Prototype |

Publisher: Activision

Developer: Radical Ent.

Release Date: 6/9/2009

Available On

If you have ever played The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, you will kind of get the idea of what Alex Mercer is going through in Prototype (or [PROTOTYPE] as SEGA thinks CAPS is cool >.>), just minus the green problem our Mr. Banner seems to be having. The reason I say prototype is like Ultimate Destruction, and just a tad more ultimate with a hint more destruction, is because it uses a beefed-up engine from the same game and shares some of the same mechanics.

You play Alex Mercer, a confusing test subject who wants revenge on his creator and to stop the infection from spreading throughout the story. I’d tell you more, but the storytelling is so terrible that I had no idea what was going on or who was doing what or who! Constant flashbacks and pieces of the story told through consuming certain targets and watching stills aren’t fun for your brain to digest.

When you first jump into the game, you’ll be able to run up walls, climb buildings, and eventually glide, kick, and consume your way to ultimate infected glory. Most of Prototype is a free-roaming mode where you run from mission to mission, or side missions or activities, like Spider-Man or any other hero you like that can run across a city in less than 30 minutes. The great thing about this is that you can find hidden items such as extra experience or little-hidden things to unlock achievements (or trophies if you’re a PS3 fan and are somehow “accidentally” reading this Xbox 360 review). While most of these (like in any sandbox game) are so spread out and so well hidden, you won’t, except for the ones you run across by accident. Most of the free-roaming is, unfortunately, boring and bland. There are just people and cars, and that’s pretty much it. Once you get further into the game, rampant zombies and infected people terrorize the streets, and it does get more interesting, but it just makes you want to stay off of them and onto the buildings. Most of the graphics in the game are outdated and kind of boring, to begin with, so there’s nothing really “eye-catching” about the game at all.

The meat of the game, really, is the fighting, and this is where the heart of Prototype lies. You have a HUGE skill tree that extends from combat to stealth, to movement, to, yes, you guessed it, powers. What kind of game would [Prototype] be without powers? Well, pretty boring since there are so many; you have more than you can handle. Prototype has so many different moves and powers that you will end up forgetting most of the little ones and just using your most obnoxious ones. Your arm can transform into different weapons such as a whip, giant fists via The Thing, larger muscles for a mix of power and speed, a giant scythe (the one on the cover!), and a few others. Accompanied by these, you have some armor (you can’t glide or double dash though!…yeah, shut up Mario Kart fanboys), and you can also shapeshift into whoever your last consumed victim was (more on that later). The way you use these powers depends on the enemies you’re fighting. A huge mechanic is the grab ability, since this is used to fling objects at helicopters, giant tentacle arms, and even military soldiers or infected monsters. Most of the time, you mash X and Y together to create a cool combo, then somehow unleash a weird power. That’s why there is just too much in this game since you can’t memorize all these combos and what each one does for what weapons. One of the next major mechanics is the lock-on system, which is used to dash toward enemies and pummel them before they do something amazing to your infected self. I had a hard time with multiple enemies since you’d want to target one (say, a guy with a rocket launcher up high), but the game would keep targeting someone else below.

You can use actual weapons in the game that enemies drop, such as machine guns, shotguns, and rocket launchers, and these are essential in some missions. Not always will you have your weapons available, and you’ll have to use the environment around you. It also consists of many boss fights, and this is where I concluded my playthrough. The game gets so frustratingly difficult towards the end that it will throw so many hard enemies at you at once (two tentacles plus 5–6 hunters) while trying to protect something. Yeah, right, but then again, Sega is known for doing this in their games. You’ll end up trying to hit one enemy, then another knocks you back, then you can’t get up because another is smashing on you, and when you do, you get knocked back again. Yes, a lot of cheap deaths and hits, and this isn’t fair.

Aside from the annoying main missions, there are some rather fun and unique activities that utilize your powers. Some missions will have you using selected power to eliminate a certain amount of enemies in a certain amount of time; some are races, checkpoint races, and some even have you finding targets and consuming them for your Web (more on that later). While most of these are fun, some are impossible to get because of the target requirements for a gold medal and the maximum amount of experience points to spend in the skill tree. Other skills are earned by consuming certain targets to fly helicopters, tanks, etc.

The last element I should mention is the skill tree, which is filled by consuming certain targets and watching a series of stills and a brief voice clip to fill in the story (lame). So as you can see, this may be unique (and ways to unlock achievements, yeah, or trophies), but this seems more like a cheap way to tell the story or used as a game filler. While Prototype is fun for a while, it quickly gets repetitive with its cookie-cutter enemy AI, broken storytelling, cheap deaths, and bland free-roaming world. I recommend Prototype for a rental, but don’t expect anything amazing.