There's always that one game in your collection. The one that makes you feel guilty for liking it, despite critics or your peers telling you it's just not very good. Call it a guilty pleasure, call it 'the critics just don't understand it, man', call it what you want, you like a game that just never got noticed or people actively hate. 
 
This is one of those games. Alpha Protocol, one of Giant Bomb's runners-up for the 'Most Disappointing Game of 2010' (a category that went hands down to Fable III). People didn't seem sure what to make of the game, and Sega didn't seem pleased enough with how the game ended up that i t's effectively put the kibosh on any followups. It's a damn shame because there are amazing ideas in here that could have been interated on. 
 
The one sentence summary of Alpha Protocol is 'Mass Effect with spies'- a compelling sentence. Obsidian Entertainment is no stranger to following in Bioware's footsteps, having created the flawed but conceptually brilliant Knights of the Old Republic 2 after the beloved Bioware RPG. What propelled KOTOR 2 to the point of nearly surpassing its predecessor was developing upon ideas the original had laid down and defying the expectations people had laid upon anything with the name 'Star Wars'.
 
Alpha Protocol does so in much the same way in that this is the first game where you can actually feel like a spy. There have been good James Bond games, and no shortage of espionage- themed outings, but those games never quite encapsulated the 'entire' spy experience of guns, stealth, and charm. Alpha Protocol allowed the player to do any of those three and to make them viable options for your character. That was what made for such a compelling case for this game. But I have to address the game's flaws a bit before I can explain why this is actually a decent game and you can pay money for it without regrets.
 
Part of the reason Alpha Protocol never quite caught fire was the fact that it's an Obsidian game. Obsidian has gained a reputation for, let's be honest, created a conceptually compelling game and then dropping the ball when it comes to technical quality. In this game, there are bugs. The game isn't really optimized and textures can take a bit to pop in. I've seen loot disappear between loads. The AI can be dumbfoundedly stupid at times if you focused on stealth. This is a textbook case of an Obsidian game needing more time in the proverbial oven to properly mature into a AAA product. 
 
The other big problem of the game is player expectation. When any kind of shooting is involved, players have been conditioned to assume that shooter-style mechanics come first and any role-playing trappings come second. Alpha Protocol flips the equation; it's an RPG with shooter trappings. If you want your gun to actually hit something, you need to invest in it. If you want to sneak around and you're not in the tutorial or Saudi Arabia, you have to pay for it. You're not automatically an expert at aiming a gun because that's how the game is designed; you have to play to your strengths and pay to get those strengths.
 
With that said, Alpha Protocol allows for a viable point disperal for any kind of run as long as you invest in one of the guns or martial arts- there are boss fights where you can't stealth your way to victory. Running and gunning is still an option with the right points and strategy, and stealth is a-ok (and possibly the path to easy mode depending on the AI). What helps sell the game is that the game world reacts to how you play. Something you say early in the game can come back late-game, the guys you saved could help you, your actions in a mission can come back to bite you in the ass down the line. It's a credit to the writing staff that they accounted for so many possibilities and made you feel like Michael Thorton's methods mattered.  The endgame can go a million different ways because of all of the shenanigans that you pulled, and that's awesome.
 
Speaking of credit to the writing staff, the story is arguably as compelling as some of Mass Effect's finest moments. There's a sense of tension that seemed absent from the majority of the original Mass Effect, and the characters manage to make themselves memorable in a way half of Mass Effect's party members either didn't quite succeed in doing or needed to return in Mass Effect 2 to make a better impression. 
 
This game is a clear-cut case of 'almost but not quite', but it comes close enough and does enough that other games don't that I can stand by this game and defend it. At full-price it's a dicey proposition, but it's now roughly $20 on Steam and it's old enough to be bought on the cheap if you buy your games used. Go for it.