Prototype Review

Soooo, I finished the game Prototype a while ago, and I've gotta say, it was pretty fun. The game is set in modern-day New York as you enter the role of Alex Mercer, a young man who has taken it upon himself to gracefully f*** sh** up for the unsuspecting people of the city that never sleeps. Waking up on an autopsy table, Alex rushes out of the building he's in but is quickly cornered and shot. Miraculously, he feels uninjured and leaps over a ten-foot fence. Upon taking out some pursuing helicopters, Alex rapidly realizes that he has gained superhuman abilities because he’s become some grotesque virus form of Ditto that will mutate or kill anyone he gets close to.

"Appetizing."

The game is a free-roam beat-em-up similar in feeling to the Spiderman 2 game. However, the mechanics of this game have, for the most part, been more fine-tuned. Alex has the ability to sprint, grab, slaughter whole groups of enemies, run up walls, jump incredibly long distances, glide through the air, change forms and weapons, and level himself up by accruing a certain amount of experience gained from hacking apart infected civilians and monstrous manifestations of the virus that have been let loose upon the city. The majority of the game is spent completing objectives Alex sets to help him restore his memory and learn the chain of events that led up to the predicament he finds himself in. A variety of beat-em-up, chasing, stealth, race-against-time, and target hunt missions help Alex learn more about what he has become as he tries to survive against a violent, militarized biocontainment unit and legions of unearthly creatures thirsting for blood.

While the game is first and foremost a sandbox game with a developed combat system, one of the most immediately gratifying aspects of Prototype is the free-running. Alex’s sprint is incredibly fast, and the developers did a very nice job programming Alex to be able to respond to debris and cars in the roadway by having him do a small hop or a twist over them as he’s going, without reducing the speed or control that he has over his running.

It becomes an essential part of the game too, as there are chasing missions, many times where you must outrun and hide from authorities, and even escape from hordes of normal enemies. It’s an amazing feeling when you’re booking it down a street at 10% HP with 5 Hunters (cheetahs mixed with Regenerators from RE4) catching up with you, and then slamming the jump button to vault over a building. The jumping and wall running that have been a problem for the Spiderman games is almost completely resolved in this game. Instead of forcing the player to build up momentum and awkwardly struggle to go up a building in a straight line if he didn’t approach the building face in exactly the right way, Alex is able to sprint up buildings (somehow) very much like he sprints on the highway. The control over the wall-running is very smooth, easy to use, and controlled, so much so that you can pull off Mario-esque wall jumps to catch that dick of a helicopter pilot that just HAS to ruin your day.

“You've nowhere to hide, nowhere to run!
Your Black Hawk will burn like the heart of the sun~!"

A large section of what makes Prototype different from other sandbox games is the ability to disguise oneself as a passerby, or to change forms to better suit the situation. Alex can sneak around military bases, steal the memories of others, trick his enemies, blend in with crowds, become an impenetrable Juggernaut with a sword the size of his arm, a tentacle monster, a Freddy Kreugar with bigger claws, or a tank-smasher with arms as thick as a boulder. The ability to wreak havoc then snatch up an innocent, terrified civilian to consume him and walk away from a scene of carnage without a care in the world is a unique experience I have yet to feel in any other game I have thus far played. The variety of powers, guns, level up options, and vehicles available allow the player to have a bit of leeway in deciding how to play, and offers hours of gameplay available for you to destroy what you like, when you like, however you like.

The most glaring problem with Prototype, though, would have to be the difficulty of the game. While the game is fun, and generally relaxed, the enemies are a bit on the strong side. One screwup against a normal enemy can leave you with half of your health missing. Also, enemies seem to sometimes solely pick on you when there are more choice targets around threatening to rend them limb from limb. It was extraordinarily frustrating to be slicing a Hunter to shreds, dodge another, and then get rocket-blasted in the face from off-screen as you’re trying to sprint away. There are ample health drops, but the fact that you have to kill an enemy while there are five of them repeatedly trying to body slam Alex made it somewhat frustrating to be low on health. The superattacks that you could purchase while allocating your Evolution Points (Experience points) at level up were also fun and handy, but the fact that you had to stand still for a few seconds and use health to activate the ability made it a less than desirable aspect of gameplay. Even if everyone around you was somehow miraculously targeting something else, the chances of pulling off a superattack uninterrupted would be incredibly low, as even one deranged Infected could trip into you and hit-stun you. Therefore, you can picture Alex’s face full of seething rage as he’d repeatedly charge up an attack only to wind up getting combo’d by 3 Hunters that saw the guy from a block away and decided, “Hey, I don’t like that guy, I want to kill him.”

“fffffFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUU--”

In addition to the random attacks that can smash you into a wall, the fighting system was, unfortunately, somewhat blocky. While there were a good deal of weapons and a large environment available to you to beat the sh** out of your enemies, it was sometimes impossible to dodge out of a combo or break it as fast as a video game player may wish. In this game, that could actually be the difference between a good fight and death.

On a lesser note, the game has a side story of sorts that reveals the background of Alex Mercer and the virus that has ravaged the city. This side story is exposed through a collective photographic memory that can be ripped from the minds of certain high-end military men and politicians prancing about the city. However, these spawns are, at least seemingly, random and they can suddenly appear and disappear on your mini-map. The fact that you could be zooming by at 60 miles per hour with 7 Hunters on your tail could make it very nerve-wracking to change paths and try to nab the guy. In addition, the random chaos that consumes New York can easily bump the Web of Intrigue (side story) target off the plane of the living.

"Oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap"

A point that the game made early on was Alex’s ability to break into military bases, destroy enemy hives, impact the spread of the virus, and maybe, the fate of the New Yorkers doomed to a terrible, terrible death. However, knocking down a hive or a military base, which is a full-on 6 story warehouse, is utterly meaningless because it just gets built back up somehow within the hour. The story was also linear, but not very thoroughly thought out. The story has potential to interestingly bring out the fullest in a sandbox game, but in practice, no matter what you do, you’ll be forced to experience the same hellish New York time and time again. In addition, there were loose ends left at the end of the story which could be filled in by the gamer, but a lot of the important characters and events seem ineffectual by the end when you face an almost random boss that somehow leads to an illogically permanent conclusion.

“I sense DLC potential.”

Despite all the somewhat negligible flaws that this game can show at times, the game overall is a fun one to play through. I haven’t played too many sandbox games, but in terms of gameplay, this would have to be at the top of the list for me. While its story and characters are less than admirable, the game doesn’t feel like it drags. The music, while not strikingly memorable, fit the situations of the game well, making music for this game a 3.5. The graphics are standard for this generation, maybe slightly above average, making it a 3.5. The atmosphere, while not particularly chilling, was better than expected, and the player can very clearly tell where the infection was running rampant as explosions, screams, smoke, and blood flew through a blood-red sky. However, the sheer number of simultaneous AI produced in the city and their smooth reactions, as well as the capability to not only react to the player, but what other AI or enemy models are doing, is quite impressive. The transition between trying to slowly walk away from a suspicious Supersoldier to shoving civilians out of the way as he picks you out from nearby citizens and shouts out to alert nearby militia is flawless and quick. For the general atmosphere and performance of the AI in the environment, I give a 4 out of 5. The narration of Alex Mercer’s campaign is...less than exhilarating, and while it may enthrall some gamers out there, the needlessly violent, self-serving, “I don’t need a reason to do what I want to do” attitude and general pacing problems made the story feel underdeveloped. Since the story felt more like a necessary tack-on than a part of the game, narration gets a 2. On the other hand, the gameplay for this free-roamer was quite well done. The level-up system and fine-tuning of all of Alex’s abilities, as well as the little things like the degree of control granted while sprinting up a skyscraper or the precision of Alex’s drive-by grabs make the parkour highly entertaining. The combat system, though not perfect, was well made, and options available to the player on how to engage a varying mob of foes made each fight different and kept the fighting from growing stale. I would give the gameplay a 4.5. Overall, I’d strongly recommend this game if you’re the type of gamer who loves sandbox RPG games or the freedom of movement Spiderman 2 offers. I believe this game deserves a 3.5 out of 5.