In the last few months, I decided to start listening to audiobooks. I’ve downloaded books from http://librivox.org/ (Jack London Call of the Wild, Whitefang, few others), joined Audible.com, which has new books, but an annoying DRM combined with Columbia House subscription agreement you have to dodge.

Some of these books are decent performances - and either way, I appreciate all of the performances, but some readers don’t really understand they’re not just reading a book aloud: they’re performing.

A friend of mine gave me their copies of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, read by James Marsters of Buffy and Smallville fame. I’d read the books before and thought, why not?

After the first couple minutes of Storm Front, I realized I was in for a treat. James Marsters performs all voices and characterizations with such commitment, at times you can’t tell it’s by the same voice. When I started to look around on the net for similar performances, no one seems to be committing to their audiobooks with the same drive. End to end, Butcher’s tales are excellent by themselves, but when Marsters is added, the result is far above and beyond what I’d become used to.

Nuanced and well-paced, these stories are multi-hour now one-person plays, with lots of subtlety and have made me laugh, raised goosebumps, and have been just as enticing as any best selling page turner.

And it’s ruined it for me - I now expect performances from other books. I’ve been hunting for more and if you find any, please drop me a line.

If you’re interested, Audible.com has some samples, here’s Storm Front. You can buy the CDs over at Buzzy Multimedia. I found a digital copy of Walter Jon Williams “This is Not a Game”, which was well done, but I don’t know the performer.

Yeah, a lot of you are going to say, “What, you didn’t read all the bad press?”

I did. But I wanted to give it a fair chance. I’m not a big fan of game journalism: some games that should never get a review receive journo-blow jobs and many that aren’t protected receive a blanket party. Right now, Alpha Protocol is getting the blanket. And I hate to say it, but this one deserves it.

So how far did I get? Half-way through the Saudi Arabia mission before I calmly stopped and thought, “I’m not having fun and I’m not going to punish myself anymore.”

I really wanted to prove myself wrong. As Michael Thornton, you’re a nondescript rookie spy who’s out to… uh… well, I’m wasn’t too sure WHAT you were out to do. You seemed to be working for the US government in black ops, but since you start out kidnapped, you really don’t KNOW if they’re the US Government, but then you seem to forget all that… So, story-wise, the plausible deniability bar is incredibly high from the get go. I’ve heard of Stockholm syndrome, but this was ridiculous.

This game play needs TLC. People may whine about Gabe Newell’s desire to release the perfect game, but in truth they really want him to take their time.

The worst thing: it had a GREAT heart. The writers, the designers (and I’m sure the developers) had wonderful ideas for Alpha Protocol.

Minigames - When it’s just easier not to play them because they’re so incredibly high effort for such low reward (”hacking”) or low effort for annoying rewards (”lock picking”), you may as well not have them. There’s nothing wrong with minigames, but a little A-B testing and designer playability reviews would’ve immediately shown that player

Saves - If I ever own a game studio, I would implement 1 very important rule: Players can save games when they are not in combat. All of my games would adhere to such a rule and if any designer came to me with an alternate view of “Fuck the players, they don’t know what’s good for them” I’d tell him/her to pack their bags and get the fuck out of my office.

AI - yeah, you’ve read elsewhere, but this AI was really bizarre once you see the guys spazzo-breakdance towards you.

Stealth - the one thing that this game ALMOST had was a decent stealth system. But then I triggered a bad hacking minigame and it was all messed up.

Dialog skips - you know what, if you’re going to FORCE me to save when YOU want me to save, at least your dialog skip feature could be something better than a fast forward button - which incidentally, was almost as fun as the minigames.

Graphics and uncanny valley moments - I was ok with both. Other reviews are pretty harsh on the graphics, but I found them ok. Not great, but ok.

Voice acting - See dialog skips, but the voice acting was a lot better than most but due to the lack of a tolerable skip and no save features , one grows tedious of going through the same conversations.

Cut Scenes - C’mon, the ONLY options to avoid cutscenes are: 1) Watch them, 2) Pause the game or 3) Alt-Tab out to kill the process.

So, I feel bad for the developers and designers. Introducing a new gaming IP is something that is financially risky and potentially career busting. When it happens (Half-Life) it’s ground shattering. When it fails, it’s that little engine that couldn’t. Alpha Protocol could’ve been a real contender - you see the gem in the water.

What lessons should game designers learn from this?

* Don’t recreate the wheel - steal your interfaces from other companies which work (Bioware Dialog skips work)
* If you’re gonna minigame don’t maximize the pain - default to BORING, FAST and STUPID rather than so overly complex it’s just not worth it.
* A-B Testing - which game features are people enjoying?

It’s always good to break a mold and challenge what we know. But also, it’s important to challenge ourselves to admit we’re wrong.

I am HeresyBob, and I bought this game so you don’t have to.