Prototype review

In a world of terrible superhero games, it's rare even consider any game other than Batman as your choice for superhero delight. However; games like Infamous are slowly beginning to turn the trend around. Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions was fun and Infamous 2 was amazing. Another game that folds in with this bunch is Prototype. A game where destruction and power are your toys and New York is truly your playground.


Prototype tells the narrative of Alex Mercer, a man who wakes up while being vivisected. He soon discovers he has incredible powers and the ability to consume and learn the memories of living things. Oh, by the way; New York is infected with some evil virus that turns people in to zombies. It's your job to find out who did this to you and do something about that infection. The storytelling isn't fantastic at all. It's not awful, just not very good. You meet a few characters, but care little about them for you to remember them and the story has holes. But all through this; Alex is the one character you really like. You want him to succeed, even though his motives are unclear. So, he wants to save people and stop the infection (I think) but he consumes people for extra health and slashes them for fun. At times, you might use them as weapons... Also, I could never work out if Alex was trying to stop the infection or if he just didn't care. In one mission, I had to destroy this antidote to the virus, but in the next I had to make sure a truck containing the virus wasn't destroyed. Huh?><><><>M<><>MKINBFWONWB!@
On the graphics side of things, they aren't strong or stylistic, which is a shame, but we don't care that much do we?


And now, the moment you've been waiting for...THE OMGFTW gameplay segment. Alex Mercer is everything you want form a super hero. 

Wheee!

Alex can do pretty much anything. He can run up walls with fantastic control, glide, transform his arms into hammerfist, claws, whipfist, blade, muscle mass and a shield. He can wear armour, hijack tanks and helicopters, pick up cars/buses/choppers and unleash devastator attacks which kill pretty much anyone around you. He can pick up a variety of guns and transform his appearance to make himself look like the last person he consumed. All of these offer unique gameplay options and ways to approach missions. The missions themselves...well, they tend to revolve around the same things. Chase this dude, kill enemies, destroy thing, protect x, whatever. Nothing too special, but the amount of gameplay devices you have at your disposal makes everything you do interesting and fun. There are also stealth sections which require you to remain disguised and these are really fun as they offer up a different style of gameplay. But, there are indeed some problems to this game that go beyond just the presentation. First off, if there are a lot of enemies on screen, if begins to lag up a fair bit. The other big issue with the combat is that towards the end of the game, enemies begin to swarm you. This happens so quickly and so often, that you have no chance at all to attack and no chance at all to consume anyone for health.


Besides these issues, Prototype succeeds where so many other games fail. It makes you feel powerful. No matter where you are in the game, you always feel like a super hero. This game is pure fun. Pick it up.