Today started out as a rainy day where I was hoping for an awesome weekend to start on my backlog of Steam games. Well, I got it. Class is cancelled for me for the rest of the week and I want to dive into a new game. I am 30% on Saint Row The Third but I just feel like I shouldn't play it. I was looking at Fallout 3 GOTY but the fellows on Reddit told me the DLC wasn't that great. So, now I am just casually looking at Alpha Protocol for the mere $15 on Steam and the lack of any recent update on how the games developers have fixed the bad aspects of it. I don't know what the weekend will entail but I will make sure to get more than 30 hours in by Sunday night.

@jhudson3: Alpha Protocol is probably a good place to start. If you give it about 5 or 6 hours, you should be able to tell if it's for you or not.

It's actually a lot like the first Mass Effect, except there's no Citadel equivalent, so the only places you revisit are your home bases (sort of like the Normandy in Mass Effect). The skill and inventory systems are very much like Mass Effect 1. The conversation system is subtly different from Mass Effect. You don't necessarily need to "roleplay" as either a good guy, an asshole, or somewhere in between. Instead, it's more like real life; if you're talking to an old military man, speak to him in a professional manner and act respectfully; if you're talking to a drunk in a bar, speak to him more casually and joke around. Try to read what kind of behaviour different characters respond well to.

There are still some bugs, but they ironed out a lot of major ones. However, there are 2-3 levels where if you quick load in the middle of them, the enemies just don't exist. This is bad, because there's a finite number of enemies in the game, and thus a finite amount of XP. In one of the early missions (it's a nighttime desert level), this happens, where if you quick load, all of the enemies in the current area just aren't there (depriving you of XP), but once you get to the next autosave/checkpoint, all further enemies do appear properly. It doesn't happen on every level, just a couple of them (there's like 20-30 levels in the game). I trained myself to just not quick load obsessively, and if I fucked up I just rolled with it.

@BisonHero: Thanks for the input! I believe I am going to buckle down and beat Saints Row: The Third tomorrow and then start on this game. I would say it is worth the $20 on Steam and I am in the mood for a great story. But anyways, thanks!

I remember having the same kinda thing happen to me a year or two ago and Alpha Protocol is worth the insanely cheap price it's at now. The only annoying part about it is the whole play by the numbers thing when shooting ie shooting people kinda sucks at the start of the game because your stats are low. Personally I'd recommend choosing a gun type and dumping points into it at the start to get rid of any frustrating moments quickly. But otherwise it has a pretty decent story and I don't remember coming across any bugs from anything other than its own limitations.