Alpha Protocol

2 STARS in case the dumb star rating's not working.

Eight months ago, I was just about to leave to pick up Alpha Protocol on the day of its release when Sega decided to postpone it until June 1. I was so pumped for this game and just before I got a hold of it, it was taken away. Now, I'm renting the game to see how it has turned out, and I'm glad I chose not to buy it.

Pros:

• Dialogue system adds some urgency to your choices.
• The choices you make have some deep impact on how the rest of the game plays out. It's possible for you and your buddy to play through the game and see different people and have different events unfold.
• Ton of customization for your character.
• Some of the skill upgrades are very helpful and rewarding.
• Neat E-mail system.

Cons:

• Huge amount of bugs, including some game breaking ones. One game breaker in particular occurred when I had to defend a satellite dish while my handler downloaded info off it. The process should have taken about two, three minutes, yet even after I cleared the room of all enemies, my handler never finished downloading. The game unpaused, I left my guy standing in the middle of the site while I went to the bathroom, made some popcorn, and checked my real-life E-mail. When I came back, my guy was still standing there with no word from my handler! This glitch happened two more times.
• Horrendous, god-awful A.I. Even if you're firing directly at them, a good third of all enemies will run up and attempt to engage you in mortal- I mean, martial arts kombat.... sorry, combat. Other times alerted enemies will suddenly stop in their tracks and cease firing or doing anything a sane person being shot at would do. While still trying to defend that stupid satellite mentioned earlier, a thug dude charging at me suddenly and for no reason turned around and started running backwards towards me. I though he was going all Deadly Premonition on me or something, but then I quickly realized it was just the A.I. being really, really crappy.
• Some story elements aren't conveyed properly. At one point, an enemy leader knew I was heading his way, yet when I got to the next room filled with baddies, they were completely oblivious of my presence. Shouldn't they have been on alert since someone knew I was coming?
• Awkward animation makes almost every movement either laughable or just plain ridiculous.
• Cheesy, comical, and unnecessary boss fights. I got through every boss fight I encountered by either staying put and waiting for my weapon's cross hair to go critical and shooting them or by going invisible and rendering them unconscious.
• Looks okay. While the visuals get to job done, they definitely won't wow you and in many instances are pretty generic.
• A lot of texture pop-in. From loading up your last save to just trying a five o'clock shadow on Thorton, there's texture pop-in, and it's ugly.
• Some of the skills don't fit the tone the game's going for. For example, you can literally turn invisible for a few seconds. Invisible. Yeah, it's helpful in some situations, but it doesn't make any sense when the rest of the story's trying to be realistic.
• Combat is often wonky and unreliable. Melee looks cartoonish and the gunplay is flawed by dice roll mechanics.
• No mini-map makes having to constantly fiddle through the slow menus tedious.
• A slew of other irks that just really got to me after a while and showed how unpolished the entire package was.

If you didn't read the entire middle section of the review or just haven't noticed, I'm incredibly disappointed in the final product of this game. It had so much potential - a spy RPG taking to various locales around the world where your decisions have a dramatic impact on the story - and yet if felt I was playing a beta version of the game the entire time. It feels unfinished, and it certainly feels like Obsidian didn't use any of those eight months they were given to fix the most glaring of problems. It's definitely not worth $60, $50, and would have to be looked over for even a rental.