Alpah Protocol comes pretty close to being a really cool game.
First of all the shooting isn't great. It's certainly playable but not up to par with ME2 or Splinter Cell. The game doesn't look horrible or anything, the visuals are good enough for me although there is a lot of screen tearing. It's a bummer you can't customize your dude more. I like the story and the RPG stuff though. Choosing new skills and buying gun upgrades is fun. The choice system is cool in concept. It actually tells you what differences your choices made at the end of the mission. It's nice to see a direct result. The story is kinda neat if you like goofy spy crap like 24 but the dialog itself could certainly use improvment. The e-mail feature is also really neat too but they are written so fucking badly.
I usually sneak up on the bad guys and karate chop them in the neck. And when that fails I run around beating them up or lining up shots behind cover with my pistol (which takes way longer then it should). However near the end of the game you are forced to play it like Gears of War. And the controls are no where near as good as an actual 3rd person shooter. It's such a piss off when your 5 feet away from a guy and Mike Thorten can't shoot him. You literaly need to stand still and aim for about 3 or 4 seconds and even then one shot probably won't be enough. So you have to wait again. He is a fucking agent trained to use guns and I'm pretty sure I could shoot better. So it makes for an extremely frustrating giltch filled mess. If this game played better and had better dialog it would really be something cool.
I like sneaking around even though it's not as good as a real stealth game, I like the choices even though the dialog can be very dumb sometimes, I even like the terrible email stuff that contains some of the worst jokes I've heard in my lifetime. I like this game even though it seems like it doesn't want me to. Sadly it misses it's true potential. But hey give it a rent and see for yourself, you might enjoy it. I know I did, at least untill the end anyway.
