Protocol

Protocol is an alright puzzle game, it’s an alright shooter game, it’s just simply alright. It’s very busy jumping from genre to genre and focusing on atmospheric building and keeping the player entertained using some crude and brash humor at times that becomes stale on replays.

There is so much ambition to be found in Protocol on the Xbox. At times, it’s on a path to becoming a hybrid of Prey and Portal, both in the way it feels to play, and its ability to generate left-field ideas. Unfortunately, the ideas never fail to be executed poorly. Thanks largely to its controls, you will be, by turns, infuriated, bored, confused and offended. For a game that starts by feeling like a commentary on the lack of control in video games, it’s when you’re handed control that Protocol is at its worst.

Protocol may have been an interesting experience in VR, but as a classic game it turns out to be a slow, boring, frustrating, sloppy and repetitive action/puzzle game. It could have been more interesting with a deep gameplay redesign, but as it is, we wouldn't recommend it even to die-hard fans of first-person puzzle games.

Various technical problems due to the sloppy transition from the VR environment and mixed gaming styles lead to a confusing mixture with no character defining assets and a mediocre plot with little to no interest for the player.

Protocol is a tortuous experience that combines clumsy, awful gameplay with an abysmal script. I would much rather fail the protocol, and be nuked, then have to play through this again.

If I were inclined to be generous to Protocol (and I’m not), I’d say it’s more a failure of execution than of ideas. After all, it’s at least smart enough to know that it needs to be better than it is. Still, the end result is the same: a game that’s not particularly fun to play.