For those who are still debating whether or not to check Alpha Protocol out -- and this is something you should definitely be quietly debating with yourself if you're a role-playing fan -- allow me to direct you towards two recent articles on The Escapist that both make very valid and insightful points about the game.

First, there's this week's Extra Punctuation. For those of you who don't know, Yahtzee Croshaw (the guy who does Zero Punctuation, and in fact reviewed the game last week) has a weekly column in which he elaborates on points he made in his most recent video. He's semi-serious about it and he occasionally makes arguments that I agree with.

This week, he talked about why the forced boss battles in Alpha Protocol detract from the game's play-as-you-want attitude, and how offering the player extra freedom in character customization may make the game harder than it should have been. This is essentially required reading for anyone who plans to play the game and doesn't want to run into dead-ends down the road when faced with bosses they can't handle (and I see Fastkilr already ran into this problem, as he noted in the gaming progress thread). Yahtzee also points out that Deus Ex is one of the few games that really does allow players to complete the game however they want. Alpha Protocol should have been that game's second coming, but it fell just short.

Secondly, Shamus Young (who actually beat Yahtzee to the punch on the boss battle issue in the most recent episode of his comic strip, Stolen Pixels) wrote up a rather compelling argument in the game's favor in today's Experienced Points. He tackles the concept of "role-playing," and how Alpha Protocol is still more about choices than most other games on the market. He draws some comparisons between the design strategies of Bethesda, BioWare and Obsidian; namely, he illustrates why Bethesda's games have recently failed to hold my attention, why BioWare's middle ground works well and why Obsidian should by all means rule this genre. He paints a flattering picture of Alpha Protocol which should really sell the game for what it accomplishes.