This April, the Easter Bunny left a nice Sega treat nestled in-between the Peeps and the jelly beans for the SuperPod Game Club to play - the 2010 stealth-action RPG Alpha Protocol, which was chosen by Thrak. Quite a few of us weren't able to get into this game, so it'll be another short but sweet review from two members.

As always, you wonderful readers are absolutely welcome to join our humble little game club, and even write some blurbs about the games with us. Click the button below to learn more. We'd love to have you!

Tony

A new month has passed and it seems I was the only one to get through the assigned game this time around, so I’ll try to make this quick. Alpha Protocol is one of those games that just misses the mark of being something truly great, it was released in an seemingly unfinished state due to issues during development and Sega’s various indecisions during the project. This is something that really shows in the final product, the gameplay is lacking in just about every department and there is a very noticeable lack of polish throughout the entire playthrough.

There is an upgrade system that lets you build the character based on your playstyle, which is a great idea in concept, but could potentially lead to some impossible situations if your build isn’t up to snuff because of the way the game is balanced. On the other hand, you could also become comically overpowered if you focus on maxing out certain skills and pretty much become unstoppable by the end of the game. This unbalance wouldn’t be that big of an issue if you were able to respec your character if necessary, but you’re only given two chances early on in the game (once after the tutorial and the other after the first set of missions) and after that you just have to hope you’ll have enough skill points later on if you want to make any sudden adjustments. I think the best solution would have been an option to spend the money to allocate points between skills, because you can have more money than you know what to do with after a certain point.

Where the game really shines is how varied the storyline can play out based on your decisions, which was still a bit of a novelty at the time. The story follows Michael Thorton, a highly skilled new recruit for a secret US agency known as Alpha Protocol. Almost immediately after he joins, he finds himself in the middle of a conspiracy after a mission gone wrong forces him to become a rogue agent and go on the run. It’s a pretty basic premise, but the story can play out a bunch of different ways depending on what you do. You could easily cause a conversation to go sideways, or make a decision that could potentially piss an ally off, potentially cutting you off from having them as a useful contact. There are also moments where you could just straight up execute someone in the middle of a conversation, which could lead to some spicy consequences later on in the game.

With that being said, the dialogue options can sometimes leave more to be desired. The basic gist of a conversation is you pick one of four potential responses by pressing their corresponding face button, which depending on the option could lead to the feelings of the person you’re talking to change. This comes with the usual drawbacks of having such a simple system, sometimes you’ll pick a dialogue option that has the exact opposite reaction than you were expecting based on how it was labeled. More often than not it doesn’t really affect the overall flow of a conversation, but when it does it can be kind of frustrating. It can also lead to some unintentionally funny moments, like when you pick the option to be suave that results in Michael saying the lamest thing imaginable with a shit eating smile and the person you’re talking just isn’t having any of it.

Despite all of Alpha Protocol’s glaring flaws, I still had a great time playing it. The combat is pretty clunky, the stealth mechanic is borderline useless and the enemy AI can be non-existent. You would think that alone would be enough to completely write the game off, but despite those issues there is just something so unapologetically charming about the game. There is a great game buried beneath the mountain of bugs and jank and I’d recommend it to anyone who won’t mind dealing with all of its imperfections.

Aaron

While I didn't beat Alpha Protocol in April, I have beaten it twice in the past on the good ol' Xbox 360. I first discovered this game at a GameStop, after selling Naruto Ultimate Ninja whatever number I had at the time (there's like 65 of those games) and I had just quit my dishwashing job and was looking for a new game to help pass the time. I spotted this game on a shelf and saw that Obsidian was the developer. Having loved Fallout: New Vegas, I bought the game, headed home, and fired that shit up. Over the next few days, I would obsess over this game, playing it nonstop. At some point, my older sister's boyfriend, Mark, would make the comment "why are you always inside playing video games? Is that all you do?", to which I responded "hell yeah". There isn't anything else to do in Chatsworth, IA, a rural Iowa town with a population of around 50 people.

Getting back to the game, I remember really enjoying this game. One of the standout parts for me is the ability to buy intel that would either make the current mission easier (buy a map of the area, sabotage enemy guns so they can't shoot, give you a better starting point, etc), make future missions easier (destroying enemy supplies so that faction is weaker overall), and even giving you side objectives that would give you extra cash. The other part that really hooked me was the upgrade system. While there are certain archetypes to follow (stealth, action, or tech), you can essentially build your Mike to be what you want him to be. My preferred playstyle is a shotgun Mike with lots of tech upgrades so that my grenades make much bigger booms and stun nearby enemies. Speaking of guns, the weapon upgrade system is also pretty in-depth. Each type of gun has lots of different modifiers to adjust weapon accuracy, reload speed, firing speed, and more. It's wild how much control you have over so many small aspects in this game from 2010.

Let's talk about my current experience with Alpha Protocol - which was awesome. I still think this game is very fun. Since it's not backwards compatible on Xbox Series X/S, I bought a second copy on GOG, who I will always give money to because they rule. I decided to do a tech-bro build for this playthrough, prioritizing gadgets and hacking over anything else. This immediately took backseat, as the stealth just doesn't work all that well unless you upgrade it to an incredibly high level. Most missions I would go in with my shotgun and pistol and just annihilate everyone and then do my business and end the mission. But there were some missions where I was able to sneak past guards, hack some computers or security systems, and get through the mission undetected, which was highly satisfying. I got quite a few missions in before this game had to go on the backburner while I played some other stuff.

Overall, Alpha Protocol is pretty janky and is definitely off-putting to newcomers. But if you go into it with a third-person shooter mindset and just ignore stealth, you'll be totally fine. To be honest, I want this type of game to make a comeback. There is nothing at all like Alpha Protocol in the current market, and that's such a shame. If you haven't yet played this game, go buy it on GOG and let me know what you think!

That's all folks! Make sure to come back next month for our reviews of Vanquish - yet another Sega gem from 2010! We've got many more members partaking in this one, so expect way more reviews in May.

Go check out the SuperPod Game Club page for more info!