Best preview yet of Alpha protocol

[Thorton_AP]

i am with just about everyone here the review stank and that guy couldnt play to save his life!!!

That actually begs the question... how representative is he of the general public's gaming skills at large?

 

=/

 

 

speak for yourself

 

 

Are you stating that you are an accurate representation of the general public's gaming skill then?

 

Not sure why you felt compelled to respond when it's easy to infer that 213374U was not referring to you.

[Orogun01]

i am with just about everyone here the review stank and that guy couldnt play to save his life!!!

That actually begs the question... how representative is he of the general public's gaming skills at large?

 

=/

 

 

speak for yourself

 

 

Are you stating that you are an accurate representation of the general public's gaming skill then?

 

Not sure why you felt compelled to respond when it's easy to infer that 213374U was not referring to you.

I'm part of the general public, I'm I not?

[Oner]

If you think that you don't have horrible gaming skillz, then obviously no, you're an exception.

If you think that you do have horrible gaming skillz, then... you're part of a majority, what's wrong with that? You want to be unique in your badness?

[zkylon]

Uh, numbers was just raising a question, not accusing anyone of sucking. "speak for yourself" isn't a valid counter if there's not an actual statement to begin with :/

[213374U]

I'm part of the general public, I'm I not?

Yes, and no. You aren't part of the general public in that you generally pay more attention than the average joe to games, and you probably devote more time to that as well.

 

At any rate, you may be part of the general public but are not THE general public. So are your gaming skills representative of the gaming public's at large? How are they, compared to the reviewer's? Why is there a sudden apparent increase in acute haemorrhoids cases in the boards' user base?

 

The answers to these and other questions... when I ****ing feel like it.

Edited May 19, 2010 by 213374U

[Baeus]

Plain and simple, those guys spent a lot of time running into a wall. Most people manage to avoid that. Draw what conclusions you like

[Thorton_AP]

i am with just about everyone here the review stank and that guy couldnt play to save his life!!!

That actually begs the question... how representative is he of the general public's gaming skills at large?

 

=/

 

 

speak for yourself

 

 

Are you stating that you are an accurate representation of the general public's gaming skill then?

 

Not sure why you felt compelled to respond when it's easy to infer that 213374U was not referring to you.

I'm part of the general public, I'm I not?

 

What is the general public?

 

To be perfectly blunt, I definitely do consider myself to be a better gamer than the "general public." I'm the type of person that doesn't need all the hand holding that goes on in today's games.

 

Do you need it?

[zkylon]

In topic with the preview, i actually thought that, besides the stoner girl thrown in for some diversity, the guys were actually funny. The guy sucked at the game and it felt like he was breaking it on purpose and the game responded to that in a bad way, but that's expectable. The good thing is that he died a lot because of that and while the AI was very goofy, to the point it was loleabe a bunch of times, there was some flanking and decent grenade throwing every now and then.

 

So sucky player + beta build + pot = not so good advertising. It shows why developers don't always share their beta code.

 

And why is that show called Gaming Night if it's clearly afternoon?

[entrerix]

the guy played like crap and got killed. it also showed that just running around willy-nilly with a shotgun out isn't a great strategy in an espionage oriented game.

 

its hard to run-n-gun in deus ex (for me at least), and it appears hard in this as well so color me excited

 

as for enemies running and punching when shooting might be a better idea... well, the ai in deus ex is awful and that game still is a fantastic experience even compared to more modern games so that aspect alone does very little to worry me.

 

also, the animations for "sneaking" are stiff, but other animations are done quite well so i'm not too worried in that department either.

 

linear levels though.... that might be a dealbreaker in this type of game for me though, we'll see how that plays out. if there is enough C&C in other aspects of the game or the storyline is really just awesome then it might not matter

[fuZZ]

i am with just about everyone here the review stank and that guy couldnt play to save his life!!!

That actually begs the question... how representative is he of the general public's gaming skills at large?

 

=/

 

 

speak for yourself

 

 

Are you stating that you are an accurate representation of the general public's gaming skill then?

 

Not sure why you felt compelled to respond when it's easy to infer that 213374U was not referring to you.

I'm part of the general public, I'm I not?

 

What is the general public?

 

To be perfectly blunt, I definitely do consider myself to be a better gamer than the "general public." I'm the type of person that doesn't need all the hand holding that goes on in today's games.

 

Do you need it?

 

so your saying the general public needs hand holding? how naive and arrogant

Edited May 20, 2010 by fuZZ

[Jokerman89]

i am with just about everyone here the review stank and that guy couldnt play to save his life!!!

That actually begs the question... how representative is he of the general public's gaming skills at large?

 

=/

 

 

speak for yourself

 

 

Are you stating that you are an accurate representation of the general public's gaming skill then?

 

Not sure why you felt compelled to respond when it's easy to infer that 213374U was not referring to you.

I'm part of the general public, I'm I not?

 

What is the general public?

 

To be perfectly blunt, I definitely do consider myself to be a better gamer than the "general public." I'm the type of person that doesn't need all the hand holding that goes on in today's games.

 

Do you need it?

 

so your saying the general public needs hand holding? how naive and arrogant

 

 

 

Gotta be a reason most games these days do it...

[Thorton_AP]

so your saying the general public needs hand holding? how naive and arrogant

 

 

I'd say you're probably better than the "average gamer." At least from the perception of game developers that add in a lot of hand holding and so forth.

 

The funny thing is you seem to insist that I consider you to be a part of the faceless blob of "general public."

 

And as a matter of fact, I do think that a lot of the gamers want things spoon fed to them. Game development seems to echo this, as they seem to be spoon feeding people.

 

I don't know why you're getting so defensive about it all though. /shrug

 

 

Or do you not feel games have a lot of hand holding?

[Raithe]

It's fairly simple. "Serious Gamers" aren't the customer base most companies use these days. The big market is in the "Casual Gamer" who usually tends more towards the consoles and the "quick n easy" format that's simple to get into.

 

Until the latter half of this decade, the "serious gamer" tended to be a touch more of the traditional nerd/geek or general enthusiast in computer related areas.. And who would quite cheerfully spend hour after hour playing a game. Now it's starting to open up to a whole bunch of other people.

 

The "casual gamer" is the majority of people who buy and play the games, but they don't put in the many hours to establish the sort of skill sets (and yes, there are exceptions of casual gamers having serious natural skill) that the "serious gamers" develop. So games get made with a lot more hand holding and general ease of use compared to ye olde games.

 

 

Discuss.

[Thorton_AP]

Yeah that's pretty much what I feel as well. It is what it is.

 

But this makes my naive and arrogant I guess

Edited May 20, 2010 by Thorton_AP

[fuZZ]

so your saying the general public needs hand holding? how naive and arrogant

 

 

I'd say you're probably better than the "average gamer." At least from the perception of game developers that add in a lot of hand holding and so forth.

 

The funny thing is you seem to insist that I consider you to be a part of the faceless blob of "general public."

 

And as a matter of fact, I do think that a lot of the gamers want things spoon fed to them. Game development seems to echo this, as they seem to be spoon feeding people.

 

I don't know why you're getting so defensive about it all though. /shrug

 

 

Or do you not feel games have a lot of hand holding?

 

uh ok, no defensive shields up here...

[Thorton_AP]

Just offensive firepower?

[213374U]

It's fairly simple. "Serious Gamers" aren't the customer base most companies use these days. The big market is in the "Casual Gamer" who usually tends more towards the consoles and the "quick n easy" format that's simple to get into.

Bah. I'd think watching some guy show off his mad skills at some game while he tells us about it would be more enticing to people that a moron failing miserably and making lame jokes as the icing on the cake. Because, you see, good players push the game to its limits, so you're getting a much better idea of what the game is about and what it's capable of, gameplay wise. I mean, last example that comes to mind is me watching some youtubes of a guy charging around like crazy with his Vanguard in ME2 Insanity, and I didn't stop playing that until I was able to at least do the same... just because it's fun to learn and get better at things, in general.

 

What's the point of, uh, watching a frustrated comedian "review" a game... when it's actually the game one is interested in? Comedy Central is now a banned channel, so people need to get their fix elsewhere?

 

I simply can't understand this thinking.

[Thorton_AP]

I'm not saying it was a good idea for this guy to be the reviewer haha.

 

I agree with you that this chap may be more representative of the gaming public, but I don't agree that it was a good idea

[ninjitsubob]

i'm sooo glad they mentioned that wacky ass outfit he's wearing in this preview...

[Itkovian]

I watched this preview yesterday, and I just had to finally register to post.

 

I really disliked this preview. Not because AP looks bad, quite the contrary, but rather because the "dudes" went out of their way to make the game look actually bad.

 

Of course, I'm sure its unintentional. Probably more a matter of "dudes" being "dudes", but really there was a total lack of professionalism in this, and no real attempt to actually expose the features and flaws of the game. It was more one guy flailing around a level like he'd never played it (and yet he had), while a bunch of people made terrible jokes and snarky comments about what they're saying.

 

I mean, this isn't Zero Punctuation here: the goal probably wasn't to make the game look silly, but rather give us a preview of the game. But nevertheless, they probably would be hard pressed to paint AP in a worse light. Sure, as followers of the game we could look past their inanity and appreciate the features we could gleam, but I don't know how someone new to AP would get a good impression from this silly "playthrough"

 

Where to start?

 

- First of all, why make the main character look silly like that? Is that meant to be funny? All it ends up achieving is make the game look stupid. Of course the feature it exposes is that you can choose your appearance, but still. Imagine if a Mass Effect 2 preview had decided to showcase its cinematics while using an Ugly Shepard. What kind of impression of the game would that have created?

 

And of course they spent the entire session laughing at the appearance, literally making inane comments about it while actually interesting things happening on the screen were being ignored.

 

There's a reason designers chose to make protagonists look good (or badass, or whatever). It directly affects people's impressions of the product. Choosing a silly looking PC in a previous deliberately biases the viewers against the product.

 

- The player was simply goofing around most of the time, not paying attention to what he's doing.

 

That is somewhat more understandable, because he's got 5 other people around him distracting him. But still, he clearly had played the level before, and yet just flailed about the whole time. Its as if he deliberately played like a fool to get a few laughs. Great way to create a good first impression of the game.

 

Another example is him using the shotgun. Someone suggests picking it up, which he does. However, he knows he has no skills with it, and doesn't train in it at all either. So he spends the playthrough flailing about with a shotgun he's not trained in using, missing most of the time and making the gameplay look bad. Sure, the guy kept saying he wasn't trained and that's why it didn't play so well, but why keep at it? This is an RPG! Picking up a weapon you're not trained in is asking to look stupid.

 

Again, all it achieves is make the game look bad. How many people might have seen that and scoffed at how useless a shotgun was?

 

- The "Dudes".

 

I'm sure what I mean is clear enough already, but let's pick an example:

 

At one point they're going through a corridor they already went down, and the corpses disappeared. One of them makes a joke "where did the corpses go? Did they eat them?" (referring to the other guards left). Again, this is a preview. The impression this creates is that disappearing bodies is stupid and a flaw.

 

Except, of course, that 90% of games out there do that. It's an accepted convention in gaming to save system resources by making bodies decay.

 

Why even comment about it? Sure, the guy was probably just trying to be funny and make his voice heard, but it was quite inappropriate.

 

 

- The "questions".

 

Again, this was probably a case of filling air and showing you are doing your job, but most of the questions were just plain ridiculous (and too many just comments on the character's silly look). Why not pick some serious questions for once? And if there's not any, then why not remain silent and let the viewers see and hear the game audio.

 

Anyway, that's all I remember. I'm sure there's more.

 

Point is, if I were in any way related to this game's marketing, I would be quite pissed off. Unless you subscribe to the "any exposure is good exposure" school of thought, it probably turned away quite a few new prospects who might otherwise have purchased the game had the preview been more professional.

 

Thank you.

 

Itkovian

[Klemer]

Thanks Itkovian, makes me glad I dont watch too many "making of, sneak preview, etc type" trailers. Last game I did was FarCry 2 and once I got the game I cried long tears of disappointment.

[Itkovian]

Thanks Itkovian, makes me glad I dont watch too many "making of, sneak preview, etc type" trailers. Last game I did was FarCry 2 and once I got the game I cried long tears of disappointment.

 

Well, my point is this: the game looks good, and there's a lot of cool features we kinda got a look at, but these guys went out of their way to make it look bad.

 

Probably not intentionally, but certainly through a general "let's goof off" attitude to it. It's as if they think what they're doing has no real marketing impact. I certainly hope someone with actual authority saw that and is displeased.

 

Itkovian