Your words pierce my heart </3.

I don't think I would have minded the ending so much if... it was just the fact that

Spoiler

you and your love interest escape on a boat prepared by the bad guy – the cliche of cliches

 

That's only your ending. In mine, in the first playthrough I sailed off alone after taking it from Westridge. In the second playthrough, SIE set it up for me and let me go whilst she stayed to kill more people.

The choices do change the outcomes, but sometimes not in highly visible ways. If you replay in a completely different way, with regards to your approach to influence, you get a significantly different ending. For my first playthrough, for example, Scarlet was a Spy and ended up shooting me before betraying Leland. In my second playthrough, Mina was the one who set me up from the start and I went to laugh as she died.

It's just not all that obvious until you see the differences.

 

Played the PC version, and jesus christ the game is broken. Fundamentally broken combat, terrible texturing, and of course the sniper rifle scenes are fucking evil. Seriously, who takes sensitivity up to such a high rate that you can't even move the mouse a millimeter without jumping across the screen? You can't even adjust it in the sniper mode either!

Combat is broke terribly. There is some kind of in-game mouse acceleration, which I can't seem to turn of even with .ini file changes. There are random 180 degree spins which have caused me to die at so many points I can't list them.

The worst part of it is, this game had absolutely huge potential. The story could have been great, and at least the personal choice and talk system are great. Really, Sega and Obsidian should be hanging their heads in shame for releasing a game in this condition. It really does fit it's name ALPHA protocol, as in an ALPHA release stage game.

Oh and the hacking is downright annoying. The game itself isn't that frustrating, it's trying to use your mouse and line up the code which is mind numbingly hard.

 

Just started, and so far this game is a giant piece of broken shit speaking from a control perspective.

Mouse camera control adds a bunch of fucking problems no matter what .INI tweak or sensitivity I applied. Switching to a controller made it all vanish. Horrible control porting. If I wanted to use a fucking controller I'd of played it on a console. I do not like aiming like a retard. The menus are clusterfucked. The gadget use on the controllers isn't very friendly, but then again I don't play console shooters often, so maybe I'm just not used to it.

Playing with the mouse is an exercise in using god mode. Even with it barely moving, the mouse will spin all over like John said, it's not usable.

The hacking game took me few minutes to get, there's a chunk of numbers on the screen that stay stationary, I was trying to find the numbers in the moving parts.

Graphically, the opening scenes look like a slightly retouched N64 graphics, I'd be fucking ashamed if I were them. Even by console standards the game should of looked better then this. It gets better farther in, but the plane scene itself was shit.

I think I'll like it more as I move farther in, but the opening impressions, and having to spend 4 hours struggling to get the controls to work, and having it crash on me twice after the unskippable intro was bullshit. The next game that puts out unskippable movies is being blacklisted by me.

 

Actually I picked it up for PS3 on a gamefly sale, and it's pretty damn good on PS3. Maybe I just got lucky, but I've yet to experience any problems besides minor texture pop in.

The game still looks like ass, but at least it's playable.

The rumors when the game was being released, was that one of the managers of the dev team was a major control freak, which is the main reason the game has so many issues. Apparently he demanded everything be done his way.

 

It's pure Obsidian - awesome story and characters wrapped in bugs and cut content. I got lucky and only encountered a single minor mouse glitch, but other people (like poor Middy) get bent over the table by them.

If you see it on special, it's bargain-bin gold. I can't in good faith recommend paying retail, though.

 

Steam sold it for $7.50 last night. Too bad it was the PC version >.<.

For those of you who use gamefly, look for their used game sales. They're the best I've ever found for consoles. I picked up my copy (using a $5 gamefly reward) for 10 dollars including shipping.

 

Played it some more. The cover system makes me fucking rage. I played the first airfield mission, and it was totally different the 3 times I played it. One time there were fuckers everywhere, the next time just inside the buildings, the next I had to go looking for ppl, with no changes to anything in between.

I was Sam Fishering my ass off with nonlethal takedowns, total stealth. Then I opened this door quietly to a guy who was already shooting at the door with a turret before it even finished opening =/ Rage.

I'm liking it more, but the console controller pisses me off hard.

 

I actually enjoyed this game most likely because I got it for my 360 which I encountered no bugs on but it was still an enjoyable experience for me. I did however discover that stealth is ludicrously broken if you throw enough points into it. On my first play through I went combat and put points into toughness and martial arts which worked alright at first but I eventually got severely frustrated with getting swarmed and destroyed so I started a new play through in which I went a direction I normally don't go and threw all of my points into stealth/pistols. As I approached the end of the game I found absolutely nothing at all to be a challenge even on hard difficulty. I simply clicked my invisibility power on, strolled into the room, one shotted everyone and strolled right back out before the timer ran out with not a single alarm being sounded despite the fact that they were staring directly at their friends when I opened their throats from ear to ear. If for some reason my invisibility wasn't a great option then all I had to do was pull out my silenced pistol and click on my chain shot, with proper aiming I could clear entire rooms full of guards instantaneously.

 

Stealth / Pistol is ludicrously broken, but it makes a no-kill run a challenge instead of something only a fetishist would do. I'm gonna restart soon and go for a no-kill Thorton Inc ending.

More raving about the game: Albatross is fucking awesome. I squeed like a little girl when, just before the last mission, Thorton and Albatross (who I had a great relationship with) riffed on bird metaphors for like a minute straight.

Spoiler

Some particularly fun challenges...

In the Taipei Data Farm mission, do the entire mission without any alarms. Bonus points for total ninja mode, no kills, knock-outs, or sightings. Needless to say, ridiculous stealth stats are pretty much necessary.

If you bug all six servers, by the way, you can delete the five they find, be all buddy-buddy with G22, and still siphon off some information.

In Rome, do the CIA Listening Station mission without any sightings or knock-outs. More attainable than the others, but still a challenge.

In Taipei, buddy up with G22 (by deleting the bugs or just deleting the five they find, and not earning their enmity if you visited Moscow first), the Triad (by getting the blackmail information, revealing you have it, and then saying you'll forget it in the name of friendship) and Steven Heck (by... playing along with him, mostly). That way, at the final mission, you've got G22 agents and Triad soldiers equipped by Heck storming through the gardens with you. Most sexy.

In Moscow, if you're the Veteran, you can hit Breyko's safe AND rescue the captured ally.

This is particularly fun - in Moscow again, if you spare Breyko, go after Surkov, and reject his deal, you have the option of letting Breyko slice him up.

And another couple of challenges - it is, with care and diligence and a lot of savescumming, possible to convert Marburg AND Parker. Also on the Marburg front, if you piss him off bad enough, you can kill him in Italy.

This sort of shit is why I adore Obsidian, despite their flaws.


Edit: spoilerrific but friggin' hilarious compilation of Thorton being a complete fucking nutjob. These are all actual in-game possibilities.

 

Lol yeah after trial and error the best powers I found for actually getting shit accomplished were stealth, pistols and if you had any spares split them between tech, hand to hand and toughness. With stealth you basically just get a laundry list of useful shit, Awareness is permanently activated showing you exactly how many guards there are and what direction they're facing at all times, you get a saftey net which is basically if your sneaking and get seen you automatically turn invisible giving you time to hide at first or later on as it gets better trot over and stab the guy who spotted you in the throat and finally the god mode the actual invisibility button which is your "I Win" button. When you have it maxed out you can casually stroll into rooms completely invisible and cut peoples throats. The only time you need to be concerned is when there are cameras or turrets involved because both can see through standard invisibility which is where tech skill comes in. If you have a high enough tech skill you can gain a second invisibility skill which functions on all electronic devices.

Once you get these maxed out its absurd how easy things get, no alarms, no alerted guards, no swarms and desperate running with shitty controls, you just casually pick who you want dead at your leisure. Even the hardest boss in the game Konstantine Brayko is made into a joke with a combination of these and the drugs Heck will smuggle into his coke.

 

I didn't have that option, I guess since I did Moscow before hand. I did however have to pistol his ass via chain shot over and over.

Just picked this up again as I want to finish it and uninstall it. Pistol is the only thing I'm using. Stealth is boiled down to me just crouching and headshotting everything. Maxed stealth gives me breathing room for cameras, or just running through them. I don't bother trying to Sam Fischer it anymore, I just one shot em and roll. I've only had a few times in the asian level where I had to use shadow operative, but other then that and chain shot, I havent used the other powers more then an initial test run.

The assault rifle is useless, even with a mod I got to make it always a smaller reticle. It's cone of fire is way too large, and the bursting I hate. I also hate when they'll tell you there's a sniper rifle on the level, and then I never find the damned thing, lol. I can't remember the last time I upgraded my pistol or armor, or even used a gadget. Huge parts of the game just ignored, way to balance stuff.

Some of the character's are just awesome, but as said before, there's no depth to their characters outside of the brief interactions you have with them. But still Heck is funny as hell. So much wasted potential.

 

Haven't you played Conviction? That is Sam Fisher these days.

It's marked on the map, bro.

Well, it is made by Obsidian.

 

This. I bought the game based on Tehan's recommendation in another thread, and immediately realized that they clearly didn't finish this game. If the game had actually been completed by the developers, it'd be great.

 

Yeah if you do Taipei first and make nice with Heck he'll put mess with Brayko's coke and Brayko wont be able to run more than ten steps without having to stop and gasp for air as well as just making your shots hurt him more and him having a smaller health bar over all. I played it through without the drugs the first time and it took me forever to beat it, the second time when I used the drugs option it literally took me two minutes.

 

Holy shit I wish I'd known that. The first time I played the game, I did it using pistol & stealth, and Brayko was easy as all hell. I just chainshotted him, kited, and chainshotted agian.

Second time, I tried assault rifle. Shit got real then. No longer easy. That little cunt would just CQC me before I could run away.

@Midnight, bro you do not want to find those sniper rifles on the PC. I don't know what it is, but when I tried sniper on PC, the sensitivity was so jacked up (even when I lowered it) that trying to use the rifle gave me a migraine. Moving my mouse even a single cm would cause the sight to flash all the way to the left/right.

 

Ug you're shitting me.

Which has got to be a giant useless pile of shit map I've ever seen. No indication of level/height, a clusterfuck of icons. I stopped looking at it after the first few missions.

No matter what I tried I couldn't get the mouse functioning right. I tried ini tweaks, unofficial patches, etc. No matter what it'd be smooth as shit, until I touched the mouse, then it'd stutter up and move all over the place. Xbox 360 controllering it, and it's driving me insane, but I want to finish it.

With the last few missions I've been on being linear as shit and over before I even got into it, I can't see it taking much longer. Another thing, they mentioned being able to have multiple handler choises based on your influence... where the fuck are they?? I've had Darcy for 1, and for one in the villa I had an option of Mina, Sie, or the normal girl, and I think I was given over to Albatross once when he cut in. Are there more that I missed somehow? I haven't seen all this dynamic changes they claim. I'm playing through as a nice professional person, and so far everyone's loved me, every one the story lets you keep alive is alive, you'd think they'd of had side missions for me.

The gelato shop in Rome pissed me off hardcore. I played once, the guy went for a gun and I had to kill him. Reloaded after Mina bitched, tried to bluff him, no matter what it seemed like I had to kill him. He didn't know the passcode, he was being shifty, and he drew on me, but Leland and Mina are on my shit about killing the guy in self defense??? What the hell are you supposed to do there? Also I had a bug in the embassy where I shot a guard in the head three times with the traq bullets and it registered as a fatality, so the game got on my shit for mass murdering the guards there???