Raithe

Worked the first playthrough of Alpha Protocol... Now giving it a try from the Rookie perspective.. A few flaws, some glitches, but not a bad gem.

Rifles have the "subsonic rounds" which basically works as a silencer... But to keep using them you have to spend money regularly to keep your supplies topped up.. I'm guessing that was meant to balance things out against you running around "sniping" constantly without any alarms being raised..

It depends what you call mini-bosses.. I mean depending on how you go at it.. Hm, There's Brayko in Moscow.. but then you don't have to fight him.. Then Sie, again, you don' thave to fight her (although she rather enjoys it if you do...the whole email of "im standing naked at the mirror touching all those bruises you gave me dahling"..). Rome, there's Marburg to deal with.. and Taipai has Omen Deng.. All of these people are meant to be superior to the regular mooks and henchmen you can take down with ease.. So I guess it makes some sense that people of their calibre aren't simple one shot kills.... I think one of the things people are forgetting is that depending on just how you approach things, you might not have to actually fight these people... Then again I can't be totally sure of that since I haven't played those routes yet..

Brayko is a major pain to get past if you attempt it early in the game. The best thing to do is to try another one of the hubs. (Remember, you can shift between them as much as you like as long as missions are available...). Then build up your character a bit more before trying to deal with Brayko. That's what I ended up doing. I tried Moscow straight after Saudi and nada I could do worked on him. He killed me in a few seconds. Went off to Rome and Tapai..then came back and fairly handed him his head... the difference between level 7 or so and being level 16 I guess

and take that literally in game.. There's a hidden elevator in the shower...

I went through most of the game using martial arts, stealth takedowns and pistols... And then for the whole finale I kept getting stuck in situations where I had to pull out the assault rifle to deal with things... and dang it, I'd orginally been trying to tranq all those marines.. But given how hard they were trying to shoot me, blow me up, or generally give me a bad hair day I got irritated.

I don't know.. it does carry a certain level of.. Roger's Moore's Bond modernised a touch. But yeah, I tend to think of suave as a bit more.. charming.. then that sort of smug flirtatious. I will also say, Mike's dialogue actually flows quite well even when you're bouncing between attitudes in a single conversation. It doesn't come across as totally schizophrenic..

You have the default "move at x pace" which is a little faster then a normal walk.. and then there's the "sprint" button. Think of it as Mike as ADD and is a hyper-git who always has to be moving. It's not something that really jumps out and is glaringly immersion breaking. At least it hasn't leapt out and hit me with a wet haddock over it...

I think one of the troubles for people percieving things as bland is that unlike the majority of games, the settings are all "real-world" urbanised areas mostly. There's not going to be much thats going to pop out compared to fantasy games with strange cities or shooters like crysis where the locales are usually lush jungles, or alien ships, or cities being invaded and in stages of destruction... <shrugs> Sure you have architectural and art differences between cultures, but when it's all modern-day settings, you tend to be 'used' to seeing things (even cities like Rome and Taipai) on tv. There's nothing going to be new and flashy about them. That suits the setting... I will admit one of the small things that has irked me is the level design with the "multiple routes through" and how often if you start one of the alternate methods, the level shuts off behind you so you can't go back and go another way.. Although to be fair I've only encountered that a couple of times. Doors that you've moved through only 5 minutes before suddenly lock tight and prevent you from returning to explore another way... Still having fun with it tho.

His armor kept regenerating at bloody fast levels. I emptied assault rifle into him and could barely get him to 2/3 a health bar... Ah well.. I've had a break from Moscow and gone to wander around Rome before returning to Brayko later..

The hacking game has a few twitches with the mouse, but I haven't had any major issues.. Yes, the graphics can be a bit clunky.. but I don't generally expect crysis level swishness ramped up for an enjoyable rpg. I've found the dialogue stance system to be interesting, and the voice work quite decent. There's worse dialogue and spoken lines in a lot of tv/film , especially crime and spy stuff thats on these days. The gameplay and level designs do feel a touch reminiscent of deus ex to me.. which I enjoy. There are some flaws in it, but nothing thats truly reached out and grabbed me. And forty pounds sterling? where on earth did you buy that? the retail price was 29.99 and nearly everywhere was doing the standard release day "reduction" that most games have.

I think my main problem is if he stabs me a couple of times I drop from 125 to around 10 health.. so if I stop moving to try to hit him with anything i'm suddenly dead.. Which seems to limit me to a> trying to hit him and dying within seconds.. or b> just running around without trying to hit him.. Both seem to me ways of not progressing... Ah well. I shall return and attempt again. There's going to be something stupid I'm missing.

Heh. Normal. I've been doing fine up to now. The mix of stealth, martial arts, and a bit of pistol. But even when I hit Fury.. he wades into me and I'm dead in seconds from that knife before I can even do much. I'm trying to figure out if I'm using the wrong approach on him.. but I thought I'd best have a break before I got too frustrated

I thought I'd like Brayko... but now I'm stuck with him slicing me to bits in 3 seconds flat within moments of him snorting coke... After the 7th time.. it's beginning to get a touch annoying..

The mouse controlled side does tend to "float" a little, but I think I've adjusted to it, and it mostly works. Heh, I actually tend to get the mouse side locked in before the keyboard...

No i have the same issue and i am on PS3, checkpoint system is not great :-S When you use the "save new checkpoint" it doesn't make a save of where you are.. it starts using a different slot to save in... Thereby allowing you to reload previous save points rather then continuously saving over the same one... But yeah, it always is the last autosave point.

hm, once I got used to using space for the one and left-click for the other, I never really had much of an issue with the hacking game... It's that whole technique of pulling your gaze back and rather then reading the numbers/words just looking for the non-flicker areas...

So far the only things I've noticed are a few graphical twitches now and then.. Nothing game breaking. Oh, and the checkpoints can be a bit irritating. Quite often you complete an objective but that isn't a checkpoint to save.. And I've just had one annoying thing where I finished Saudi, but real life interupted and had to quit out..but the game won't allow that until you get through all the dialogue sequences....and then it keeps autosaving during those without letting you quit. I was stuck having to "skip" through it all rather then play it so I could quit. Dammit. Now I've got to reload from an earlier save , redo that final mission and then I can actually "play" that sequence and make actual choices.. Ah well. Apart from that, I'm finding it fairly brilliant in that good game way. Enjoyable, interesting, and drawing you in to find out what happens next...

Hm, I haven't had any sort of trouble like that with my mouse while playing... Sure I'm playing a lot of stealth and hand to hand.. but I've also been using a fair bit of pistol and assault rifle without too much grief..

"erotic is what you like, kinky is what everyone else likes.."

Heh, i've always done a lot better on mouse and keyboard with shooters then with console gamepads... Dang it.. amazon was telling me AP was "preparing to dispatch" on wednesday morning.. there I was hoping it would mean I'd have it arriving today.. but instead.. that "preparing to dispatch" lasted about 19 hours, and only finally cleared to "dispatched" today... So my pc version should be arriving early tomorrow morning...

It made back a little over triple the budget.. and that usually satisfies the producers.. Dougray Scott was quite decent as the Interpol agent. I thought they worked quite well together.. That and the whole bathtub sequence with Robert Knepper... the rubber duckie.. They did manage to put in quite a few iconic images from the games in the movie without making it look too forced.

http://uk.gamespot.com/news/6263818.html Well it looks like filmwise there's going to be a sequel... To be honest I thought the first one made a fairly decent film. It wasn't anything hugely brilliant, but it has to rate up there as one of the best video game to film adaptions.. It'll be curious to see if Timothy Olyphant does return with it as well...

Hm, so to him things are linear.. but to some of the other people on the boards who have been playing it..they're not linear.. Gee. Methinks something is quirky there.

Dang it.. Amazon haven't even started the dispatch process for my pre-order yet.. I guess they're really keeping tight to the official date regardless... so it'll be sent tomorrow and arrive friday..