To add a fun extra wrinkle, the mouse string doesn’t keep pace with the cursor. Once found, you need to overlay the corresponding number string-one controlled by WASD, the other by mouse. Hacking, meanwhile, requires you to find two passwords in a grid of scrolling numbers. It’s one of three you’re regularly asked to complete, but the other two-lockpicking and bypassing-are inoffensively bland. I’ll get to Alpha Protocol’s laudable qualities soon, but I can’t skip over the hacking system, which is among the worst minigames I’ve ever encountered. It’s absurdly effective and allows you to concentrate on exploration and the challenge of bypassing security systems. With this, and a couple of damage upgrades, you can reliably, quickly and silently take down enemies with a single headshot. An upgrade, fairly early in the pistol skill tree, lets you line up shots from cover. While a pure non-detection run is difficult-a casualty, again, of the AI-the pistol and stun gun are both so overpowered they negate much of the challenge. The best, Field Operative, favours stealth, and is comfortably the most powerful build. The Tech Specialist is able to use more gadgets, which is a more enjoyable way to play-albeit one hamstrung by the need to predict and manipulate enemy AI. That’s bad news for the Soldier class, but the other two styles benefit from some more rounded specialisation trees. Unsurprisingly, it makes combat inherently unsatisfying. Alpha Protocol attempts to redress the balance through limitations-artificially lowering your aim, and offering skills designed to reduce its self-imposed handicaps. Most of the enemies are lightly armoured humans, easily killed by anyone proficient at aiming a mouse. But Alpha Protocol is predominantly an RPG set in the real world. Mass Effect had shields, and monstrous enemies that could support lots of hit points-shifting the levelling focus to sci-fi skills that caused major damage. This is one of the problems of pairing shooter design with RPG mechanics. Remember in Deus Ex, when shootouts involved standing still while your reticule slowly targeted the person you wanted to shoot? It wasn’t a good system then, and, unsurprisingly, hadn’t become a good idea a decade later-years after the third-person cover shooter craze of the late-aughts. It’s a problem heightened by the fact that Alpha Protocol’s combat is not very good. Saudi Arabia has none of this-the most subversive thing you can do is talk your way past an opening fight-and it makes for a monotonous opener. The structure becomes more varied and freeform, and everything you choose has an effect. The problem is Alpha Protocol gets more interesting later on. There’s an airfield to bug, a weapons stockpile to investigate, and an arms dealer to intercept. The mission structure works well-Thorton must take on various preparatory missions to track down a shipment of missiles stolen by the terrorist organisation Al-Samad. In place is a series of infiltration missions set across Saudi Arabia. First, you’re forced through a lacklustre opening that forgoes much of Alpha Protocol’s best systems. Untangling this mess, however, takes time.
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