Toe Tagger Joe

Same here, I doubt he's anything more than a troll and a damn good one at that. I'm not defending Sega, Obsidian or anyone else (for all I know there could be management issues). Just saying the guys a damn good troll. He is, he got this topic going. If you're reading this, congratulations sir.

Funny, they didn't do that for Mass Effect. Perhaps the US box is missing the "The Espionage RPG" subtitle? As far as I know it's on there. I have the pre-order box from Bestbuy, the only difference between the two (afaik) is that mine says "pre-order" and has a yellow part on it... That the retail version won't have (I think I'm supposed to return this version to get the retail version when I pick it up).

Sorry, I didn't explain myself clearly at all. Polish is basically a multi-faceted word and tackles almost every component of the game. Granted, glitches are always present in a game, other area in which Alpha Protocol apparently feels unpolished are graphics, gameplay (wonky balance, bad AI and bad minigames design), camera controls, and apparently, if the Bit-tech review is to be believed, area design/layout. Also, Obsidian has a reputation of buggy games (the unfinished KOTOR2, Neverwinter Nights 2 which was far too ambitious for Obsidian's possibilities and came out full of bugs with a couple of nasty gamebreaking bugs too) which colors the perception of the game. Many people will probably be unconsciously be looking for bugs when they play and trust me, they will remember them. There's also the matter that some feel the game 'trick them' and don't like the stat-driven shooting mechanics because they stretch too much their suspension of disbelief and the fact that the writing and choices & consequences has been almost ignored by the reviews (with a couple of exceptions) so far. I also want to add that I'm actually looking forward to my Alpha Protocol's playthrough. It's not about the game itself that I'm worried (though I hope I don't encounter issues eheh) but rather about its reception and what influence this will have on the future of Obsidian and western rpgs. No, I know what you meant by polish. However bugs have been another major point of yours and I wanted to address that. My point was that if a developer/publisher is popular enough people tend to overlook game breakers and lack of polish simply because of that developer/publisher's reputation. I think that may come back to haunt AP, which is too bad. However that doesn't necessarily mean it won't see a sequel. Red Faction: Guerrilla didn't have the best sales (or reviews, I think it's average is like 82-85), but THQ has announced a sequel. <3 I really don't know how to address being "tricked". I'd have to read that myself. I know what you're getting at though, you're afraid the few negative comments you're seeing will negatively reflect the game. I wouldn't worry that much about it, MW2 is another unpolished game (it was so bad Game Informer a few months back actually wrote about all the bugs, glitches and short comings and it's a pretty large list. However, they said that because the game was so popular it was to be expected.). Yet it sold a **** load of copies and people continually buy the DLC despite it being the biggest swindle in gaming history. I doubt the 3 CoD games (not including the CoD MMO iirc) they'll be releasing in 1 year will all be polished, yet they'll still sell a ****load of copies 'cause of Activision and Treyarch's rep (some other devs are doing the other games, but my point still stands they'll sell 'cause of Activision's rep). I guess, I'm just wondering how much of the unpolished/bug complaints are legitimate and how many are just simply because of Obs past and the fact they aren't as well known as bigger companies.

Looking at the comments of some sites (I'm talking about sites like RPGWatch, not casual sites), some comments about the technical polish and bugs here, plus some fairly major gaming sites and mags slamming the game could hurt the game. Also, to be pretty honest, three unpolished games in a row (at least they finished this though, but it took 4 years) it's not a good track record and reduces a lot my expectations for new Obsidian projects. Sad but true. Every game has bugs and glitches. Have you seen some of the ones posted on here in that topic about Red Dead Redemption (The donkey lady and cougar man)? Hell I have a friend who said the game was freezing on him every time he tried to shoot someone he needed to, in order to advance the story. Somehow I doubt ME2 or FO3 were without glitches (even one of my favorite games, Perfect Dark was riddled with them). In fact I know ME2 did 'cause I ran into a few them. Hell one of the most popular games ever, Halo 2 released with like 500 glitches. They fixed 3 or 4 via patches. Talk about unfinished. I remember someone having like 100-200 videos of glitches from Halo and Halo 2. They were hired to be a beta tester for Bungie... Just sayin'. I'll have to take your word on Obs lack of polish, as I haven't played anything from them aside from KotOR II. However scores overall haven't been that bad... I think the average is around 80, which for a small development firm is a respectable score imo. If they can hit that 85% threshold, even better.

Yeah, two fairly low scores from major review mags, the game is going to tank. Sarcasm aside, game spot's user score has increased and they took down the 6 they gave it. One user even gave it a 9.5, I have no idea how good the review is, but at least not everyone hates it.

Those reviews are from "reviewer wannabe" that i am sure enjoyed the game and later bash it. The game maybe isn't a perfect 10 but neither deserve a mediocre score , much less 1. I couldn't agree more about the reviewer. I don't think he even the genre of the game judging by this sentence (even though it says "RPG" on the box): As for the quality of the game itself, I imagine it's better than he says it is. I'll have to wait until June 1st to see though.

As long as Alpha Protocol gets an 85 or higher on average (read: metacritic), it should do fine in sales. At least, according to Activision: http://www.gamepro.com/article/features/21...ore-metacritic/ As for liking less-polished/well-received games, I'm right there with you.

True, but there's still quite a few people waiting to play the game... So who knows how it'll turn out? June 1st can't get here soon enough.

It'd be kind of funny if he stole that horrible review from someone else. Just shows how intelligent and lazy some people are.

Here's a pretty entertaining review off of gamespot. It was sent to me via xbox live by someone who knows I pre-ordered Alpha Protocol. http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/rpg/alphap...%3Bcontinue%3B1 EDIT: It also manages to be even less informative than the one mentioned above this post.

Thanks for the heads up with the bestbuy offer. I had no idea they were offering this, hopefully when I pre-order later I'll still be able to get the code for the weapons. While I like amazon for older games, I didn't really want to wait a week for this one when I'm only saving $3. Sorry about bumping an older topic, but there's not much in this forum anyway.