Colorado Shooting

The attack in Aurora, Colorado is a tragedy that leaves me feeling numb and sick. I need to get my feelings off my chest before I write anything else because it's such a senseless waste of life.

When these things happens, when some psychopath or monster decides that he wants to get attention by killing people, I have to wonder who failed the world the most.  Was it the person responsible, society, parents, or who? What makes people want to stand out by killing? I don't get it and, honestly, I hope I never do.

Just felt the need to say that.

Spec Ops: The Line review

    Violence in video games is something that I tend to go with the majority of gamers with. I.e. it's a harmless activity roughly akin to action movies. The people who are killed are fictional and there's no more danger to people playing them than reading Shakespeare. After all, plenty of people died in Hamlet, didn't they?

    Spec Ops: The Line has a different take on the subject. It's not that playing video games will make you violent, but it questions whether or not it's really a healthy past time or artistically worthwhile to slaughter thousands of artificial pixels.

    In short, it's sort of the shooter version of Watchman. The game's protagonists are living in a world governed by shooter rules like Call of Duty or Gears of War but react to the carnage around them in a believable manner.

    In other words, visceral horror and revulsion. Indeed, even when our "heroes" attempt to live by the rules of a shooter and relentlessly mow down hordes of enemies, it is something that proves to be a horrific mistake. The game lures into thinking things will be one way and routinely pulls the rug out from under you.

    The premise is that the city of Dubai has been hit by a sandstorm of Biblical proportions and the 33rd Battalion of the United States Army is sent in to help with the evacuation. The evacuation goes poorly and it is believed the 33rd Battalion is KIA. The sandstorm, being a Deus Ex Machina and all, lasts for six months and everyone writes off the 33rd as a loss. When a transmission is heard which indicate that members of the 33rd may still be alive, the US military sends in a three-man team to determine if there's anyone alive.

    The idea behind the story is ridiculous for a variety of reasons but it's like a hidden world of supernatural creatures running around in present time, you either put on your suspension of disbelief blinders or there's no story. In any case, our heroes head on in and immediately find signs that the 33rd is engaged in a low-level war with the survivors they've dubbed "insurgents." You know, despite the fact that Dubai is in the United Arab Emirates and they have no authority there.

    What's amazing is that the story actually doesn't attempt to make obvious commentary on the War on Terror or Iraq War. Quite the contrary, the game deliberately sets out to create a self-contained situation that functions by its own rules. The 33rd aren't invaders and the locals aren't terrorists. They use some of the War on Terror's language but even that is mostly replaced by real life military jargon.

    In a way, I think this makes better satire than directly making one-on-one correlations. Apocalypse Now wouldn't be nearly as good a critique of Vietnam if not for the oddball elements that come from Heart of Darkness' original Congo setting. Spec Ops: The Line draws liberally from both works, establishing itself as a work about the horrors of wartime very early on. Ironically, what you would THINK they crib from those two stories is a clever bit of misdirection.

    People who want to know what I'm talking about will just have to play the game.

    Spec Ops: The Line is filled with the game bringing home the fact that the people you're fighting and killing by the dozens are human beings. Not to spoil but, on at least one occasion, the people you think are the bad guys turn out to be regular people who now attack you because you've killed so many of them. Several times, the story calls into question why you're reacting with Call of Duty-esque violence before reminding the players that other options have disappeared because of it. In other words, in for a penny, in for a pound even when semi-innocent people will be killed.

    There's a bit of arrogance in this sort of game-making, saying, "Why are you playing this bloody murder simulator?" The answer, of course, is that "You, the developer, have chosen to devote thousands of hours to creating this bloody murder simulator. Worse, you've charged me sixty bucks for it so you better damn well deliver the goods."

    Just as the developers more or less ask, through in-game dialogue, what's preventing the player from turning the game off you have to ask them, "what prevented you from making a game where people aren't slain by the thousands?" Still, despite this, Spec Ops: The Line is a wonderful 'horrors of war' story.

    A note on the other elements of the game, the game play is average and the setting is pretty small. I finished the game in about six hours, so it's probably not worth paying the full price for. Still, much like Portal, I can't really imagine the game being expanded on in any meaningful way. It's good the way it is.

7/10

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

    The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is one of my favorite video games of all time. I know I say that a lot but the quality of the story, graphics, characters, and setting adds up to something far greater than the sum of its parts. I know people might find me a bit hypocritical for this after bringing the game to task for its depiction of women but that doesn't mean the work as a whole isn't awesome. There are also far, far worse offenders in the handling of females than the Witcher series.

    The premise of the game is that Geralt of Rivia is presently serving as the bodyguard of King Foltest of Temeria. The ending of the previous game had Geralt save the monarch from an assassin who appeared to a Witcher himself. This is a premise which stretches credibility a bit since Witchers are supposed to remain apolitical but Geralt's willingness to involve himself in Temerian affairs can be explained away by his love for Foltest's adviser Triss.

    To talk about the rest of the plot runs the risk of spoilers. However, I will share the detail that a powerful Witcher named Letho is attempting to assassinate the Kings of the North. Geralt of Rivia, interested in the affair for reasons of his own, is attempting to stop him. At the very least, Letho's actions endanger all Witchers everywhere. The resulting story involves politics, dragons, betrayal, racism, and epic monster fights.

    The more you know about the Witcher series, the more you'll enjoy this game though newcomers to the franchise won't be lost. My wife, not a fan of video games, fell in love with the setting and spent many an hour just watching me game. The graphics are gorgeous and even the Xbox 360 version looks more like it was painted than designed. I can't say it has quite the same sweeping vistas as Skyrim but the individual characters are a treat to look at.

    The gameplay of the Witcher 2 is much simplified from the original one. You can wield your sword in one of two ways, hitting with hard but slow strikes or short but fast ones. You can supplement your character, Geralt, with powerful potions if you know combat is coming. You can also work a series of minor spells at the beginning of the game, which can become more powerful if you choose to enhance them. Like most RPGs, it works on a leveling system with the option to improve any of the above skills. Finally, Geralt has regenerating health.

    The Witcher 2's real heart, however, is in it's evocative setting. The Witcher world will come off to Americans as closer to the fantasy world of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire than J.R.R Tolkien though the game contains several hilarious digs at The Lord of the Rings. Morality isn't black and white with the game going to painstaking lengths to make sure that every group has a reason behind their actions.

    This culminates in one of the game's coolest features. The entire second act of the story completely changes depending on whether or not you wish to side between the human knights you've befriended or the elvish terrorists who have a semi-legitimate cause. Very few video games give such a divergent path structure and such serious consequences to your choices. This carries over into Act III where the fate of whole nations can be decided by Geralt's actions.

    I'm going to take a moment to also talk about the heart of what makes the story work, Geralt of Rivia. Fans of the Witcher novels need no further explanation as to why he's such a wonderful character to play but newcomers should know he's one of the best protagonists in video games. It's difficult to put into words why but he manages to invoke all of the charm and ruggedness of a Clint Eastwood character without falling into of the pitfalls that afflict characters who try to be tough. Geralt simply IS tough.

    Playing the role of a mercenary monster hunter is enough to win you badass credentials to begin with but he's a figure who also speaks truth to power. No matter what choices you make during the game, Geralt never 'breaks character' and always does his decisions in a way that feels true to the previous scenes. That's fantastic writing there. He's also a character who is funny as hell, often serving as the only rationale person in the setting. Nothing the other characters ever do is silly but they routinely are blinded by sexism, racism, or hatred to the point they can't serve their own interests.

    The other characters are also a source of tremendous amusement. My favorite is Dandelion, the womanizing bard and part-time spy. As Geralt's best friend and chronicler, he provides much of the commentary on the politics involved. Geralt doesn't care who sits on the thrones of men but Dandelion keeps us informed of the stakes. It's an odd but enjoyable friendship to have the toughest man in the world hanging around with a flamboyant dandy. I also enjoy Zoltan, who has the misfortune of being a capable and ambitious man born in a time when dwarves weren't allowed to be either.

    The game is a vast improvement over the original Witcher in terms of handling romances as well. While Geralt is still able to have optional sexual encounters other than his primary love interest (Triss Merigold), these are all relatively well developed. The only ones that are 'just sort of there' are an elven woman whose life you saved and prostitutes. It's a far better handling of the subject of sex than the seemingly two dozen or so women you could seduce in the original game.

    The female characters are also extremely well-developed with the Witcher 2 having some of the most memorable plot-important women in gaming. The fact there's more than one vitally important plot-moving female PC shouldn't be rare but it is and the game mostly avoids depriving its female characters of agency.

    There is, however, a couple of points that need to be brought up for gamers interested in the Witcher 2. The first is that the game pushes hard the Mature rating. It is one of the few games I have encountered to have topless female nudity. Likewise, this is not briefly shown but the focus of several scenes. There is no 'censored' version of option, you simply have to experience it if you're a prudish or shy sort. The second is the contains exceptionally harsh language and some scenes of strong violence.

    More or less, the kind of thing you'd see if The Witcher was a show on HBO.

    The game also features two gay characters and one potentially bisexual one. Unfortunately, the two gay characters are both villains while the bisexual one is morally gray at best. I wouldn't bring this up if not for the fact the option exists for both of these characters to suffer horrific injury as well. The scene for the gay male character involves the option to have him castrated, thankfully in retaliation for his murder of someone as opposed to a hate-crime against his sexuality. The game also contains an example of one of my personal pet peeve: Rape as Drama.

    I'll spare you a long lecture on the topic but rape is something I think which sinks the narrative cold. It's especially problematic when otherwise strong female characters have it somewhere in their background. In the Witcher 2, the female character knight Ves only manages to become a Blue Stripes Knight after spending weeks as the sex slave of an elvish terrorist. Later in the game, a important female character (whose name will go unmentioned) is raped by a major NPC.

    This is in no way condoned by the game or treated for titillation value. It's a repulsive crime done to someone that Geralt may have romantic feelings for at best and at least has positive feelings toward. Unfortunately, that's the real rub. The rape exists to get the player well and truly pissed off so they will be more inclined to stick the aforementioned Major NPC many times with a dagger. This was something I could have done without in an otherwise progressive game.

    If not for these elements, I would have given the game a perfect ten. Everything else blows its competitors away. Unfortunately, these are not small flaws to me and affected my enjoyment of the whole. I'm not a prude and I'm capable of appreciating horrible things happened to people in "realistic" settings. Still, the game showed a mild sense of homophobia (while using lesbianism for titillation) while also doing something with rape I felt was tired and overdone. I don't think the game should be considered garbage for these elements but buyers should be warned. It's an otherwise great game with astounding visuals, amazing characters, and fun game play.

9/10

The Green Hornet Chronicles review

    The Green Hornet Chronicles is a book I purchased on the recommendation of a friend and I have to say I am mightily pleased. Obviously, being a thirty-one year old man, I never experienced the original Pulps. The Green Hornet, himself, isn't a Pulp character but a 1930s radio drama creation. The Green Hornet Chronicles is like a Pulp anthology, however, consisting of nineteen about the character's adventures.

     A relative of the Lone Ranger, the Green Hornet has taken up his ancestor's vigilantism with the twist of masquerading as a criminal. Since criminals believe the Green Hornet is one of them, they react differently to him than they would a police officer or Superman. They often try to make deals with him, bribe him, or intimidate him instead of just outright kill him. This works in the Green Hornet's advantage and allows him to lay many traps for the criminal underworld.

    The Green Hornet Chronicles functions, essentially, like self-contained comic books. They even have miniature comic book covers in front of the short stories. The stories vary drastically in tone and style but generally keep a consistent feel between them. They are set, not in the 1930s, but during the 1960s during the Green Hornet TV show with Van Williams and Bruce Lee. This inconsistency is never remarked on and I assume this is meant to take place in the television show continuity.

     The short stories are roughly as follows:

The Night Car - Will Murray

    An introduction into the world of the Green Hornet. It's a cute little story where our heroes have to deal with someone trying to track down the Black Beauty using the miraculous power of COMPUTERS! I liked it and think it was a wonderful bit of fluff.

I Had The Green Hornet’s Love Child - Greg Cox

    A humorous premise played straight. A woman claims to have had the Green Hornet's child in order to capitalize on his infamy. This, of course, makes her a target for the Green Hornet's many enemies.

Weakness - C.J. Henderson

    This is the only story I didn't like in the anthology. A politician in a loveless marriage has an affair and is blackmailed into becoming a crusading champion of justice by the Hornet. This is tawdry enough but when you discover the entire thing was engineered by the Hornet and the politician's feelings for the woman were real, my sympathy was squarely on the side of the Hornet's victim. .

Topsy-Turvy - James Chambers

    Reefer Madness! A delightfully gonzo story about a 60s Guru who brainwashes kids into a drug cult. The entire thing is deliciously retro from start to finish.

Nothing Gold Can Stay - Richard Dean Starr

    A story centered around Kato as opposed to the Green Hornet. I liked the depiction of the Hornet's now more famous companion. It goes to show you that Kato isn't the Hornet's sidekick but partner.

Just a Man - Thom Brannan

    One of my two favorite stories in the anthology. This is a dark but not TOO dark story about how a horrifically injured Marine sniper decides to become a vigilante. It sets the Green Hornet against an opponent arguably as talented and intelligent as him, one suffering from a horrible sense of misjustice. Just A Man is a story destined to end tragically but the journey makes the experience all the more worthwhile.

The Cold Cash Kill - James Reasoner

    Counterfeiters at the Daily Sentinel! This is a nice story to show Britt Reid being hit in a place he couldn't possibly expect. The legitimacy of the Daily Sentinel is a major part of Britt's secret identity. If it's reputation is destroyed, the Green Hornet could potentially lose its biggest defense.

     I like this idea, very original.

Flight of the Yellowjacket - Howard Hopkins

    I give this story very high praise, I would like to see the villain introduced in it again. The tying together of the Green Hornet further with the legacy of the Lone Ranger was always sort of out there but works perfectly here because it's more cosmic than anything else. Britt Reid has a beautiful ex named Cavendish.

     What could possibly go wrong?

By Scarab and Scorpion - Mark Ellis

    The Curse of the Mummy is a story that no longer works in modern times but fits well in the retro-universe of the Green Hornet. Obviously it's nothing supernatural but the oddity of the actual villains more than makes up for it.

You Can’t Pick the Number - Rich Harvey

    A nice tale of redemption and corruption. You Can't Pick the Number has an unusual criminal premise in a crooked lottery and I've got to say that as original enough for me to become interested.

Eyes of the Madonna - Ron Fortier

    The Cold War becomes the subject of the Green Hornet universe as a secret list of Russian agents in the United States is smuggled into Detroit. Given this isn't so far after the Cuban Missile Crisis, it's an excellent topical story that makes use of the time period.

Stormy Weather - Patricia Weakley

    A hilariously out-there story where an anachronistic snarky female bounty hunter, think Stephanie Plumb only Texan, decides to go after the Green Hornet only to start crushing on him. The story is told from her perspective and so completely askew from the usual Green Hornet stories that I couldn't stop laughing the entire way through.

     Bravo, Patricia.

The Auction - Terry Alexander

    Someone has stolen the Green Hornet's mask! The Green Hornet breaks his old one out and decides to go after it. It's a simple enough premise and I can't say I didn't enjoy watching it play out. Terry should be proud of his creation.

Go Go Gone - Robert Greenberger
    A friend of Britt Reid is murdered and the heroes find themselves on a treasure hunt for a Cold War secret project that people are willing to kill for. Go Go Gone is another bizarre story that works precisely because it's so left field.

Mutual Assured Destruction - Bill Spangler

    White slavery is even darker than the subject of Weakness but is handled here by the Hornet standing as a moral paragon against the dark. It's a harsh tale that keeps you biting your nails until the end.

The Crimson Dragon - Mark Justice

    The Crimson Dragon is an East Asian warlord who has come to spread his dope amongst the streets of Detroit. Unlike in most such stories, the Green Hornet is after one of his many victims as opposed to the Dragon himself. Kato, to me, acts a little out of character in dismissing the victim because she's a drug-user and part-time hooker.

Fang and Sting - Win Scott Eckert

    It's hard to put this story into words but the short version is it is simultaneously FRICKING AWESOME and BAT**** INSANE. We're temporarily dumped out of the 1960s continuity into an alternate universe containing Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu, James Bond's SPECTRE, and implications of plenty of other heroes. There's a giant underground base, exotic warriors, a femme fatale mad Doctor and more.

     It's completely out of genre but like Stormy Weather, works splendidly.

 The Inside Man - Matthew Baugh

     My other favorite story in the volume. It's not as gonzo as Fang and Sting or Stormy Weathers but it has the same strong emotional core as Just a Man. A Native American army veteran wants to escape the grinding poverty of his life on the reservation by working for the Green Hornet. The character must choose between honor and nobility with the stakes high because we don't know if he'll live or die unlike the leads.

 The Soul of Solomon - Harlan Ellison

      For whatever reason, it wasn't included in my book.

     A great work overall, The Green Hornet Chronicles is a worthwhile buy for anyone with even a passing familiarity with the Hornet. It's light, fun, enjoyable fiction. A great buy and well worth the money.

9/10

Go right instead of left every so often

    There is nothing new under the sun so trying to be original is an exercise in futility. That doesn't mean, however, you have to be derivative. It's a thought that occurred to me while I was writing an Irish character named Shannon O'Reilly.

    She's already got strikes against her. She's got red hair, she's violent, and her name is so Oireland it hurts. I then decided to do something unexpected and give her blue eyes. I then decided to make her Protestant instead of Catholic.

     This was noteworthy to me because the character originally in my head was a stereotypical redheaded, green-eyed Irish Catholic. You know, despite the fact red hair with green eyes is pretty damn rare in real life. I decided to make just a adjustment because it was so overdone. The result was the character felt more authentic to me. A minor change but, to me, an important one.

    I think more people should do this in their writing. Make a character Jewish, black, or Hispanic if you've initially envisioned them as a Caucasian Christian. Don't have a female character described as beautiful even if she's the love interest.

    Shake things up just a little.

    Really, when writ large, it can totally change your perspective on writing. I think this is the heart of making something "new" in the world of published fiction. My desire to write a spy novel, for example, was frustrated by the fact that I know almost nothing about real-life espionage. I also wanted to write something silly and exciting. I like James Bond movies (I have the whole set except for Quantum of Solace) but James was copied so many times he became a parody of himself by the Roger Moore era.

    Which is why True Lies is so awesome.

    True Lies is, according to the producers, a James Bond movie they created because no one was making movies in the franchise anymore. This was during the lull in the series after Timothy Dalton's well-acted but financially unsuccessful films The Living Daylights and License to Kill. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays, essentially, James Bond but the twist is he's a happily married family man.

    The dichotomy goes on to inform the rest of the movie. While True Lies is partially a comedy, other franchises went with the same basic change to great success. Alias is a James Bond story with the protagonist being a female with a spy father. Chuck is about an average guy regularly sucked into the world of international espionage.

    It occurred to me that virtually any tired old premise could be improved by just changing one or more elements and seeing how the dice fall. Let's take the generic Sherlock Holmes premise. A master Detective and his physically capable but less savant assistant solve crimes of an unusual nature. Now let's set it in a fantasy world like J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth. It occurs to me that I might want to read this story.

     Really, this is a tried and true method of creating something unique. The Magnificent Seven and A Fistful of Dollars are both adaptations of samurai films. Let's adapt The 47 Ronin from Japanese literature. The premise is a bunch of samurai are orphaned when their lord is forced to commit suicide due to the actions of a jealous rival. You could do a contemporary story about a group of Iraq war veterans out to revenge their former commander after he's framed.

    You don't have to do this. If you want to do a straight James Bond story with a tuxedo-wearing playboy spy, only changing the name and some cosmetic details, it's possible to write it well. Just be sure to make the character your own in some way and good things will follow. At the end of the day, you're writing people and if you treat them as having their own motivations and attitudes, you'll never go wrong.

     Still, I'm glad I changed Shannon's eye color and decided to mix-up my spy novel idea.

    Maybe I'll share how I decided to change it someday.

When writing a novel doesn't pan out

    Hey guys,

    No, despite what the title says, this isn't about me giving up on writing. In fact, I've completed two manuscripts and have edited them. I'm now fishing around for publishers and hope to join the ranks of established authors sometime this year. If not, then certainly next year. I even have a third manuscript in the works.

    No, this is an article about a most distressing subject. A subject that virtually every author will run into every now and can be a source of endless frustration. This is when you've made progress on a novel, extensive progress in fact, and discover that you don't like the results.

    This can happen with grammar, certainly, but that can be corrected. This can also happen with description, which is harder. However, the absolute worst scenario is when you realize that the novel itself is not working.

    Damn, that's a kick in the guts.

     have a number of manuscripts both completed and otherwise that will never see the light of day. If I had to put an estimate on the number of 100K+ novels I've done that I will never ever release, I'd say there was at least five or six. That's not including concepts I worked really hard on before abandoning.

    There's an old saying that the first one million words that every writer creates are crap. I don't necessary believe this is the truth but there's a little merit to the saying. Finding your footing at a writer is a long and torturous exercise.

     You could be halfway complete through a work only to find that it's filled with stock characters, banal dialogue, cliches, unoriginal ideas, or relies on contrivances that are essential the story. You can't rip one offensive element out without the whole thing tumbling down.

    I'll share with you one storyline of mine that will probably never see the light of day: Queen of Wands starring Anna Tarot. Anna Tarot was a exceptionally cool twenty-something sorceress who has a half-dragon boyfriend named Gabriel in a magical Los Angeles. There's evil afoot in the magical college-like environment she attends and she's drafted by the local secret society to stop it.

    There was nothing terrible about the above concept but the way I implemented it failed spectaculary. For example, as a white thirty-something male Geek, I know nothing about writing a "cool" character. My own romantic experience influenced my writing so the way the characters talked was inappropriate for the characters. I also inserted a lot of 'silly scenes' that were next to serious ones, leading to a wildly inconsistent tone.

    Oh and my wife hates Gabriel. Seriously. He's the one character I made who she could not stand.

    This is what leads to the most difficult decision a writer can face: when not to proceed with a novel. Stephen King, himself, actually wrote about the phenomenon in Bag of Bones when he described trunk novels. When you're a young and hungry author, you can create hundreds of manuscripts buit that doesn't mean any of them should see the light of day.

    I hesitate to tell you to hit the delete key, however. In fact, I strenuously urge all writers to keep all of their work, whether in hard copy format or backed up on a hard-drive. Even if you have decided, perhaps correctly, that a work is terrible it's an important part of the writing process. You may want to revisit it someday.

    J.R.R Tolkien fiddled with the Lord of the Rings from the time he was a soldier in the trenches of first World War until after his son fought in the second. His original concept was closer to what we call the Silmarillion and it wasn't until after he created a character named Bilbo Baggins and he got published that what we know as his masterwork got published.

     There's no shame in writing something, completing it, deciding you don't like it, and then rewriting it from the ground up. This is a part of the writing process and sometimes in order to see if something works or not, you have to see how it looks on paper. Other times, you might want to fiddle with the concept itself.

    Finally, there's something to be said for a writer getting cold feet as well. Plenty of times, you can develop an aversion to your own writing when there's nothing wrong with it as well. For that, you just need to set down your work and come back to it later. Maybe with fresh eyes, it'll look better later or you can figure out where you went wrong and rework it. You could also say, "nah" and start something new.

    It's all part of the game.

    Cheers!

Alpha Protocol review

  Alpha Protocol is an oddball creation that I purchased for $7.95 from my local Gamestop. Was it a bargain? Yes. Is it the best game of all time? No. Could it have been the best game of all time? Maybe. That's the most frustrating thing about the game. This is one of the more entertaining games I've played in my life and should be up there with Skyrim and Max Payne. The problem is the flaws are numerous, glaring, and irritating. If the game even had a patch, which it doesn't, it might be up there with the greats.

    The premise of the game is simple. You are Michael Thorton, a mixed race protagonist who is semi-voluntarily recruited into a secret government agency called Alpha Protocol. Michael Thorton can be played in three ways; Aggressive, Suave, or Professional. This roughly corresponds to the three different sorts of spies which exist: Jack Bauer, James Bond, and Jason Bourne.

    The plot follows Michael Thorton as he's sent to investigate Al-Samad, an Al-Qaeda knock-off, which has been using next-generation missiles to shoot down American airliners. These missiles are manufactured by the world's largest arms dealer, Halbech, which you get no points for guessing is secretly evil. Thankfully, the game doesn't pretend this is a major revelation and reveals it in the opening scene of the game.

    Telling you anything more about the plot would spoil much of the game's plot. The story is intricately woven, having numerous twists and turns that include some genuine surprises. One of the game's selling points is you can complete any of the three major story arcs in whatever order you desire. A cool fact is that doing so results in changes to the way each of the arcs plays out.For example, if you complete Russia first, you can call on one of the companions you meet there during the Rome missions.

    The characters of the game are quite enjoyable. Mina, your Mission Handler, is a fun character who has a flirtatious but professional relationship with Michael. Leland, the Big Bad of the game, actually respects Michael if you handle things in a typically heroic fashion. I even liked the villainous killer Marburg. He's an ex-Alpha Protocol agent who got burned (in the Burn Notice sense) and has been carrying a chip on his shoulder ever since.

    If everything was like the characters and plot, the game would be a perfect ten. Unfortunately, the gameplay isn't bad but it's just good enough to make the flaws all the more glaring. The game system is a rough combination of Mass Effect and Deus Ex. You can play as a stealth character, a gun-toting maniac, or a martial arts master capable of beating up whole armies of mooks. If all of the gameplay was perfect, this would be awesome.

    The first major problem is the gunplay. The targeting sensor in this game is terrible, so that it takes four or five shots to take down anybody in the game except in the game of a head shot. Next, it's possible for the special abilities you've spent oodles of character points on to just randomly disappear. Finally, the minigames are improperly explained at the start. Given hacking, lockpicking, and security bypasses are a major part of the game this last flaw can turn a person off the game before it's even started.
   
    I managed to create a character which circumvented most of these flaws by accenting my character's talents as a martial artist and putting so many points in my "Toughness" score I could survive a helicopter rocket attack (and do at one point). Even so, there were places that I wasn't able to punch my way through problems and almost no warning when this was going to happen.

    Still, Alpha Protocol is worth the effort. I managed to beat the game with only some minor changes to my gameplay at varying points. I recommend the game to anyone who wants to play the role of a spy in a contemporary setting. Alpha Protocol is not 'realistic' by any stretch of the imagination but it's a lot of fun.

7/10 for the gameplay.

10/10 for storyline.

8.5/10 overall.