Prototype Review

He's out to ask some POINTED questions

Mix together Spiderman, Assassin’s Creed, Incredible Hulk, Grand Theft Auto and Destroy All Humans and you’re probably getting a bit close to the game Prototype (and an awful plastic mess in your blender, too). It’s a third person sandbox title which puts you in a beautifully detailed New York that just happens to be in the grips of an ever spreading mutating super-virus. It sounds like pretty entertaining stuff, right? Unfortunately, unlike the game’s main character, this game has a few limits that might not seem immediately obvious.

Players take the role of dead-man-walking Alex Mercer. You wake up in a morgue about to be autopsied with no memory of how you ended up there, and upon discovering that you’re in posession of super strength and speed you do what any normal thinking person would do: you crush a few people’s heads and haul arse.

This may be the first flaw in this game. Alex is completely a-moral. Feel free to blow up, rip apart or consume as many innocent bystanders as you like. Feel free to pick them up and hurl them at your enemies if you like, they’re sort of like fleeing ammunition in this regard.

As you can see, the game has no beef with violence

Now I’m not bothered by violent video games (far from it), and I kind of salute Radical Entertainment for the courage to make a game with a cavaleer attitude to collateral damage, but even Grand Theft Auto will set the cops on you if you kill too many random bystanders. In Prototype you can simply jump down to street level and begin harvesting at will. This only adds to the player’s level of detatchment from Alex, who from the first twenty minutes of the game onward, turns out to be a hard character to actually empathise with.

Lacking empathy for your character, for me, kind of ruins the plot of any game. Mercer loses all of his humanity in his transformation, and his quest for vengence really is the only aspect of human emotion you’ll get out of him. You’ll play the story missions to progress the game, and the side missions to increase your skill tree, but the real enjoyment in this game is in the free-running city scape and multi-dimensioned combat system.

"You were supposed to destoy the virus, not join it!"

Which is where this game shines. Alex has a large range of options when it comes to movement and fighting. Holding down “Sprint” will allow the player to circumvent almost any obstacle. Mercer will leap cars, vault walls, leap across gaps and even dash straight up the side of buildings. While in the air you can throw yourself in different directions, glide across the city and then slam back down into the ground without causing yourself the slightest harm. The city is constructed beautifully, from roof to road, and traversing it in between missions is really one of the game’s highlights.

Combat also takes on an interesting angle. Players can choose both an attack and defence style. The attack styles have a good level of variation to them (my favourite was the long range pimp-slapping “Whip Hand), each with their own advantages and drawbacks. The only slightly clunky part I found was the targeting system, where you’d quite often accidentally change targets because you wanted to change the camera view. Auto-targeting was coded rather well, however, because it automatically selects whatever target poses the most threat to you when you hit the button. This means you don’t have to cycle through ten to fifteen soldiers just to aim at the tank in the middle, which is quite useful. Another feature that I liked was that while changing styles of targets, the game world slows down slightly to accomodate your selection. This is a nice touch because it means that if you want to vary your fighting style mid-battle you’re not automatically punished with sixteen rockets to the face while changing your stance.

I think I saw hentai like this once

Speaking of sixteen rockets to the face, one of the game’s other flaws is that it suffers some HORRENDOUS difficulty spikes. There will be times where you’re under attack from tanks, choppers, missle squads, super soldiers and infected hunters. All. At. The. Same. Time. Sometimes the game is even helpful enough to checkpoint you right in the middle of all this, which only hinders your ability to escape the situation and come up with a new strategy. It can be enough to drive even the calmest of gamers to begin cursing out the TV.

The game also offers elements of stealth. Mercer “consumes” people to gain their memories, their personas or to regain his health. This is typically done in a rather visceral style, crushing heads, punching through chests or in the case of one particular attack style: simply ripping them in half. However, you can disguise yourself in a split-second as the most recent person you consumed, so if you’re under attack by the military and need to escape, you can simply consume a foot soldier, walk around a corner and switch personas. This also comes into play when you gain the ability to “stealth consume”, where you simply plunge a hand into your targets back and absorb them. This style doesn’t attract attention, so you can use it to absorb people while under surveillance. But again, for me it made me wonder why Mercer behaves so violently when consuming bystanders.

You eat their hearts to gain their courage. Rich, creamy courage!

The city is really what makes this game, though. New York, including most of it’s major landmarks, has been recreated in great detail. The game also encourages your exploration too, with 200 landmark collectibles that increase your experience exponentially the more you find. And sure, the landscape graphics might not be goundbreaking or anything, but after loading the city at the beginning of each day, you’re free to roam it’s expanse, and even in the aforementioned enemy swampings, I never noticed the frame-rate start to chug.

Nearly everything gains you experience too, which is neat. From consuming people, killing enemies and destroying buildings, to exploring the world and testing your powers. All your experience goes into your skill tree, which unlocks bigger and better abilities as the game progresses. The skills include your increasing movement and combat capabilities, alongside special attacks and attributes. There’s a wide range of stuff to enhance, which is good because it means you’re often trying out new things. Special mentions go to Body Surfing (fly kicking an enemy while sprinting and using them as a skateboard) and the rarely used but quite entertaining Patsy ability (where, in disguise, you simply accuse someone else of being Mercer and watch them cop the heat).

I was disappointed however with one of the aspects that I thought looked great in the previews, which is the Web Of Intrigue. Since Alex has lost his memory, he can regain what’s happened to him by consuming those involved. It sounded fantastic in the previews, but in actuality it’s kind of … dull. There’s no method or clues as to where your Intrigue victims will turn up, you just kind of wander around the city until you see the little red icons pop up. Given the level of effort they’ve obviously gone to into creating all these people’s individual memories, it’s kind of unfortunate they didn’t put more effort into making a real investigation side mission out of tracking these people down.

The Verdict:

Prototype is a fun sandbox title, and experimenting with all of Alex’s abilities and powers is great entertainment. New York is recreated fantastically and it’s slow consumption by the spreading virus is a confronting transformation (almost as good as the abandoned London of 28 Days Later). However the plot fails to impress, all the major twists can be easily second-guessed (especially if you’re dutifully consuming your Web targets) and side missions are mostly just checkpoint races and minor fights. A good game, but rent it before you decide to buy.