Fireside Chat: Alpha Protocol reception and New Vegas

They were expecting a solid product with polish and competent game design. That is not what they received, everyone understands the simplicity of stat points and it affecting your aiming, the only issue is that in action games such as these it only serves to make the experience frustrating if the points still don't lead to satisfactory encounters.
The combat is atrocious. The cover system is broken and is as responsive as a dead horse's dick .The gunplay itself is unsatisfactory, it feels floaty and the power effect is diminutive, there is no weapon in the game that delivers a satisfying punch.
Your alternative is stealth, and that is so simplistic and elementary that it's barely any fun. Oh, and let's not forget how easy it is to cheese boss battles with a pistol and Chain Shot.

There's not much you can say for it that isn't negative or simply "it's adequate" , this is just a poor combination of Deus Ex and Mass Effect, and Obsidian should probably learn how to use their development time wisely or they'll consistently push out broken products. They'll just be another Troika, except this time around the bugs aren't worth suffering.
 
Eyenixon said:
They were expecting a solid product with polish and competent game design.
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Anyone who expects this from Obsidian is stupid by default.

Eyenixon said:
Oh, and let's not forget how easy it is to cheese boss battles with a pistol and Chain Shot.
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Did you play on easy mode or something.
[spoiler:ccda52d2a8]Stabbity stab stab.[/spoiler:ccda52d2a8]
 
Eyenixon said:
There's not much you can say for it that isn't negative or simply "it's adequate" , this is just a poor combination of Deus Ex and Mass Effect
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As far as i know mass effect is known for it´s linearity, not saying the game is not good, but it´s rpg elements are very light.

And Deus ex is not a wonder either, AI sucked there like in no other game and as AP, the game was everything but polished.

Just saying no game is perfect, what matters it´s just what's worth for you.

To me, it's writting, story, memorable characters and plenty of choices and consecuences. Sure i want a polished game, but i prefer an unpolished game which excels at those things rather than the opposite


PD: I think insults to spanish reviewrs are out of tone
 
Vegas_Wanderer said:
Just saying no game is perfect, what matters it´s just what's worth for you.
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Thank you. As much as everyone bitches, I have never played a game that wasn't glitched one way or the other.

Haven't played Alpha Protocol, but will tomorrow.. and I've always enjoyed Obsidians games regardless of technical problems. Well, except when Neverwinter Nights 2 was released in an almost unplayable state... haha.
 
Reconite said:
Eyenixon said:
They were expecting a solid product with polish and competent game design.
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Anyone who expects this from Obsidian is stupid by default.

Eyenixon said:
Oh, and let's not forget how easy it is to cheese boss battles with a pistol and Chain Shot.
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Did you play on easy mode or something.
[spoiler:5720b370b4]Stabbity stab stab.[/spoiler:5720b370b4]
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Yes, it's stupid to have standards, stop making excuses for the imbecility of gaming developers. Obsidian fucked up, not the people who had to review it, blaming them because their expectations were too high is nonsense (since it wasn't the case anyhow). There wasn't much hype for Alpha Protocol so most reviewers went into it with no real expectation at all even.
And no, I'm playing on Normal, the AI is too god damn stupid to pose any challenge.

Vegas_Wanderer said:
Eyenixon said:
There's not much you can say for it that isn't negative or simply "it's adequate" , this is just a poor combination of Deus Ex and Mass Effect
Click to expand...

As far as i know mass effect is known for it´s linearity, not saying the game is not good, but it´s rpg elements are very light.

And Deus ex is not a wonder either, AI sucked there like in no other game and as AP, the game was everything but polished.

Just saying no game is perfect, what matters it´s just what's worth for you.

To me, it's writting, story, memorable characters and plenty of choices and consecuences. Sure i want a polished game, but i prefer an unpolished game which excels at those things rather than the opposite


PD: I think insults to spanish reviewrs are out of tone
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This isn't the job of the reviewer, the reviewer's job is to evaluate primarily the most important aspects of a game, which is the gameplay itself. I said it before, I don't understand why PS:T and Arcanum received such good reviews when they were honestly pretty terribly made even compared to the standard buggy RPG. Loving a game for its story and characters is fine, loving those elements then ignoring all the game's major issues while slapping an 8/10 on the score board because you liked the superfluous details is moronic. Reviews are supposed to be honest and objective, and while that's impossible, they can at the very least do something called "trying", which is what most publications did with Alpha Protocol.
Now if they could only do the same for AAA titles but unfortunately the fight for "exclusives" and advertising is too much an influence.
 
Eyenixon said:
Loving a game for its story and characters is fine, loving those elements then ignoring all the game's major issues while slapping an 8/10 on the score board because you liked the superfluous details is moronic.
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I agree with parts of what you are saying, but strongly disagree with you calling character design, setting, dialogue and story writing "superfluous details". They are things that are integral to a complete package as a game.

Yes, gameplay should stand on it's own; it is, afterall, a game. But no one goes for a bike ride down the broken pavement in Chicago. They ride for the hills in the Alps. People want their world to feel vibrant and alive. Otherwise, it doesn't matter how amazing the bike design is if you get bored of riding it in a bland world?

A game reviewers job is to present a clear and unbiased picture of a product. No one, as far as I've seen, does this anymore, though, so why you're acting like Planescape: Torment was the 4th sign of the apocalypse, I have no idea.
 
I've had an odd feeling about this news post, and I just now understood why.

I know this is a tyranny and all. :P But something must be said! :hide:

This news post seems so out of place as a.. news post. There's a perfectly good area called General Gaming and Hardware Forum. That's where I would post something like this. 8-)

Of course, I'm not an admin. Carry on then. :lalala:
 
A review is never going to be unbiased but reviewers need to more clearly seperate out the opinion from the observations. You can describe gameplay and such and then comment on it. That enables the reader to get both observations and comparisons about the game and then opinions on such. I really like it when reviewers compare games with similar games so that I can better see what they are measuring it against.
 
IMissLark said:
Eyenixon said:
Loving a game for its story and characters is fine, loving those elements then ignoring all the game's major issues while slapping an 8/10 on the score board because you liked the superfluous details is moronic.
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I agree with parts of what you are saying, but strongly disagree with you calling character design, setting, dialogue and story writing "superfluous details". They are things that are integral to a complete package as a game.

Yes, gameplay should stand on it's own; it is, afterall, a game. But no one goes for a bike ride down the broken pavement in Chicago. They ride for the hills in the Alps. People want their world to feel vibrant and alive. Otherwise, it doesn't matter how amazing the bike design is if you get bored of riding it in a bland world?
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Amen
 
First off I think people are unnecessarily harsh on FO3. Yes, FO1/2 are much, much better. That said, FO3 was an entertaining game--entertaining enough to play to the end. Not entertaining enough to buy the DLC or play again, but that's more than a lot of games for me. It may not live up to FO1/2, but it sure as heck ain't a 6/10.

Arcanum was a terrible game, and I really tried liking it. Horrible graphics, the real-time system was laughably borked (I was confused when I first played it until I disabled it), and aside from those secondary issues I just didn't find it fun. Felt unnecessarily linear, the story was boring me... didn't have the depth of FO1/2. Vampire Bloodlines had its moments, but definitely wasn't anything exemplary.

I want to like Obsidian, I really do. Feargus Urquhart is a cool guy to talk to, and a lot of the staff are behind some of my cherished Black Isle games (BG1/BG2, etc). That said, they haven't really made any game that I really liked, be it NWN2, KOTOR2, etc.

Is Alpha Protocol worth picking up for PC? Pondering buying it just out of principal of supporting the company, but if it's that bad then I might pass...
 
yukatan said:
Arcanum was a terrible game, and I really tried liking it. Horrible graphics, the real-time system was laughably borked (I was confused when I first played it until I disabled it), and aside from those secondary issues I just didn't find it fun. Felt unnecessarily linear, the story was boring me... didn't have the depth of FO1/2.
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ok, i will be the first to admit that arcanum is no holy grail as a RPG when taken on its own merits.

but when you compare arcanum to a game like FO3 or oblivion, it then becomes a holy grail of RPGs.

arcanum CAN be linear if you approach it on your first time and dont replay it or try to play it in a different order. thats what defines linear. if you MUST go from A to B to C to D then its linear. arcanum is not linear. its not extremely sandboxish, but it is sandboxish.

RPGs may be horrid on their first play through. what defines them as a RPG is when you play them again and purposefully try to be different and do things differently.
 
yukatan said:
Arcanum was a terrible game, and I really tried liking it. Horrible graphics, the real-time system was laughably borked (I was confused when I first played it until I disabled it), and aside from those secondary issues I just didn't find it fun. Felt unnecessarily linear, the story was boring me... didn't have the depth of FO1/2.
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Go to The House Of Lords and hunt around for the resolution patch, latest unofficial game patch and High Quality Townmaps (see below)…after you fix all that stuff the game is 100% better, not that it wasn’t great to start with. I too had reservation after my initial play of Arcanum, and left it for years before tried again, though the game isn’t perfect by any means, it is a wonderful game - just give it a chance.

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All this Arcanum hatred is making alec sad.

Also: maybe I got a special copy, but in all my playthroughs of the game I've never found a bug I wasn't able to solve by sheer common logic.

I rate it much higher than, for instance, Fallout 2 of which the numerous bugs NEVER teased me either.

Heh. Guess I'm just lucky, eh? :roll:
 
Never realized any bugs in Fallout 2 as well and I played it often with only the last official patch.
 
Eyenixon said:
Now if they could only do the same for AAA titles but unfortunately the fight for "exclusives" and advertising is too much an influence.
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But the problem here is that they don't, so you have AP which receives these incredibly low scores and a game like Fallout 3 which receives incredibly high scores. AP may need a *lot* of polish and some work on the gameplay mechanics, but Fallout 3 was pretty light on the polish as well, needed a *lot* of work on the gameplay mechanics, and the content (dialogue, story, character-building mechanics, world, etc.) are piss-poor in comparison to a game like AP. In what world does a game like Fallout 3 deserve scores of 10/10 while AP deserves 5/10 or even 2/10?

So, while you may be right that the reviewers are really just doing their job in this instance, it's still not right if they don't explicitly state, "Hey, this time we're being honest in our review so you can't compare the scores we give this game to the scores of other games where we've been heavily influenced by developer advertising, gifts, hype, and the threat of losing access to early previews and review copies of titles from major development studios."
 
Whats the deal with trolling PS:T and Arcanum?
Either way, id much rather play a game that has something to it, even if i have to crawl through sewers to avoid game hanging.
 
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