The Sins of Alpha Protocol

Gameroni’s Tom Chick breaks down the “sins” committed by Alpha Protocol and why they ultimately led to the game being trumped by Mass Effect 2 and other titles on many “Best of 2010” lists around the web.

…the gameplay takes place in discrete standalone boxes, each a challenge that you’ve had a hand in setting up. These challenges jump from place to place without any connective tissue. There is no overworld. You don’t fly a jet around a map. There is no sense of distance or passing time. Russia is as close as Rome which is as close as Taiwan, and they’re all a loading screen from Saudi Arabia. One minute you’re storming a yacht in Russia, the next you’re exchanging three or four lines with some slob at a gelato shop in Italy, and then it’s off to Taiwan if you want. Do the next mission locally or on the other side of the globe. There is no attempt at world building in terms of how the episodes are arranged. There is no meaningful geography. This is a place without space or time.

In short, Alpha Protocol feels more like a game than a world. And it will put its gameness right up in your face. It is not ashamed of being an RPG, as is the case with RPGs that hide their numbers under the hood, along with the repercussions of your actions. You might get a vague indicator of your faction allegiance or a marker on a scale from red to blue for how someone feels about you. Alpha Protocol gives you a hard number and it’s not even a very big number. Parker? He’s +4. Westbridge? +6. Mina? -14 because of all those guards you killed, each its own -1.