❄ Protocol | Review | Xbox Series X | 6.5/10 | "A Test of Patience That I Failed" ❄ #BrittsBriefBulletinPart2

Protocol on XBOX Series X is a first-person comedic adventure that casts you in the role of a recently divorced special operative that has been assigned by no one less than the President to complete a gauntlet known as ‘The Protocol’ in the Arctic Circle.

Whilst the game runs at a solid 30fps on the Xbox Series X, it’s a shame that this isn’t set at 60 as the blizzard conditions and shiny chrome that make up the bulk of the facility would really benefit front hat extra smoothness of flow.

That said, there are many other, more important issues here that need to be addressed before this. The subtitles rarely match up with what is spoken onscreen and the dialogue, in general, is lacking. 

Jokes fall flat and are poorly delivered by voice actors that stress odd parts of sentences and are very one-note in nature. 

Combine this with unforgiving trial and error gameplay, finicky controls and a game that makes a point of telling you that you’ll die many times (seeing the - luckily skippable - same death sequence over and over again) and you can’t help but feel you’re playing a game more designed for shrieking YouTube channels to make Let’s Plays from than a robust single-player experience and the enjoyment ebbs away pretty quickly.

If you can connect with the humour, you’ll get a lot more mileage out of this than I did. 

As it was, despite a couple of fun moments that stood out such as an early segment involving medication and an alien autopsy, it soon devolved into thankless tasks that felt like padding.

Not one that will stick in my mind in the months to come, unfortunately.