…And gave it a respectable 7/10, complaining about the game’s overall lack of polish and balance while complimenting its ability to keep you playing despite these issues. Obsidian Entertainment has never been great at polish; the company is much more about design and writing than technology, but they’re nowhere near as bad as Troika used to be. For some people, the fact that Chris Avellone (Baldur’s Gate, Fallout, Planescape Torment, KOTOR 2) is lead designer and writer on this game is more than enough to warrant a purchase, reviews be damned. I am one of those people.
And for what it’s worth, Chris is also a really nice guy. I sat on a panel with him at a conference about a year ago, and I’ve been meaning to post the video here if I can ever get it from the conference people.
UPDATE: 1UP’s Scott Sharkey awarded Alpha Protocol a B+ and a good deal of reasoned praise and gentle criticism. Meanwhile, Destructoid’s Jim Sterling brutalized the game with a 2/10. Which do you agree with? Your weapon is choice!
UPDATE UPDATE: John Walker of RPS has posted thoughts on his first hour with the game, and they’re not pretty. It looks like the PC version is especially… flawed. We’ll see more as the day goes on.
Email the author of this post at steerpike@tap-repeatedly.com.
I think I’ll be getting this on the strength of Chris being involved as well. I couldn’t give a rats nads about the graphics and tech, it’s about the strength of the experience and considering the game held the reviewer’s attention despite issues says a lot really.
Vampire: Bloodlines was a messy game but it had such redeeming qualities that I could forgive the clunkiness. It’s just a shame that the latter stages of the game turned to shit. Combat really wasn’t that game’s strength.
That review got me interested. I always thought there was a bit of tongue in cheek going on with AP. Glad to see it’s still there.
You know what’s funny, Scout, is that originally there wasn’t. I was just at the Interfaces conference here in Michigan, and one of the Obsidian concept artists was giving a lecture. Apparently the original plan was a very corporate-espionage, straight-up-spy kind of thing, but – as he put it – “that means nothing but dudes in three piece suits, which gets boring.” So they caricatured some of it. A wise move, I think.
Wow. Indeed. If the designers were getting bored with their own game…
Ditto on the Avellone factor.
Fallout 1, 2, and KOTOR 2 are all top 10 contenders on my “favourite games” list. If Obsidian made garbage bags I would put them in my kitchen.
Regarding the polish (which I’ve heard some terrible things about), I was about to post my concern that Fallout New Vegas wouldn’t be as polished either. Then I remembered that Fallout 3 wasn’t exactly the most polished experience anyway. Not an awful lot to lose on that front I guess!
[…] Protocol Posted by Matt "Steerpike" Sakey on June 2, 2010, 9:08 am Based on yesterday’s flurry of bad press for Obsidian’s new Spy-PG, I’d decided to contradict myself (when I said I would buy […]