{"id":1564,"date":"2011-01-11T18:27:19","date_gmt":"2011-01-12T02:27:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/?p=1564"},"modified":"2011-01-11T18:27:19","modified_gmt":"2011-01-12T02:27:19","slug":"the-sins-of-alpha-protocol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/2011\/01\/11\/the-sins-of-alpha-protocol\/","title":{"rendered":"The sins of Alpha Protocol"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"fancybox\" rel=\"1564\" href=\"http:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Alpha_Protocol_sins.jpg\"<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Alpha_Protocol_sins.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Alpha_Protocol_sins\" width=\"600\" height=\"319\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1566\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Alpha_Protocol_sins.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Alpha_Protocol_sins-300x159.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When Gameroni editor Jason Venter suggested I write an article about why Alpha Protocol wasn&#8217;t more widely appreciated, my first reaction was to sulk because I&#8217;d much rather write such an article about Lost Planet 2.  But mine is not to reason why yadda yadda yadda.  And after having a grand time working my way through Alpha Protocol again, I came to the conclusion that it has a lot in common with Shadow Watch.<\/p>\n<p>You remember Shadow Watch, right?  No?  Kids these days&#8230;   <\/p>\n<p>Shadow Watch was an elegant turn-based tactical game in which a team of agents did agent-like things on discrete levels strung together along a shuffled storyline.  It had an almost boardgame level of abstraction and streamlining, but it looked like an X-Com clone.  So a common complaint about Shadow Watch was, &#8220;Hey, why can&#8217;t my dude go prone?&#8221; or &#8220;Hey, why can&#8217;t I go through a window?&#8221;  Which completely missed the point.<\/p>\n<p>For better and worse, Alpha Protocol has a lot of Shadow Watch going for it in terms of why it wasn&#8217;t more widely appreciated.  But don&#8217;t worry, I promise I won&#8217;t drone on about ten-year-old strategy games.  Read the Sins of Alpha Protocol <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gameroni.com\/posts\/481.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The sins of Alpha Protocol - Quarter to Three<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/2011\/01\/11\/the-sins-of-alpha-protocol\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The sins of Alpha Protocol - 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