It seems like a lot of people hated on Alpha Protocol without even playing it. This is no doubt due to IGN giving the game a relatively bad review. But who else here actually loved the game?

I thought it was great for what I paid for it, but I didn't pay full price. There's a lot to like but just as much to dislike about it.

" This is no doubt due to IGN giving the game a relatively bad review."

IGN factors in on this? Not to me. For me, it was the Giant Bomb quick look. Made me bored and disgusted. Not saying I wouldn't like the game, I'm sure I might. But there's so many other games I'd rather play.

The biggest flaw I saw in that game was how it gave you options on how you wanted to play the game but it was not always forthcoming about how to go about applying that way, or if it were even possible. And sometimes it straight up forced you to play against your style. Such as being a stealth guy and being put against an obviously close-range assult type of boss-fight. I had to 'glitch' the game to finish one boss fight, by applying the invisibility thing the game 'forgot' to send out helpers to the boss every 'cycle'.

So other than being a bit janky, it was a lot of fun story wise. If they could have tuned the combat a bit more and made boss fights equally 'your-way', I wouldn't mind a sequel.

I dunno, even the reviews that said they really liked the story said that the game was flat out broken.

It has lots of issues in the core mechanics, if you don't care for the things that it does well it's perfectly reasonable to dislike it.

" It seems like a lot of people hated on Alpha Protocol without even playing it. This is no doubt due to IGN giving the game a relatively bad review. But who else here actually loved the game? "

" @pretender15 said:

" This is no doubt due to IGN giving the game a relatively bad review."

Or cause it, ya know, just looks bad?  I never read the IGN review and I guess I'm a "hater" of this game because I thought it looked pretty bad every time I saw it.  I am interested in seeing if the story stuff is as good as people say though, so I'll probably buy it for mas. "

Well I really liked it, but I can understand why some people didn't share my opinion. Gameplay wise, it was pretty clunky.

This wasn't about IGN, this was about a general consensus from both critics and gamers.
Everything I was reading before it's release was hyping it up to be an obvious nominee for game of the year.
Everything I read after it's release was either bad, or overly apologetic.
 
Like many other games, I really hope to try it and decide for myself eventually, but games are being released at a neck-breaking pace these days and my time is just too limited to try everything I want to try.

Why are there haters of the game? Because it's a game, and because people have opinions that are there own. I often wonder why people care that others hate a game. If you like it, play it. Enjoy it. That should be enough. I don't understand this need for validation in liking a game any more than I understand the need for validation in hating one.

" IGN factors in on this? Not to me. For me, it was the Giant Bomb quick look. Made me bored and disgusted. Not saying I wouldn't like the game, I'm sure I might. But there's so many other games I'd rather play. "

It's cause it sucked.

Game itself aside, let's not forget what happened leading up to the game's release. alpha protocol had a set release date in 2009. Sega didn't announce it's delay until THAT DAY. People literally went to stores, asked for a copy of Alpha Protocol, and were met with responses of "uh... we didn't get any..." 
 
The game was then delayed a few more times, and finally released almost an entire year later, and I didn't hear a single positive thing about it from any game critic, some even going as far as to say parts of the game were blatantly unfinished. 
 
I haven't played Alpha Protocol, so I can't say how it is, but if you look at it from the perspective of somebody who was actually eagerly awaiting that game's release for years, it sure sounds like it would have been disappointing.

I thought it was a great game