Raithe

Omen Deng comments about the "good fieldcraft" for trying to blend in by wearing civilian clothing in the subway station...

Hm, well I had high pistol and martial arts skills for one playthrough, when you meet Championichik and there's that whole Mike: Is that gold medal real? Sukov: He won it for boxing Mike: Cool, I got a couple for shooting and martial arts... I'm guessing that's a moment of reactivity due to skills..

Well.. it might add some interesting twists to the pro-fox hunting lobby here... I blame it on the childhood image of the sneaky/comedy fox that turns up in so many kids cartoons ...All these people who see them as "noble animals" or at least, cute and harmless...

Entrance into Marburg's Villa... and the portrait on the stairs. Mike : "Narcissist much?"

You can build up a fairly decent relationship with Heck without casually offing civilians and going too mad...

It's an interesting choice of art direction.. but until there's more to see I'm not going to make up my mind on whether its bad or good. At least there's a known reasoning behind it... rather then just something thrown in for no reason in particular..

Also get the "Poisoned Cocaine" Intel from Heck if you've done Tapai before Moscow.. that's always useful.

Hm, all the interviews and such have just been ps3 and xbox 360...

I would like to say Tron Evolutions.. since I happen to love the old Tron film, and really enjoyed Tron 2.0 for the inherent fun geekness in it... but.. meh.. Tron Evolutions.. Not coming to a pc. Is it just me or is that a wtf moment? A big Tron game.. and it's not going to be for the pc....

.. Damn it.. now we're going to have to start trying out various combinations of hats, bears, glasses and wear civilian gear just to see what lines actually turn up...

Stick a few gadgets around as you move.. I found a few shock traps placed to be quite useful...

It changes, sometimes its a random women, sometimes it looks like a Deus Vult guy...

That and the new version of D&D totally sucks (although the art is rather damn good). Also, if you give it a squinty eyed view, it almost looks like they've made it similar to WoW for pen n paper time.. so I guess that would both make it simpler, and cause some issues if they try to put it back into a computer game these days....

The arcade in Brayko's mansion.. I swear that's music from Deus Ex playing on a loop... throw in Mina's comment about recognising the music playing over the earpiece...

I'm half wondering when someones going to jump on here and start dancing on the "AP2! AP2!" wagon..

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..