2019-05-01+PC+Gamer

I realise I’m going to love it the
moment I hear the doddering
espionage soundtrack in the menu.
It’s the music that would play as you
took the lift to James Bond’s luxury
shag-pad. Everything about this
suggests the game takes itself
completely seriously,
and that just makes me
more excited.
This earnestness
continues on the Agent
Select screen, which
reads like it was drafted
by Garth Marenghi’s
ghostwriter. I go with a
‘freelancer’ – partly
because that’s what I am in real life,
and partly because it describes me as
‘fearless from birth’, as if I commando
rolled out of the womb with a
Walther PPK inexplicably concealed
on my infant body. I haven’t fired a
single round yet, and I’m already in
love with Alpha Protocol.
I decide my guy will be an expert
at martial arts and stealth to the

I

t’s usually difficult to enjoy a poor game in the way it’s possible to
enjoy a poor film. Alpha Protocol, however, is as close
as it gets. You know it’s bad, I know it’s bad, Obsidian probably
knows it’s bad, and yet despite this, everyone with a soul deserves
to play it at least once. It’s gaming’s Plan 9 From Outer Space;
The Room with elbows to the throat.

exclusion of everything else. I can’t

fire a gun, but by God I can punch. I

am Mike Fists: the chop in the

shadows, the chokehold in the dark.

Mike Fists wakes up sedated in a

mysterious lab, wearing scrubs that

have a QR code on them (‘scan this to

get 20 per cent off your

next exploding watch’).

As discussed, I’m

terrible at shooting, so I

decide to batter

everyone instead. It

feels great when it

works, but a few times

Ifall short and end up

flailing in front of my

enemy, doing spin-kicks in the air like

I’m trying to impress my school

crush after one karate lesson.

I adore the minigames. Hacking,

lock picking, and deactivating alarms

are satisfying distractions that are

almost certainly nothing like the real

thing. It reminds me of Sid Meier’s

Covert Action. When it goes well, I

feel super effective, even after I press

the wrong button and realise I can

deactivate alarms by shooting instead

of hacking them. I also love that the

opening takes place somewhere

called ‘The Greybox’, which is what I

would have called my secret lair

when I was seven. The Shushplace.

The Shadowyurt. Incognitovault.

Johnny English

Things get real when I leave The

Greybox and head to Saudi Arabia.

It’s going rather well until I zipline

right past a security camera – which,

to be fair, the game did warn me

about. It’s a mistake that gives me the

pleasing image of some beleaguered

security guard hitting the alarm after

a klungo superspy goes zooming

across his monitor.

And that pretty much sums up

everything I love about this dumb,

brilliant game – accidental slapstick

moments in a world that’s grimly

serious, like finding a pop-up

inflatable snake in the urn of a

crematedlover.

NeedtoKNow

What is it?

Unintentionally

hilarious

espionageaction

EXPECttOPaY

£10

DEvElOPEr

ObsidianEntertainment

PublishEr

SEGA

rEviEWEDOn

Intel Core i7-7700 CUP

@ 3.60GHz, 16 GB RAM,

NVIDIA GeForce GTX

1070,Windows 10

MultiPlaYEr

No

link

https://bit.ly/2yAfTHS

65

It’s like if Bioware made

an Austin Powers game

but didn’t realise it was

meant to be a joke. I can’t

recommend it enough.

vErDiCt

Covert InaCtIon

AlphAprotocol plays like a B movie

I amMike

Fists: the chop

in the shadows,

the chokehold

in the dark

oldgAmesrevisitedbymattelliott

thEY’rE baCk

Forget krav maga, this is

pure ’60s movie kung fu.

The worst thing is the

crouching animation.