Alpha Protocol
console Xbox 360, PS3, PC
rating 18
Alpha Protocol is the rarest of video game beasts: it'sa new idea. It's a spy thriller, replete with the usual global conspiracies, high-tech weaponry and complexes filled with armed goons, but it's dressed up with the menu-hopping, number-crunching complexity of a role-playing game. This is James Bond meets Dungeons And Dragons.
It's an odd hybrid but, in fact, having to hop onto a menu and select skills, tune up weapons and plan strategies is less jarring here than it is in your average swords-and-sorcery adventure, although it is still odd to seea box pop up on screen to tell you your pistol shot has just earned you 150 experience points.
For gamers who like a bit of role-playing meat to their gameplay, though, it's a welcome change from the usual space tyrants, orcs and mad wizards' towers. You can decide whether to be a computer hacker,a thug, a spy or a mix of all three. There's scope for huge variety in the game's gunfights, infiltrations and escapes. It's refreshingly different from most attempts at this genre, which too often slavishly attempt to reflect the feel of spy films, leading to trashy explosion-fests with clumsily tacked-on dialogue.
Here, the feel is pure game with a distinct flavour of recent sci-fi hit Mass Effect. It's just a shame that this interesting, bold game is marred by howling gameplay flaws. The graphics are flat. Textures are low-grade and dated and the blocky landscapes make you feel as if you're exploring the loading bay of a furniture warehouse rather than the high-tech lair of an international villain. Fights can also feel scrappy, especially at close quarters, and your enemies are so stupid that it's far too easy to sneak around them.
The really unforgivable defect, though, is the dialogue. You get a huge choice in how you interact with other characters, using joypad buttons to dictate your ‘mood', but there's never really anyone engaging to talk to and far too many characters are lumpish, cardboard stereotypes.
Samurai Warriors 3
console Wii
rating 12
Samurai Warriors 3 is froma series that's huge in Japan but, much like Japan's endless series of games about giant robots, it's rather difficult for Western gamers to see what the fuss is about. It's a historical beat-'em-up, broadly speaking, set in the ‘warring states' period of Japanese history, although the sheer amount of hair gel applied to the cast makes it clear that this is a fairly broad interpretation of history. That, and the fact that your samurais use magical attacks with gay abandon.
Samurai Warriors 3 is fun enough, with mobs of foes assaulting you at once, and neat presentation where a 3D map shows you where to run to complete your mission. The first time you cut down a football team's worth of ninja foes, it's quite exhilarating, but the game rapidly begins to feel very dated, and the maps seem almost devoid of anything bar more flocks of dumb, useless drones to eliminate with your katana sword.
It also seems criminal thata sword-fighting game such as this should make so little use of the Wii's motion-sensing. Here, you just batter away at the ‘A' button on your controller, which is far less fun than the physical, lampshade-endangering sword fights of rival Wii swashbuckler Red Steel 2.
