Alpha Protocol for PS3 looked like it was going to be a fun game. So much for looks. As a third person shooter goes, it’s worth a rent. If you are very, very bored. I’m betting that you won’t be playing this one all the way thorough though.
The game seems wishy washy. You get the sense while playing it that the developers were trying out some various things and that they had several meetings where they could not agree what to do with the game. It resulted in something that didn’t hit it’s mark.
You can choose from a few character careers. There is no female avatar available. There is no excuse for it. The story line such as it is, while boring, certainly could have accommodated a female agent, and it would have been far more interesting. Those of us who enjoy third person shooters, do so because seeing our character inside the game’s world makes it feel more immersive, than just seeing a pair of hands and not being able to have a view of the game in 360 degrees. Looking at a female character appeals both to the straight male set as well as the queer girl crowd.
Supposedly the game has an RPG aspect, but it falls short there too. The character customization extends only to the choice to have a beard and a bandanna. That’s about all. This weak character customization does not make the game a legitimate RPG.
There is Alpha Protocol’s ‘morality system’ which frankly doesn’t materialize well in most games that attempt it. The result is even more boring down time. The font is so small on the screen that by the time you read all the text the time is up before you can make a selection. You are supposed to make allies using it. However in practice it is so tedious that it is unlikely that you will have the patience to put the feature to practical use.

In Alpha Protocol you do choose the skill points that you can apply to various abilities. In a very common fashion it rewards the tank style play above all. If you want to stealth or tech your way through, you’ll have a much more challenging, (ok I mean annoying) time of playing the game. I do not envy the reviewers who had the patience to play it through. I’m not getting paid so I only invested about ten hours in the mess.
The AI is very stupid for the most part and that leads to some unintended levity in the game. It leaves many opportunities for a nice head shot. But then once in while you get one NPC that is almost impossible to kill. You can tell that they were experimenting with having AI at different levels. It didn’t quite work out. You’ll see experienced reviewers online complaining that the bosses were too hard to kill, and at other times they were way too easy. Evidentially the game is way out of balance.
To top it off the game will freeze and crash on the PS3. I hate the crashes where you have to not only get up off the couch, but it also forgets where you were and sends you all the way back to the last auto save. When that happens more than once I put the disk right back in the Gamefly sleeve and send it back.
I am hard pressed to come up with anything good to relate to you about this game. Other than to tell you to skip it entirely. I give Alpha Protocol 4 empty pistols out of 10.