Shepard, Thorton is not.

I've made it a habit to keep a bottle of water by my bedside these days, to stave off the effects of early morning pickle mouth. If I wake up in the middle of the night and my mouth is all dry and tastes like the very bottom of a whiskey barrel, you can't just nod off from that. My mouth demands to remain moist.

So not long ago, I gave Alpha Protocol a tour of duty at a discount price, despite the foamy mouthed negative reviews. It was one of those games where I "had to see it for myself". I wanted to see the trainwreck.
The end result was...not unenjoyable. I definately felt I was playing a poor mans Mass Effect with only one squad member, and the main character not being quite as Badass. In fact, the main character, Michael Thorton, is kind of a dick.
The game also suffers from being relatively short, and as soon as you meet some relatively interesting characters, you're already waving them goodbye as you move on to the next chapter. It almost begs to be played at least twice to test out different approaches to situations. I can name at least three places where I would have preferred a different course, or wasn't paying attention and did something I didn't want to.
It's at the very least a 3 out of 5 game. In the very least.

The next game in my queu is Eternal Sonata, a game I've been meaning to get under my belt for some time now. The voice acting and story are on par with what you would expect from a Japanese RPG. That is, very campy, possibly cheesy, and the story makes no sense from a standard, logical point of view.