Alpha Protocol (2010) - Review

Some times games don't manage to make you feel as much as you or the developers hoped for. Alpha Protocol has a lot going for it, but falls a bit short of being a good game. As it is now, it's ok. Good enough to waste some time on, if all you were going to do was scroll through Youtube Reels anyway. But probably not something you're going to think too much about once you've turned it off.

Which is unfortunate because on paper Alpha Protocol has a lot going for it. Developed by Obsidian ( Knight of the Old Republic, Fallout: New Vegas, Outer Wilds) and published by SEGA (needs no introduction) in 2010, it presents itself as an action role-playing shooter and could fool anyone that it was picking up the baton from Deus Ex after Deus Ex sort of fumbled and lost it.

It's clear that is what it is trying to do, with the main character introduction and gameplay being very similar. You play as Mike Thorton, and at the beginning of the game it's not entirely clear why you are where you are. But you are quickly thrust into the action as you run, stealth and shoot your way through different set pieces. After only a handful of missions you end up embroiled in a plot twist, Bourne-style, and need to keep working to figure things out. It's a story about corporate greed, shifting alliances and plenty of backstabbing, if you choose to. The pacing is high and the story cuts back and forth between the present and the future. 

The game allows you to tackle missions in a variety of ways - when you start the game you can choose what kind of agent you want to be, and it affects how your agent will be able to solve different problems and presumably more or less how you are going to play through the game. Each time you level up you can choose to improve different weapon skills, stealthing, technical aptitude and more typical RPG stuff. You also unlock skills on cooldowns which you can trigger to improve your situation in different ways. I found some of those skills absolutely mandatory, like the skill that allows you to track enemies even when you can't visibly see them. That skill starts out on a cooldown but if you invest enough points into it, it becomes permanent and made the levels way easier to get through.

A big reason for this is because the stealth sections aren't very well realized, but that could also be because I didn't put many points into this. I found it hard to judge how visible Thorton was in any given moment, and often found myself confused when I was spotted by someone. After having played games like Thief and aforementioned Deus Ex, I just know there are much better ways to inform your player of these things, but on the other hand games like Assassins Creed struggle with this also.

Running and gunning works fine however. Your weapons have different recoil, different bullets and different addons you can attach to improve their stats. You can take cover behind things and throughout the levels there are a lot of computers to hack and locks to pick if you want to. All of these things usually give you some sort of small upper edge, like disabling cameras or extra loot.

The game has a neat, optional, tutorial in the beginning - which I completely butchered. The people assisting me were delicate about my lack of skill however. The game never felt hard though, and even though I often messed up because the controls aren't always precise enough, it was usually not difficult to get myself out of the situations I had put myself into. Enemies are often contained in segments, even within a level, meaning that once you've shot off a certain few in an area, the rest will be just as unaware as ever. 

In fact, let's talk a bit more about this part. I played this on PC with keyboard, but it really felt like the game was made for a control pad, the way you're supposed to interact with the environment and even with menus just was a bit unintuitive and clunky. For instance, to select between different cooldowns or gadgets (grenades, first aids) you press Z or C and choose from a radial menu as default, rather than them being bound to different keys. And the interface doesn't always react to where the mouse cursor is, in that weird way that you only understand if you've experienced it.

The AI is not the best, actually among the most stupid I have seen in a game of this time. Several bosses I managed to unintentionally cheese simply because their heads were poking out behind some cover and they wouldn't react when I laid in to them. I guess the AI thought they were behind cover and just couldn't figure why they were still taking damage. And when I shot someone, it didn't matter where it happened, everyone in the vicinity knows my exact location immediately and run through corridors and up and down stairs to find me without trouble. What is up with the homing tracking? Then they run towards me like lambs to slaughter, so some times it will work in my favor. And this is not the kind of game where you have to worry about leaving bodies visibly anywhere, AI does not react to this at all.

Obsidian has put a lot of effort into making a slick feeling game in other areas though. The game tracks your reputation with most of the characters you meet, which in turn affects how they react to different situations and conversations. It's explained early on that a good reputation isn't always beneficial, because a bad reputation can make someone annoyed with you which in the world of covert operation can be used to your advantage. When they explained this I was intrigued by how this was going to showcase itself in the game. Often during conversation a wheel of reactions will pop-up. You have a few seconds to choose how Thorton is going to react to what is being talked about. The options are often only described with an adjective, "angry", "flirty", "professional", and it's some times difficult to predict exactly what each option means. It happened fairly often that I chose something only to feel like that wasn't what I was going for at all.

Between missions you spend time in a base of operations which allows you to tinker with your gear and otherwise prepare for your mission. One interesting feature is the option to buy "intel", that will give you different benefits in your upcoming missions. This can be everything from a map of the area you're going to, information on the characters you're meeting or even giving you optional ways to go around the place. You can choose in which order you play through missions which in turn affect how some people around you react. There are a lot of variables to play around with and they feel like they matter. Your choices are some times very weighty and not always easy to make.

I've only played through the game once, but it definitely gives you the impression that the choices you make and the way you handle situations impact how you move forward, meaning you can have a wholly different experience on a second playthrough. I can't say how well this is realized, but it felt impressive and enticing. After a few hours with the game I couldn't help but see the layered onion that it was trying to be, and I liked it.

It's really too bad the main character is such an uninteresting sausage of a person. The poor guy doing the voice acting sounds bored half the time and confused the other half, like he doesn't really understand what he is saying. And unfortunately this goes for most of the characters of the game, where pretty much all of them sound like they are phoning it it. The only guy who sounds like he is having fun is Steven Heck, but then Heck is a special kind of psycho. I rarely even react to voice acting performances, even less complain about them, but in this game it is so bad it actually detracts from the overall experience.

Overall, and to reiterate, Alpha Protocol has some interesting highs and lows. It's almost like two different teams worked on it, or they ended putting so much effort into the writing that they didn't have any money left for the gameplay. It's far from a bad game, and easy enough to rarely annoy you. In the end it's just kind of... forgettable.

El Stompo (2014) - The Spectrum Game Review

In my quest to review the games on my The Spectrum in fairly random order, I have gotten to El Stompo. El Stompo was released in 2014 and as such is a another "modern" game for the ZX Spectrum, just like my previous review game TCQ. In El Stompo you play as a frog-like creature who works as a TV repair...frog. The only way it knows to repair things is by stomping on them. Of course!

What follows is 35 screens of puzzle solving, in which you need to avoid enemies, obstacles and traverse tricky levels to get to stomping all those TV's.

El Stompo is a pretty game. It's colorful, has some really cute sprites and as soon as you figure out what the different blocks and items do, everything is easy to understand and play. The puzzle solving really ranges from fairly simple to fiendish but El Stompo nails the "just one more try"-feedback loop and I never felt frustrated when things didn't go my way. Some variables can feel like they are on the edge of too random and some times you are required to do some good old waiting just for circumstances to be fruitful, but never to the point where it would detract from the fun. My only gripe with the game is that the jump button (A) and restart level button (B) are right next to each other on the controller and I miss clicked this way more than I would've liked.

The controls take a little bit of getting used to, it's easy to overshoot a step which often means death, especially on later levels. But once you know, you know.

El Stompo doesn't have any music, which I actually didn't mind as much as I thought I would. I realized while playing that not having any background music could actually be quite nice. I guess as a creator you'd reason that silence is better than something that would annoy, though I have no idea if this is the reason game creator Dave Hughes omitted a soundtrack. The game does have a few sound effects though, and they are suitably scrappy and bloppy.

El Stompo is really fun and a great addition to the Spectrum game library. If you have the opportunity to try it out I recommend it. I've only gotten to level 20 so far, but I am definitely not giving up.

TCQ (2022) - The Spectrum Game Review

 Where is a good place to start when setting out on the endeavor to review all the games on my new The Spectrum? Alphabetically? Chronologically? All orders have their benefits, but me and my kid (Ed, 12 yo) decided to just go with whatever game we felt like playing.

So first out is TCQ (Triangle, Circle, Square), released in 2022 by Portuguese developer Amaweks. But hang on a minute, 2022? Isn't this supposed to be a ZX Spectrum game? Yeah, apparently a lot of older systems still have thriving indie-developer scenes, where modern games are still being released for systems that are several decades old. And I love that. While I am definitely not in the know of these indie-scenes, I think the idea of these systems still being kept alive through sheer passion (since I really doubt there is any big money in it), is human creativity and love for a craft at its best.

So TCQ is maybe an odd game to start out on when reviewing games for a system that is older than myself (ZX Spectrum was originally released in 1982). But maybe all those decades have allowed game developers to really see new and interesting ways of utilizing what makes the Spectrum so unique. I think TCQ definitely proves this to be true - the creative mind behind the game, Paulo A.M Villalva, didn't actually know about the ZX Spectrum until quite recently. Learning more about it he came to embrace one of the quirks that makes the Spectrum memorable - the color clash. Back in the day this was considered a big short coming of the computer, and something developers tried to hide as much as possible, hence the rather unique graphical style of the ZX Spectrum.

I don't really understand the technical aspect of color clashing (you can read more about it here) but I realize that just like Amaweks it's something I never considered to be a bad thing, but rather something that appealed to my eye. Paulo took it one step further and realized he could utilize this quirk and incorporate it so that it became the focal point of a game, and TCQ was born.

TCQ was inspired by paintings from artists like Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky and maybe Joan Miró, artists whom I myself happen to quite enjoy the works of.

The game itself is simple enough, you control one of three shapes through different stages and need to solve some simple platforming to make it to the end. You can only be one shape at the time, but different shapes can get you through different obstacles. The shapes can be acquired in different areas, meaning you have to backtrack certain parts to be able to reach new parts, in what could be called a very simple form of Metroidvania. The circle allows you to jump, the triangle can shoot through objects and the square allows you to remove certain blocks. The stages are varied and fun, the music is absolutely great (unfortunately I couldn't find a single good video of it on Youtube). The controls are simple since all you need to do is move left-right and jump/shoot occasionally. I tried this both with the keyboard and the gamepad and both worked fine.

The game is very short though, and after five stages that you can clear quite easily once you know what you're doing, you're done. The big star of the game is without a doubt the graphics, which you might have to see in action to truly appreciate. Images might make you think it is headache inducing, hard to navigate or just aesthetically horrible. But seeing the little shapes move around in this world, and see how they visually interact with the shapes around them is just... interesting. It is like a living work of art.

It's definitely a game worth checking out and fun to play while it lasts. I would've loved to see more from this! 

Ed's commentary: 

I think the music was great but found the graphics a bit difficult to navigate. It can be hard to see what makes out the background and foreground when you are going to make a jump or moving around, so there is some trial and error involved in that. The gameplay is fun and easy to learn though. I enjoyed it and have already replayed it a few times.

The Spectrum - ZX Spectrum Retro Game Remake

 I am an 80's kid, but didn't really have video games when I was young. I grew up with a little bit of SNES and mostly N64. The very first console I owned myself was an N64 and I always had a hard time with anything older than that. SNES and NES games were just too difficult, too unforgiving, too confusing. Don't even get me started on games for consoles I had only heard about like the Commodore 64 and the Ataris. What about the consoles I had barely even heard about, like the Spectrums, the Vic-20, the TurboGrafx-16 and the Odyssey? Why would I ever care about that?

Somehow I managed to have an interest for all these old things even though I had to accept that I was probably never going to be able to play the games successfully. Reading about old consoles and old games, and especially reading stories about the way these things came to be (and came to crash down in many cases) still fascinates me, even though I never got to live and play with these consoles when they were the coolest thing around.

But I can't really explain why it's the ZX Spectrum specifically that really got its hooks into me. I can't remember when I first heard about it or when I first started to become more curious about it, but it happened somewhere, and I just couldn't stop thinking about it. Retro Games have done the world a favor and released remake-versions of a lot of old home computers, like the mini-commodore 64 or the mini vic-20, but I would just register and move on. But not so with the Spectrum. With this one I stopped and my brain went, "hey... I need this".

Then my brain went "but hey... why though? I've never played a single ZX Spectrum game, I know basically nothing about this console. What is it that draws me in?".

Yeah, like I said I can't explain it. Is it the unique graphics? Maybe. It is true there is something about them that have always drawn my eye. But that is a poor reason to spend 100 euro on a console. Yet here I am, proud owner of a "The Spectrum". Don't think I did this on a whim. I first heard about the remake Spectrum about half a year ago or so. I immediately wanted it but decided it was a stupid thing to buy. But I couldn't stop thinking about it. So after a few months of not being able to let it go I just ended up buying it. 

It's beautiful, and the box it comes with just oozes attention to detail and love. I've read and been told by actual ZX Spectrum owners that is a spot on replica of the original one. The first thing my daughter said when I opened it was "oh it smells lovely". And it does, it smells just like opening a new board game. This one comes with the possibility to run 64 bit and 128 bit. You can either run it in the "Games Carousel"-mode or in the "Classic"-mode, which is how the original ZX Spectrum booted and which allows you to do some BASIC programming if you know anything about that. The Spectrum itself is a keyboard, but also supports joystick-controller, D-Pad and other options I haven't explored. The Spectrum is plugged into the TV with an HDMI cable (one is provided in the box) and powered with a simple v5 adapter, same as any mobile phone uses. The box comes with a cable, but not the adapter. Not a problem, as 99% of people will already own a handful of those.

The instruction manual in the box only covers the very basic stuff, like how to start the console. To get to the good stuff, there is a QR-code to online manuals, both a more in-depth one (66 pages) for the console itself and for each and every game as well. These will be necessary as it can be quite tricky to figure out the control schemes on your own, though I found that once you'd tried a few games you at least had an idea of where to start guessing. For someone used to the modern way of mapping keys, the layout doesn't really make sense to start with. Hitting M to start a game? Ok. Most of the games will have similar keyboard layouts but far from the same, so you need to learn differently for different games. Some features I haven't been able to access in the games because I just can't figure out the key for it, even with the help of the manual. Maybe this will work better with the D-Pad that I haven't been able to test yet. But other than that, the Games Carousel mode works just like you'd expect and looks great.

Each game allows for four save slots and rewind gameplay if you mess up (which you definitely will). If the preloaded games aren't enough, the console can read games from a USB as well. There are more options and features that I haven't explored/understood fully yet and I might get back to them in the future as and if I figure them out.

So what better way to celebrate me joining the ZX Spectrum family than to review the 48 games that the console comes with? Completely nostalgia free? Well, that is the intent anyway, we'll see how long-lived this ZX Spectrum fascination is once I actually try to deep-dive and properly play the games. Because I know myself I intend to enlist the help of my 12 yo son who is already a better, and especially a more patient, gamer than me. To be continued...

Atom RPG (2017) - Review

 I am always on the hunt for something to scratch that old Fallout-itch, especially the Fallout 2-itch (which explains why I haven't played Fallout 4 or Fallout London yet, they're not isometric enough). 

Wasteland 2 turned to be a waste (pun intended) of my time. A gameplay system that is too penalizing also ends up being boring quite quickly, at least for me. And I don't recall Fallout 1 or 2 being in any way cruel when it came to chance of success. As long as you played it smartly you'd make your way through. Be smart about which odds were in your favor and you'd survive. And maybe that was the main difference, in Wasteland 2 I rarely felt like the odds were in my favor. Or it felt like I was always betting on the wrong horse, in terms of which skills and stats I decided to improve. 

That's fair, not everyone should try to straight up copy the Fallout formula, it might just mean what you're serving isn't my cup of tea.

Time to check out another contender, then - Atom RPG. It calls itself a "post-apocalyptic indie game" and says it is inspired by Fallout (and Wasteland, in fairness), among others. So far, off to a good start.

An RPG is only as good as its stories and characters, for some reason I find that almost to be even more important when it comes to post-apocalyptic RPG's. The sci-fi and quasi-futuristic setting lends itself especially well to memorable experiences in the hands of good writers. Fallout made good use of this with their different explorations of the human condition inside the vaults, the consequences of the idealistic factions taken to their extreme and who could forget the tragic story of Harold and Bob?

Atom RPG seems to have been trying to get this right, and for the most part it does. Even though the player is a nobody with a cliché starting quest (find a group of people who have been lost), it sets you on the track to talk to and experience the waste which is far from empty. People have created small societies of all sorts out here and all kinds of religions and ideologies have had an opportunity to find footing. It is as it should in the apocalyptic world.

You get plenty of opportunity to makes decisions on whom to help out, as different factions and people looking for power will ask for you help. It is far from obvious which is the best course of option, which I appreciate. You'll have to go by gut feeling, and some times you won't be happy with the end result. Yet I don't feel cheated or like I've missed out on something important. Rather I feel like I got to leave my mark on the world and it's not supposed to be easy.

There is a starting direction to motivate you into going out into the wastes and it won't take long before you get a whole bunch of other quests. They will range from eradicating wolves, picking up a library book (Lord of the Rings) and infiltrating bandit gangs. These quests will in turn make you discover new quests or maybe a quest that seemed straightforward will branch out in front of you and become a lot more complicated than it first seemed. I started to collect all the quests I could and talk to every person I met in the hopes of completing some quests almost by accident. It can feel overwhelming or be just the kind of thing you're looking for. Personally I felt like I had to start focusing on a few quests before I got too confused. It gave me a bit of FOMO, where I was worried I travelled to new locations without having all the appropriate quests for the area, but I kept telling myself it was ok. A lot of the quests are memorable too. I stumbled upon a tiny side quests clearly inspired by the movie "the Thing" and that one will stick with me.

At one point some clearly not-so-nice guys convinced me to go down a dangerous looking bunker to grab all the loot I wanted. It sounded too good to be true and as I expected, they robbed me of all my stuff when I emerged again. I thought I could trick the game, reloaded and unloaded all my stuff inside the bunker. I go out the door and think I am being smart when the robbers have nothing to rob. Only I am the fool when the robbers realize I am trying to trick them and decide to kill me instead. The game is a lot more clever than you expect at times.

Even though we're living the post-apocalypse, there is a lot to see and do. With more quests in my log than I know what to do with, finding my way around feels a bit tricky. Even though each area has a map, there are no annotations nor the possibility to add any, meaning I still don't know where anything is located. Every building and alley looks like another shack. I guess it is difficult to make the wastelands to look anything but that, and maybe it's a bit much to ask for, but all the gray and brown does get tedious after a while.

On the other hand, Atom RPG makes a decent job at sprinkling a variety of locations around the Wasteland for you to discover. Everything from a mutant circus to a roaring forest, not just the regular derelict vehicles and worn down wooden buildings. The people who inhabit the place are equally diverse. From someone with an "outside" perspective, they almost seem oddly un-bothered by the fact that the world has gone down the toilet, metaphorically and aesthetically. But maybe this is exactly how people would react? They'd just accept the new reality of things and eke out their existence. 

Your stats make a big difference to how you can achieve your successes. But where Wasteland 2 constantly made me feel like I was the underdog, or two steps behind, Atom RPG gives me options. Maybe I can choose to solve a situation with barter, speechcraft, personality or strength. The end result might differ, or maybe several options are useful to reach the same solution. Either way this means I will never feel like I've put points into the wrong things, it just means I can choose which way I want to be able to solve my problems. This ended up being an absolutely crucial difference that turned a frustrating system in Wasteland 2, into a fun one in ATOM Rpg.

There is a talent system. And it took me almost 15 hours of game time to discover it. Either that says something about how little Atom intends to hold your hand, or probably a lot more about my eye sight. The talents feel useful and allow you to further niche your play style down certain paths. Some balancing choices mean some skills seem less useful, but that could also just be me not understanding the game properly. It's probably the latter.

The waste is also surprisingly a lot less hostile than the average post-apocalyptic game. You are far more likely to encounter friendly traders than mutated wolves. And the traders are actually friendly, rather than turning out to be mutated wolves in disguises. Almost a disappointment that. Traders can sell you all kinds of things, and you can find useful stuff lying around all over, especially in people's cupboards. As long as they don't have line of sight of you doing the thievery, they won't care.

A crafting system allows you to put things together into mostly useful things, like various equipment. This turned me into a veritable hoarder as any little piece of toilet paper you pick up could turn out to be a crucial part in something you want to craft. Filling up my bags did not take long and I soon had to realize I couldn't run around picking up everything I saw like a 3 year old on a sugar rush.

You get experience for most things you do, lockpicking, saying the right things in some conversations and of course combat. But each level requires a lot of experience to reach and after a few hours I started to feel under levelled for the quests I had gained. Guess it's not a real RPG unless you've got to do some grinding. 

There seems to be a lot to say about a game that is mostly brown/beige, running around smacking mutant ants and talking to semi-alcoholic people. But I keep having fun with Atom RPG. There is a lot to tinker with and every little achievement feels like a big success, because the game is just the right amount of stingy with its praise. It's not a difficult game, but it also doesn't hold your hand. It opens the doors for you to explore it, and never badgers you to stay. In a world where the gaming culture is all about catching your attention and not allowing you to leave, it feels refreshingly pleasant.