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Alpha Protocol |OT| Bourne, Avellone, Denton, and the Agency's Sagacious Secrets

Snuggles

erotic butter maelstrom
BigJiantRobut said:
holy SHIT hacking is bad on PC

The hacking confused me so much that it caused me to shelve the game for several months. Maybe there were certain external factors that made it difficult at the time, but I could not wrap my mind around that shit.

Switching to gamepad controls helped alot, since I could use the triggers to select the correct phrases and the analog stick to navigate. It's tricky, but I eventually got the hang of it and they were fairly effortless for most of the game. From what I've read on the internet, most agree that the hacking minigame doesn't work nearly as well with KB/M controls.

It's kind of a pain, but it might make things easier if you switch to pad controls in the options whenever you have to hack. I played with a gamepad but I had to switch to KB/M every time I picked a lock since it was nearly impossible to do it with the PS3 pad's triggers.

Hopefully you can get past it, there's is a lot of awesome beyond the confusing hacking minigame.
 
Sinatar said:
If you want the path of least resistance go with Stealth + Pistols. Just about anything is viable though as long as you have some kind of combat tree for the bosses.
Nice, thanks, man.

Just found out the game detects my logitech gamepad, but unfortunately it suffers from the same issue than Arkham Asylum: y-axis on the left stick is inverted. Too bad.
 

Wag

Member
This game is made for 360 gamepad on the PC. I gave up using m/KB and just played it with 360 wireless pad. Worked fine, had fun. Well worth the $5 I paid, even better at $2.
 
Snuggler said:
The hacking confused me so much that it caused me to shelve the game for several months. Maybe there were certain external factors that made it difficult at the time, but I could not wrap my mind around that shit.

Switching to gamepad controls helped alot, since I could use the triggers to select the correct phrases and the analog stick to navigate. It's tricky, but I eventually got the hang of it and they were fairly effortless for most of the game. From what I've read on the internet, most agree that the hacking minigame doesn't work nearly as well with KB/M controls.

It's kind of a pain, but it might make things easier if you switch to pad controls in the options whenever you have to hack. I played with a gamepad but I had to switch to KB/M every time I picked a lock since it was nearly impossible to do it with the PS3 pad's triggers.

Hopefully you can get past it, there's is a lot of awesome beyond the confusing hacking minigame.

I... I dunno man. I'm on the first hacking tutorial and this shit feels just as busted as it did on Xbox back when it was released. The AI is garbage, the voice acting is ludicrous, the animation is laughable (they didn't even bother to smooth out the WASD motions on Mike, and he just pops from direction to direction) and I'm really really really frustrated by this hacking bullshit. To cap it off, there's no quicksaving, and I can't press ESC to load a checkpoint until the game is done showing me tooltips or subtitles. I don't feel like I should have to swap to a different control scheme just to make vital pieces of the game function. I keep hearing about this amazing classic RPG buried under all this madness but I'm starting to question if it's even worth it.

I'll keep at it for a little more tonight but good lord in heaven, even at 2 dollars this is giving me buyer's remorse.
 

Lesath

Member
BigJiantRobut said:
holy SHIT hacking is bad on PC

It's not that hard, especially if you sink those initial 2 points into sabotage. The controls take some getting used to, but you learn to catch the non-changing sequences in your peripheral vision pretty quickly. It's more fun than DX:HR hacking, and I managed just fine with KB+M to the end of the game.
 

Snuggles

erotic butter maelstrom
I got stuck on the first hacking tutorial. I just couldn't see it at all, I felt like Ethan Suplee in Mall Rats. I even tried watching youtube walkthroughs and it didn't help. But eventually, once I learned to look at it the right way and spot the codes, they were easy. There's that one big hurdle to get past, but it won't persist through out the rest of the game.

It gave a very bad first impression, but thankfully I pushed through.
 
AngryChinchilla said:
Posted this in the Steam thread but didn't get any help:
It's spacebar for the left code and left-click for the right one (smart, huh?). And the mouse control movement for the right-hand code really is just that horribly laggy and awful.
BigJiantRobut said:
I... I dunno man. I'm on the first hacking tutorial and this shit feels just as busted as it did on Xbox back when it was released.
It really does get a lot better once you get out of that first tutorial stage and into the game itself.
 
Thorton's delivery reminds me of those people in college who say things in the middle of lectures and expect everyone to laugh but really everyone hates him

I don't know if they intentionally made all of his "witty" banter terrible on purpose but I'm on board.
 

Wallach

Member
BigJiantRobut said:
I... I dunno man. I'm on the first hacking tutorial and this shit feels just as busted as it did on Xbox back when it was released. The AI is garbage, the voice acting is ludicrous, the animation is laughable (they didn't even bother to smooth out the WASD motions on Mike, and he just pops from direction to direction) and I'm really really really frustrated by this hacking bullshit. To cap it off, there's no quicksaving, and I can't press ESC to load a checkpoint until the game is done showing me tooltips or subtitles. I don't feel like I should have to swap to a different control scheme just to make vital pieces of the game function. I keep hearing about this amazing classic RPG buried under all this madness but I'm starting to question if it's even worth it.

I'll keep at it for a little more tonight but good lord in heaven, even at 2 dollars this is giving me buyer's remorse.

I felt the same way. The bolded in particular is kind of a peeve of mine and TW2 does the same shit. I mean, really. Your whole game is in third-person, at least try.

I had a much better time enjoying the writing on Youtube.
 

Snuggles

erotic butter maelstrom
BigJiantRobut said:
Thorton's delivery reminds me of those people in college who say things in the middle of lectures and expect everyone to laugh but really everyone hates him

I don't know if they intentionally made all of his "witty" banter terrible on purpose but I'm on board.

Heh, I liked the suave dialog options because he sounded so damn corny at times. Especially when he was hitting on a lady in the most inappropriate moments.
 

Snuggles

erotic butter maelstrom
Ok, this thread inspired me to start playthrough 2. So did anyone try scanning the cell-phone code thingy on Mike's shirt in the intro?
 

zkylon

zkylewd
BigJiantRobut said:
the animation is laughable (they didn't even bother to smooth out the WASD motions on Mike, and he just pops from direction to direction)
Wallach said:
I felt the same way. The bolded in particular is kind of a peeve of mine and TW2 does the same shit. I mean, really. Your whole game is in third-person, at least try.
Probably doesn't matter to you anymore, but there's a guy that modded in direction transition blending.

irakmata on the Obs forums said:
Change these valors in APGame.ini (My Documents)

InteractDistance=250
CoverWalkSpeed=75.f
CoverRunSpeed=125.f
PlayerRotationSpeed=80000.0f
MoveSpeedNormal=240
MoveSpeedScoped=80
SprintSpeed=320

I tried it and it works. More info here
 

Wallach

Member
zkylon said:
Probably doesn't matter to you anymore, but there's a guy that modded in direction transition blending.

Saved in case I ever go back to this game. I probably won't, but thanks for the info.
 

ctrayne

Member
You know what kicks ass about this game that I only now noticed?

The subtitles. They are real subtitles. Not seven sentences in a row that give away the next paragraph of dialogue, but real subs like in a movie. Really helps the flow of dialogue. I wish more games did this.
 

Snuggles

erotic butter maelstrom
I'm going agressive, and I was responsible for 25 orphans in just the first mission. Damn. It's fun to play as an ass and disconnect on my handlers as soon as they get ahold of me.

This game is so much fun.
 
Snuggler said:
I'm going agressive, and I was responsible for 25 orphans in just the first mission. Damn. It's fun to play as an ass and disconnect on my handlers as soon as they get ahold of me.

This game is so much fun.

Indeed. The melee attacks are also pretty brutal and goofy looking.

If you are given the option to kill, why not?

Screw pansy achievements. Play your heart out!
 

Grayman

Member
Snuggler said:
I'm going agressive, and I was responsible for 25 orphans in just the first mission. Damn. It's fun to play as an ass and disconnect on my handlers as soon as they get ahold of me.

This game is so much fun.
why are all the guards single parents?
 
Does the game have dialog that plays for Mike regardless of how you've played him so far? I've been totally no-nonsense with the main guy and Mike still spouts smartass bullshit in scenes where I don't pick a tone.

Also, "People Over Rich Corporations Act" lol

Game does seem a bit better now though, I'm having fun.
 

Snuggles

erotic butter maelstrom
BigJiantRobut said:
The lack of quick saving is ruining the stealthy approach, thanks to wonky ass KB+M controls.

Do you not own a gamepad? I'm typically a KB/M advocate but this game is much better with a pad.

Quick saving would be nice but during my stealth run I would just reload the mission when I sent off an alarm.

also: I made a GIF

2499501e20ae7be3a7848a72a81c4fc3283aa533.gif
 
Snuggler said:
Do you not own a gamepad? I'm typically a KB/M advocate but this game is much better with a pad.

Quick saving would be nice but during my stealth run I would just reload the mission when I sent off an alarm.

also: I made a GIF

2499501e20ae7be3a7848a72a81c4fc3283aa533.gif

I do own a gamepad, but given that I have the Xbox version in my living room, it's a little disappointing that the game feels like such a port. I'm reluctant to plug one in, but I guess with all the minigames requiring analog stick controls I might have to.

I'm a little confused, too - I totally didn't kill anyone in the Nasri mission, but Nasri insulted me for killing his guards. Are stealth knockouts actually kills?
 

Snuggles

erotic butter maelstrom
BigJiantRobut said:
I'm a little confused, too - I totally didn't kill anyone in the Nasri mission, but Nasri insulted me for killing his guards. Are stealth knockouts actually kills?

Hmmm...

Knockouts are most certainly not kills, since you can do lethal takedowns by tapping A instead of B. Not sure what could have happened there.
 

Le-mo

Member
I played this for about an hour and I'm liking it so far. I recommend playing it with a gamepad as it offers a better experience than a mouse/kb. For $2 I would have no problem recommending it to anybody.
 
Snuggler said:
Hmmm...

Knockouts are most certainly not kills, since you can do lethal takedowns by tapping A instead of B. Not sure what could have happened there.

What about head tranqs? I dispatched a couple of the guards outside his room with headshots, but I was using darts.
 

-tetsuo-

Unlimited Capacity
Glad that this sale is going to introduce a lot of people to the game. It has it's problems, but underneath it all it is a very solid RPG.
 

Snuggles

erotic butter maelstrom
BigJiantRobut said:
What about head tranqs? I dispatched a couple of the guards outside his room with headshots, but I was using darts.

Tranqs are OK, regardless of where they hit. If you somehow accidentally killed someone, it would have to be a lethal take down, a kill with lethal bullet (not tranq, or concussive), or a kill with an explosive grenade.

Maybe it was just the game being retarded, but usually it was good about recognizing me when I ghosted a level.
 
BigJiantRobut said:
I do own a gamepad, but given that I have the Xbox version in my living room, it's a little disappointing that the game feels like such a port. I'm reluctant to plug one in, but I guess with all the minigames requiring analog stick controls I might have to.

I'm a little confused, too - I totally didn't kill anyone in the Nasri mission, but Nasri insulted me for killing his guards. Are stealth knockouts actually kills?

I'm pretty sure that's more of a "we wrote it this way" not a "why didn't this happen?"

If you didn't kill anyone in the Nasri mission, you're fine, even if you kill Nasri himself (if you're going for that particular perk, because I did that and got it on one of my playthroughs on the PS3 version).
 

zkylon

zkylewd
BigJiantRobut said:
The lack of quick saving is ruining the stealthy approach, thanks to wonky ass KB+M controls.
I actually like the lack of quicksave in this game. Helps build up tension, since i usually just quickload whenever i'm spotted. It also forces you to stick with any decisions you make. In any other game, i'd hate it, but since AP's easy to sprint through if you know your way around the missions in 2nd or 3rd playthroughs, i don't mind.

TaroYamada said:
Grabbed this today and played for a bit, the crouching animation is terrible but gameplay wise I very much like how it feels.
I think there's an ini fix (as far as fixes can go, so it's nothing oddwordly) for that too in the link i posted earlier. I know someone was trying to crack that.
 
This game feels busted

I want to love it so bad, I love spy stuff and I love old RPGs but this just feels broken and stupid and just not fun at the moment. I'm only at Al Samad airfield and I'm facing a truly keyboard-smashing situation.

The game checkpoints before I hack the security system, so I have to play the stupid hacking game every time I reload. Once I hack the system I exit a hangar into a courtyard with two dudes in it, and one dude in a turret at the end of the yard. I can dispatch the two guys on the ground, but the guy on the turret is apparently an omniscient being who cannot be distracted. I can use the sound generator thing and make him turn away, but the instant I get out of cover he pops around 180 degrees and smokes me with his stupid turret. I'm not making any noise, I'm not in line of sight - he just knows that I'm there and then I have to reload and play the stupid goddamn hacking game again. Popping a bullet between his eyes is a no go because I don't have any silenced weapons, and my pistol skill isn't high enough to tranq him from the ground. If he sees me, I die, plain and simple.

What's more, for whatever reason my cover mechanics seem to work about 50% of the time. Sometimes it'll give me the icon to do a "run between cover" thing and the other 50% of the time it acts like that isn't even a feature. This can happen in the exact same place between the same two pieces of cover.

I WANT TO BE A SPY
 

zkylon

zkylewd
BigJiantRobut said:
This game feels busted

I want to love it so bad, I love spy stuff and I love old RPGs but this just feels broken and stupid and just not fun at the moment. I'm only at Al Samad airfield and I'm facing a truly keyboard-smashing situation.

The game checkpoints before I hack the security system, so I have to play the stupid hacking game every time I reload. Once I hack the system I exit a hangar into a courtyard with two dudes in it, and one dude in a turret at the end of the yard. I can dispatch the two guys on the ground, but the guy on the turret is apparently an omniscient being who cannot be distracted. I can use the sound generator thing and make him turn away, but the instant I get out of cover he pops around 180 degrees and smokes me with his stupid turret. I'm not making any noise, I'm not in line of sight - he just knows that I'm there and then I have to reload and play the stupid goddamn hacking game again. Popping a bullet between his eyes is a no go because I don't have any silenced weapons, and my pistol skill isn't high enough to tranq him from the ground. If he sees me, I die, plain and simple.

What's more, for whatever reason my cover mechanics seem to work about 50% of the time. Sometimes it'll give me the icon to do a "run between cover" thing and the other 50% of the time it acts like that isn't even a feature. This can happen in the exact same place between the same two pieces of cover.

I WANT TO BE A SPY
I really want to help you with it, but the game is like that at the beginning. Your skills suck, the Saudi Arabia missions are the most uninspired in the game and the clunkyness sure doesn't help. It's just that when it starts branching out (just after the Saudi Arabia segment) and you start meeting interesting characters and see what all the little differences you produce with your choices Alpha Protocol gets awesome. Also, your skills get a lot better (specially if you're a tech spec/stealth character) and you get things like invisibility to circle around the retarded AI.
 

AwesomeSauce

MagsMoonshine
2 freaking dollars!

I already have a ps3 copy that i got for about $9-10 bucks that i haven't really played. Might as well sell it now that i have decent enough PC to run this game.
 
zkylon said:
I really want to help you with it, but the game is like that at the beginning. Your skills suck, the Saudi Arabia missions are the most uninspired in the game and the clunkyness sure doesn't help. It's just that when it starts branching out (just after the Saudi Arabia segment) and you start meeting interesting characters and see what all the little differences you produce with your choices Alpha Protocol gets awesome. Also, your skills get a lot better (specially if you're a tech spec/stealth character) and you get things like invisibility to circle around the retarded AI.

Am I screwing myself over or setting myself up for disappointment if I just shoot him in the head to get past this?
 
BigJiantRobut said:
Am I screwing myself over or setting myself up for disappointment if I just shoot him in the head to get past this?

Out of curiosity have you tried sneaking past him without using a noisemaker first? If I recall, noisemakers put guards into their alter state which means they'll develop super senses. In their idle state they have the narrowest vision cone in gaming history.
 
jim-jam bongs said:
Out of curiosity have you tried sneaking past him without using a noisemaker first? If I recall, noisemakers put guards into their alter state which means they'll develop super senses. In their idle state they have the narrowest vision cone in gaming history.

He has a view of the entire yard, so not using the noisemaker makes it even more likely for me to become swiss cheese.
 
BigJiantRobut said:
He has a view of the entire yard, so not using the noisemaker makes it even more likely for me to become swiss cheese.

Oh fuck me, I remember exactly where you mean now. That bit sucks if you don't have Chain Shot already.

What I tend to do if I don't have it is to wait until the closest guy is behind the truck out of sight of the other two then take him down. Then you can sneak around the left side of the truck and take cover behind the concrete barrier there without the two guards seeing you. Wait for the one on the ground to go around the left side of the guard tower then sprint at him and kung-fu his ass.

This will make the guy in the turret really mad, and possibly lead to another guy coming out from a door next to the guard tower who you'll need to kung-fu too, but it's the only way I've found to get past it without Chain Shot tranquilising him. Once you've dealt with the guy who rushes out, you can just wait for the turret guy to forget about you or move on, he can't trigger an alarm from up there anyway.
 
BigJiantRobut said:
Am I screwing myself over or setting myself up for disappointment if I just shoot him in the head to get past this?

I'm trying to remember this clearly....Isn't there a zip line or something that goes above him that you can use and completely avoid him? or am I getting that confused with something else.

It seems to me there are multiple ways to enter that building, and you're trying the wrong one.
 
KnightAttack said:
I'm trying to remember this clearly....Isn't there a zip line or something that goes above him that you can use and completely avoid him? or am I getting that confused with something else.

It seems to me there are multiple ways to enter that building, and you're trying the wrong one.

Different objective. This is the "Get past the checkpoint" one I'm pretty sure, there is only way through it.
 
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