It doesn't matter how much C&C it has. You have to wade through a gigantic bowl of chocolade pudding (to borrow a joke from AP) to get to it and that's unbearable.
As for
The C&C wasn't all binary, you dufus, you can gain pieces of intel, that can drastically change the plot and dialogue.
care to provide at least one of these awesome C&C examples? I mean that ones that lead to DRASTIC changes of the plot and not merely to a bit of flavour dialogue.
Here, I will provide examples and I think they give a pretty good impression of what AP C&C are like.
1) shoot Al-Ibri, next you meet with Marburg and he says: Why did you shoot Al-Ibri, that wasn't necessary. You: I do what I have to do, dude. +1 reputation with Marburg
2) don't shoot Al-Ibri, next you meet with Marburg and he says: You didn't shoot Al-Ibri BUT Al-Ibri is dead, I shot him, lololol xD. You: I don't care. +1 rep with Marburg
Wooah the C&C, it boggles the mind.
Or what about that one: you go to the embassy in Moscow and Albatross contacts you and wants to be your handler. Here you have (the binary) choice: choose Albatross or SIE as you handler. What are the consequences? Well if you choose Albatross to speak out the 5-6 insignificant lines you typically exchange with your handler during a mission you will have to fight VCI goons in the embassy. But what if you chose SIE? Hold your breath here it comes: you're fighting G22 goons instead!!!111!! Awesome! Everything else is identical. They're standing at the same places, doing the same things etc.
But C&C aside, meanwhile you're going to spend 99% of your time on the shooting maps. Constantly enjoying the twitchy shooter combat, the fight with the controls, the fight with the camera, a minigame every 20 meters.
The maps are fairly linear without presenting you many ways to achieve goals, or any other way of achieve goals other than dispatching everyone, and you can go from cursor to cursor each one indicating *click here to jump/use rope/whatever*.
You know when I read *Espionage RPG* i had something else in mind. The best parts - and with best I mean shittiest - are when you truely try to play as a spy, someone who infiltrates and not someone who massacres everyone, how idiotic shoot outs are enforced on you. Not only boss fights but also situation like in the ruins in Rome, where you *have to protect* the computer against waves of enemies that spawn out of nowhere. Interestingly no one of them tried to do anything with the comp but anyway, the game wouldn't progress until you disposed of everyone.
All to often not killing anyone means shooting them the regular way except with tranq bullets! Someone shot by tranq bullets will behave like a regular dead, ie drop ammo, disappearing body etc. They will be even recognized as having been killed. Example: the triade boss who thanks you that you killed his disobedient goons while you did in fact not kill a single one of them.
All in all the game is pretty lame and doesn't deserve more than 6/10. Worst Obsidian game so far.
Of course if you liked it there's nothing wrong with wanting a sequel.
Imo the game - much like ME2 - doesn't qualify for an RPG but lacks the entertainment value of ME2.
