I think she likes aggression. I enjoyed the back-and-forth between Thorton & Leland. Reminded me of the one between Bond and Blofeld. The talks with Marburg reminded me of Auric Goldfinger. Good stuff.

That ranger chick from Samargol is a really good recruit... I used her from as soon as I could afford her, until the end. Then later I hired a blonde, masked rogue whose name I forgot.

Yes, I should replay ME2 at one point and generate an end-save where FemShep remained faithful to either Liara or Kaiden. Jacob's really meh, not to mention the romance dialogue is horrendous... and Frogboy's is even worse. Garrus is alright, but he's better as a friend.

I don't know how I would beat some bosses without Chain Shot. Combined with Shadow Operative... it's kinda cheesy. It's also funny how Evasion will make Mike invisible if he goes around a corner and bumps into a guard, allowing him to one-hit kill the guard. Anyway:

Stealth + Pistols + Hand-to-hand is pretty fun. I almost always use the melee takedown for enemies, but if I screw up, Chain Shot makes things very easy. AI is very wonky though... I'm in Rome and enemies are simply waiting in corridors while my Chain Shot is recharging.

With the bad AI, pistols are ridiculously powerful. One can own some enemies, then retreat and wait for it to recharge while enemies don't even bother attacking.

I was referring to hacking computers to further the mission. E.g. two missions in Arabia. Luckily combat is a non-issue and any fodder that appears after the sirens call are swiftly dispatched. But I'm guessing I'm missing out on perks and maybe missions this way.

I think it looks great, like a more gritty version of Team (Tween?) Fortress 2.

What's the point of being able to "abort" hacking if it leads to triggering the alarm anyway? I have many a perfectly executed stealth mission ruined this way.

You almost made me double-check whether ME2 had a gay romance after all. Then I remembered Jack's the mad chick.

This forum section is starting to feel like the BioWare Social Network.

I never went beyond patch 1.01 and aside from the memory leak (which wasn't fixed in later patches anyway) never ran into serious bugs with the game. I did have to install something to disable TLB on my Phenom processor, otherwise I can't play the game for 10 minutes without performance completely going through the drain.

His intelligence is 17. Basically Sarevok used the original plans of the Iron Throne and adapted them to his own ends --- starting an all-out war on the Sword Coast and eventually use the chaos to ascend into godhood.

I made it a habit to be suave against everyone in the Gray Box. They're all so annoying.

Could somebody please invade this country already?

I agree it's a good game, and if the hacking minigame controls + fractured subtitles will get patched, it will become a great game. Some of the skills may be unrealistic (frankly I don't understand how some reviews say that pistols suck... Chain Shot is teh awesome), but they're definitely more fun than Mass Effect's spamming of magic missiles every 5 seconds. I think that's more a case of horribad facial animations, honestly. Otherwise she looks an awful lot like Yvonne Strahovski.

A big reason for why I'm running out of time with dialogues is because for some inexplicable reason, subtitles do not appear on screen in complete sentences, but are fractured. This makes it harder for someone with bad English skills. Chain Shot FTW.

Know what, these *****ing minigames are the worst I have ever come across in any game. Hacking makes even the one from Fallout 3 seem like fun. I don't know how I even managed to pass the one in the tutorial... the block on the right moves by itself, for crying out loud. Hilarious. As for dialogue stances, by the time I'm ready to go and pick something, I'm usually out of time. I don't want to be rushed into doing things, dammit.

I think that's partly the point of OP. While fun, the game feels more like it was developed by an Eastern European independent developer rather than an overseas developer supported by a large publisher. That is perhaps why the European reviews are so positive compared to overseas ones: European reviewers are more used to lesser production values. If Alpha Protocol was developed by, say, Cypron Studios, Gamespot would've probably given a 3.0 score.

In before Mass Effect/Fallout 3/Dragon Age has even worse AI/graphics/animations/combat. Seriously, OP is spot on about the hacking minigame. Maybe it's my mouse, but it took me half an hour to even pass the one in the tutorial. I also dislike the main protagonist's voice-over... even worse than Mark Meer.

Win indeed. Bethesda should've hired more renowned game voice actors instead of Hollywood celebrities (save of course, Ron Perlman). Maybe even use some BioWare voice actors like Jennifer Hale, Mark Meer or Raphael Sbarge, just for lulz. It would have allowed them at least to use more money to buy better monkeys for their typewriters.

Viconia's reaction to sleeping with the hag is superb. Her romance really is the only good one BioWare's ever written. Anyone know who wrote it?

At least one can be sure New Vegas won't have the same management problems. Bethesda surely keeps a tight leash with regular project briefings and reports to the Toddster.

At least one can be sure Fallout: New Vegas will be an overwhelming success. Bethesda's backing & name on the box guarantees it. Heck, even a total train-wreck like Rogue Warrior somehow became a cult game (courtesy of F-bombs every 5 seconds).