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[Hixx]

not if you have chain shot (pistols), then if you add Brilliance ... yeah ...

this definitely trivializes the majority of fights, though I learned that too late

 

[XiaNaphryz]

not if you have chain shot (pistols), then if you add Brilliance ... yeah ...

High level Chain shot + High level Shadow Operative + Brilliance pretty much kills any boss. Brilliance is pretty much the only reason to go up the Tech Aptitude tree. That and it lets you make both choices in that one Moscow mission instead of having to do one or the other.

 

[MurkyZebra2417]

Just bought it for 12€ from amazon, I hope it is worth it ^^

 

[Ellis Kim]

Just bought it for 12€ from amazon, I hope it is worth it ^^

Oh, it most certainly is, my good man (lady?). I recommend the Zack Galifinakis playthrough at some point: swamp hat/shades/lumberjack beard, with sleazy decisions + the occasional sociopath move (though not to girls).

 

[snoopeasystreet]

Beard + sun glasses + hat is the only way to play through AP. It makes it 100 times more hilarious.

 

[Effect]

Who owns Alpha Protocol? Sega or OE?

 

[BobLoblaw]

I actually really liked the game. Finally completed it a couple of weeks ago. Made it all the way through without a single kill. Took me like 30 hours (a lot of that was reloading saves if I accidentally killed someone).

 

[Callibretto]

I actually really liked the game. Finally completed it a couple of weeks ago. Made it all the way through without a single kill. Took me like 30 hours (a lot of that was reloading saves if I accidentally killed someone).

do you get anything for that? also, isn't there some mandatory battle? I'm only 2 or 3 mission in and it kinda bummed me out that I keep reloading my save to make clean stealth run but at the end of the mission, you get into mandatory firefight.

 

[green sticker]

Beard + sun glasses + hat is the only way to play through AP. It makes it 100 times more hilarious.

I was just thinking the same thing, exactly what I do.

 

[butsomuch]

Who owns Alpha Protocol? Sega or OE?

Obsidian.

 

[Sober]

do you get anything for that? also, isn't there some mandatory battle? I'm only 2 or 3 mission in and it kinda bummed me out that I keep reloading my save to make clean stealth run but at the end of the mission, you get into mandatory firefight.

Not sure about achievements, played it on PC but most bosses you can spare after fighting them, though I am hesitant to say you don't kill anyone.

For example,

Spoiler

the 'pre-boss' on the bridge at the end of the Middle East set of missions? Can you nonlethal stealth takedown him or something? I shot him to death and it gave me a cinematic where Thorton tossed him over the bridge and he got run over or something to that effect. Also the APC boss at the end, was anyone else inside except your target?

 

[MurkyZebra2417]

Oh, it most certainly is, my good man (lady?). I recommend the Zack Galifinakis playthrough at some point: swamp hat/shades/lumberjack beard, with sleazy decisions + the occasional sociopath move (though not to girls).

Man, okay, swamp hat/shades/beard it is then

 

[Grayman]

I played as Zack Galifinakis when I was running through the game with a shotgun.

 

[BobLoblaw]

do you get anything for that? also, isn't there some mandatory battle? I'm only 2 or 3 mission in and it kinda bummed me out that I keep reloading my save to make clean stealth run but at the end of the mission, you get into mandatory firefight.

Nope. I just did it because one the devs in an interview said you could. You can tranquilize people and it won't count as a kill. I tranq'ed tons of people.

 

[Proposed Law]

totally worth the $12 I paid for this on Amazon.

 

[reggieandTFE]

So I bought this on Amazon and it is refusing to activate. The online activation page seems to be down.

And yes, I tried turning off my firewall and yes I tried using their "upload the code to register your computer through our webpage" but neither of those things worked.

Did anyone else recently buy this on Amazon and have any issues? I've been looking all over Google, but it seems that SEGA actually turned off the DRM for the game for those who already had activated the game. Additionally, I cannot find a damn e-mail support address for Sega; I have no desire to sign up for Sega Pass and don't have the time to spend going through the corporate rigamarole dialing their 800 number. Ugh.

 

[water_wendi]

So I bought this on Amazon and it is refusing to activate. The online activation page seems to be down.

And yes, I tried turning off my firewall and yes I tried using their "upload the code to register your computer through our webpage" but neither of those things worked.

Did anyone else recently buy this on Amazon and have any issues? I've been looking all over Google, but it seems that SEGA actually turned off the DRM for the game for those who already had activated the game. Additionally, I cannot find a damn e-mail support address for Sega; I have no desire to sign up for Sega Pass and don't have the time to spend going through the corporate rigamarole dialing their 800 number. Ugh.

Install latest patch. They removed the DRM. Likely because Sega didnt want to pay for whatever the activation servers cost.

 

[Proposed Law]

Just finished. Great game and worth the play. Stealth and Chain shot are god like, way too powerful.

 

[butsomuch]

Obsidian: We Would Make Alpha Protocol 2

Feargus Urquhart, CEO of Alpha Protocol developers Obsidian, has told Play that he would happily make Alpha Protocol 2

The revelation came after Play asked how he felt about Alpha Protocol’s mixed critical reception. “That’s a hard one. I think there were things in the game we could have done better. We’ve talked about how the cover system wasn’t the best. Would it have been better with no cover system, so we could focus on other things instead? There were certain things we did really well – the whole story, the characters, the branching.

“Perhaps it was not necessarily the job we did but there was something beyond the game – how it was represented or how it was sold or what people felt we promised them. Something went off-kilter there. So there’s another lesson to learn about communication.”

When asked if he’d ever go back and revisit old IP, Urquhart admits that he would happily make a sequel to the spy game. “Of course. We’re not making Alpha Protocol 2 but I would make Alpha Protocol 2. To do a job like this, sometimes you have to be optimistic, you have to look to the future and say ‘We can do better.’ And I always believe that.”

The full interview can be found in Play Issue 205, which is on sale now and also has the first details on FIFA 12, what went on behind closed doors with Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City and the first look at Dead Rising 2: Off The Record along with interviews with all those developers!

 

[1-D_FTW]

What the heck are you supposed to do for hacking? I wasn't paying attention (or the directions just sucked) and can't get past the first hacking section. I've tried watching videos on youtube and they're talking about left sticks and right sticks. Obviously sticks don't mean anything when you're k/m.

First impressions have been good till this point. Like the forced times on conversations and the graphics have been pleasantly decent with everything maxed on PC.

 

[Danne-Danger]

What the heck are you supposed to do for hacking? I wasn't paying attention (or the directions just sucked) and can't get past the first hacking section. I've tried watching videos on youtube and they're talking about left sticks and right sticks. Obviously sticks don't mean anything when you're k/m.

First impressions have been good till this point. Like the forced times on conversations and the graphics have been pleasantly decent with everything maxed on PC.

Among all the flashing numbers/letters you will find two lines that are frozen, you control two markers (the same length as the frozen lines), one with WASD and one with the mouse, the goal is to mark and lock both of the frozen lines, the lines will move at certain intervals but once one is locked you only need to lock the second one to complete the hack. Moving the second marker with the mouse is disorienting at first (since you also have the pointer on screen, I believe), but once you get used to it it's easy as cake. If you mark an area outside the frozen lines you'll lose some time.

I hope that's understandable... it's really quite simple once you get the hang of it, but the controls can be confusing at first, and the mouse movement is pretty floaty and inaccurate. Try to just move one marker at a time starting out.

 

[1-D_FTW]

Yeah. That makes some sense. I began spotting the non blinking numbers towards the end, but I could never lock anything in (and the lag-tastic mouse sure wasn't helping things either). Thanks. I'll go give it another shot.

EDIT: Got it. I think I was mixing them up. I was using the mouse for the left number. When I used (I think) wasd for the left and mouse for the right, it worked.

 

[butsomuch]

New Chris Avellone interview on Alpha Protocol

Agonz: It’s a fact that the reviews about Alpha Protocol were quite hard, to say the least. How much of it do you think it was due to the fact that even though AP looks like a shooter, it is an action RPG?

CFA: You’ve summed it up in the last question, all that’s only a part of it. AP represents a disconnect between what it looks like on screen vs. how it plays out – as an example, one of our design mandates from SEGA was that your gun skill effects your targeting and spread, which is something our studio is very much against, and you can see the consequences of that discrepancy in a number of mandated system mechanics in the game. Players don’t want invisible numbers in the background modifying what they’re physically doing on screen – if you have your cursor lined up, you should shoot where the cursor is pointing. Design decisions like that add up.

Alpha Protocol had its challenges on our side as well. I feel as much as it’s perceived as solely a shooter, shooter judgments carry over into the look and feel of the gameplay, and those certainly aren’t comparable to other shooters in the market – it’s not what our studio specializes in, and as such, AP was a new endeavor for us – to try and beat other mainstream shooters on the market with the first foray was a slim chance at best. We also suffered issues with AI, stealth integration with levels, and more. On the plus side, however, I feel our minigames were good, I feel the reactivity and the consequences were good, and as odd as it sounds, I liked the fact that I would hesitate when equipping my weapons, as I was trying to decide which weapons best suited my character build and accept the drawbacks and advantages of those weapons accordingly.

As for the story, I think its narrative structure was received slightly better to much better than the gameplay, but that’s because it represented more of our studio’s core competency. I liked the reputation system, and I liked the fact that pissing someone off simply gave you different bonuses.

I don’t know how much this played into it, but I also believe part of the negative press concerned the time of release, which put us in a bad spot – first off, the fact that the title was held with no improvements defied expectations of why it was being held – people expected to see more when a title is held for 5-6 months. I also don’t feel that the title being held and released after Mass Effect 2 (which had some of the best cinematic conversations to date) and Splinter Cell (which has some of the best stealth mechanics to date) was a solid release decision, and I feel that releasing before either of those titles would have helped its reception. As it stood, I believe it was held to build up marketing buzz to generate more sales, which is something that could have been started much earlier and never was.

Lastly, I don’t want any of this to come across as I’m anything less than proud of Alpha Protocol. For all its haters, there’s a good many folks who played it and enjoyed it, and for that, I’m happy. I’m also proud of how it was structured, the new mechanics, the morality system, and I do feel it had meaningful choices and a cool branching narrative. While some reviews have been extremely negative (and I think they’ve had valid reasons), there’s many other folks who played it and appreciated it for what it was, and recognized the genre-pushing we were attempting in the title.

If we ever did another one, it would be a more refined experience, although much of the design elements were new to us the first time out. We got the chance to experiment with new mechanics, and that always makes my designer heart happy.

 

[Koralsky]

Obsidian.

Nope, IP belong to SEGA. Obsidian just developed the game.

For reference, Condemned IP is not a SEGA property, even though they publish the two released games. Monolith (now Warner) is the owner of Condemned IP.

 

[subversus]

WTF, SEGA????!

 

[Tylahedras]

Good, at least that interview sums up nicely that he knows where it went wrong. I love the game despite it's flaws though.

 

[butsomuch]

Nope, IP belong to SEGA. Obsidian just developed the game.

For reference, Condemned IP is not a SEGA property, even though they publish the two released games. Monolith (now Warner) is the owner of Condemned IP.

Wrong. According to ex-Obsidian designer Patrick Mills, Obsidian owns the IP.

 

[Koralsky]

Wrong. According to ex-Obsidian designer Patrick Mills, Obsidian owns the IP.

Condemned 1&2 (Monolith/Warner's IP) :

"CONDEMNED 2 software © 2008 Monolith Productions, Inc. Audio visual © 2007 Hall Digital Films. Published by Sega Europe under license from Monolith Productions, Inc.
SEGA and the SEGA logo are registered trademarks of SEGA Corporation. MONOLITH and MONOLITH LOGO: TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. "

Gears of War (Epic's IP even though MS is publishing)

"Gears of War, Gears of War 2, the Crimson Omen logo, Marcus Fenix, Unreal, Epic Games and the Epic Games logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Epic Games, Inc., in the United States and/or elsewhere. Microsoft, the Microsoft Game Studios logo, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE, Windows, DirectX, and the Xbox logos are either registered trademarks or trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies."

Alpha Protocol

"© SEGA. SEGA, the SEGA logo and Alpha Protocol are registered trade marks or trade marks of SEGA Corporation. © 2008 Obsidian Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Obsidian and the Obsidian logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Obsidian Entertainment"

 

[Riposte]

The Witcher 2 and Fallout: New Vegas seem like they can be Alpha Protocol's peers.

 

[butsomuch]

Alpha Protocol

"© SEGA. SEGA, the SEGA logo and Alpha Protocol are registered trade marks or trade marks of SEGA Corporation. © 2008 Obsidian Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Obsidian and the Obsidian logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Obsidian Entertainment"

Definitely wrong. News from 2008? Alpha Protocol designer Patrick Mills recently (late 2010 or early 2011) confirmed Obsidian owns the IP.

 

[Larsen B]

As someone who adored Alpha Protocol, I don't think not having the rights to use Mike Thorton as the main character in a successor would be a big loss.

Obviously, this doesn't apply to Steve

Spoiler

n

Heck.

 

[Koralsky]

Definitely wrong. News from 2008? Alpha Protocol designer Patrick Mills recently (late 2010 or early 2011) confirmed Obsidian owns the IP.

It's from the official site. It's the same on the back cover of the game. If SEGA sells IP to Obsidian of-records is another story that is new for me.

 

[1-D_FTW]

I really wanna punch someone in the mouth over these hacking games. The mouse controlled one lags so bad. And then when you finally get the thing properly lined up and go to hit the left mouse button, the slightest movement moves it a square and you fail.

 

[Grayman]

As someone who adored Alpha Protocol, I don't think not having the rights to use Mike Thorton as the main character in a successor would be a big loss.

Obviously, this doesn't apply to Steve

Spoiler

n

Heck.

They would be just as well off using the conversation system and branching storyline in any modern setting. Heck was a great character but there is no value to running future stories of Mike Thorton, Halbec, AP, G22, when they can make something new each game. The 3 JB's suit the shoot lots of guys style but the dialog gameplay would work just as well for a street level or long con story.

 

[Snuggles]

I just started this last night. Well, I finally got part the first hacking minigame last night. Once I realized that I was just looking for the stationary text it wasn't so hard, but it's still kind of an annoying minigame.

Anyways, it's pretty damn good. It wears it's influences on it's sleeve, but I'm a big Deus Ex and Metal Gear Solid fan so it's a bonus for me. I can see why people rave about the choices and the tangible impact they have, in both the conversations and the way you handle missions. My handlers keep giving me shit for setting off alarms and beating the shit out of everyone. Very cool stuff.

The actual gameplay isn't great so far, but it has it's moments. I like playing as stealth and taking everyone down from behind with melee. I feel like an action movie badass when I pull that off, but it does go down hill when the guns come out. It's serviceable and I dig all of the customization options when it comes to load outs.

Still, glad I finally gave this a shot and I like it a lot so far.

 

[Shiggy]

Just started the game...the hacking minigame was awful, the rest did not impress me much either. Two hours in and I don't think I will keep on playing.

 

[Snuggles]

this game is sweet

just left a country, I sided with my sweetheart at the expense of others, but dealt with whining anyways

now gonna meet this Heck guy

 

[Snuggles]

HECK IS NOLAN NORTH!!!!

it's twisted drake

 

[iavi]

this game is sweet

just left a country, I sided with my sweetheart at the expense of others, but dealt with whining anyways

now gonna meet this Heck guy

you're just starting? Lucky!

I had avoided this game due to the ME2 comparisons, but picked it up during a steam sale and loved it to death.

protip: focus on pistols and stealth. Just do it and don't ask questions.

 

[reptilescorpio]

HECK IS NOLAN NORTH!!!!

it's twisted drake

Make sure to be his best buddy. Heck is awesome-sauce. Wish that Obsidian would make a polished sequel. AP had its problems but I had a lot of fun, I will continue to say they should take it episodic.

 

[jim-jam bongs]

Make sure to be his best buddy. Heck is awesome-sauce. Wish that Obsidian would make a polished sequel. AP had its problems but I had a lot of fun, I will continue to say they should take it episodic.

SEGA owns the IP

Anyway, 2nd best RPG of 2010 and the best was from the same studio. Good times.

 

[Snuggles]

SEGA owns the IP

Anyway, 2nd best RPG of 2010 and the best was from the same studio. Good times.

yeah, not quite New Vegas quality but this game kicks ass

I've been very impressed so far

 

[Semblance]

Heck is one of the greatest game characters ever. Brilliant stuff, especially his emails.

 

[jim-jam bongs]

yeah, not quite New Vegas quality but this game kicks ass

I've been very impressed so far

It's a really good game to play off the back of The Witcher 2 I reckon, very similar style of RPG except that you can choose the order you play the chapters. In my perfect future Obsidian and CDProjekt Red form a studio and make in equal parts Fallout games, Witcher games and experimental IPs.

*sighs and looks wistfully out the window*

 

[VinZuku]

I just started playing this game a few days ago and I unabashedly love it! The way your dialogue choices affect the game, the customization options you have when it comes to skills and weapons, the characters, this game is just great. As some have said it's a little clunky in certain places but there's absolutely nothing here that should stop you from enjoying Alpha Protocol. This is definitely a game that rewards patience and experimentation. And patience. A scary word in today's video game landscape. Unfortunate since it'd be nice to have more games like this around.

 

[Grayman]

It's a really good game to play off the back of The Witcher 2 I reckon, very similar style of RPG except that you can choose the order you play the chapters. In my perfect future Obsidian and CDProjekt Red form a studio and make in equal parts Fallout games, Witcher games and experimental IPs.

*sighs and looks wistfully out the window*

Not only can you choose the order of the chapters but you can also go back and forth between the 3 locations as you please.

 

[XiaNaphryz]

Not only can you choose the order of the chapters but you can also go back and forth between the 3 locations as you please.

And doing so may give you different dialogue options, as some characters will react to you differently depending on if you met or have a certain rep with some people at other locations.

 

[MaddenNFL64]

So, I played the shit out of this game recently. I had the same zeal to play through it multiple times, like I had with Mass Effect 2. The big problems early on were of my own doing. I just didn't know wtf I was doing. I skipped the tutorial stuff (they gave me the option, so I just turned around D, and on top of that played on recruit. Let's just say my first mission in Saudi was a complete fail. I hated the game for 45 minutes until I got some damn points & figured out to switch my armor to some quieter stuff.

But the story is fantastic, and having complete freedom to do whatever you want & get rewards anyway is awesome.

The games graphics are... meh, but I never cared about graphics too much (I just finished playing Crysis 2, so even that didn't throw me off ).

All in all, a great game, with some flaws that are easily ignored because the total package is so addicting & replayable to no end.

 

[Snuggles]

Still playing and loving this game. I've hit the first rough spot though. It's a boss battle (80's guy) and it feels like I just hit a wall. I've kicked ass with stealth through most of the game, but this guy takes a ton of damage while wrecking my shit with a few stabs (which I can't seem to run away from) and his scoped weapon. Once his minions show up and I start to take damage from all sides, I'm done for. This is only like 1/3rd of the way into the fight.

Is there any trick to this fight or is it just really brutal for stealth players?

 

[Danne-Danger]

Still playing and loving this game. I've hit the first rough spot though. It's a boss battle (80's guy) and it feels like I just hit a wall. I've kicked ass with stealth through most of the game, but this guy takes a ton of damage while wrecking my shit with a few stabs (which I can't seem to run away from) and his scoped weapon. Once his minions show up and I start to take damage from all sides, I'm done for. This is only like 1/3rd of the way into the fight.

Is there any trick to this fight or is it just really brutal for stealth players?

I was stealth/melee and didn't have any issues with him.

Try flashbangs.