Written by Nibbles

Prototype is a third person, open world game from Radical Entertainment, available for both the XBox 360 and Sony Playstation 3.

The game is set in New York City with you controlling Alex Mercer, a man with some very unique and devastating powers. It seems that a virus is sweeping the city, and Alex is between the infected and the military attempting to suppress it, with no real idea why. Waking up on a slab in the morgue of some company called GENTEK, Alex flees when the persons about to perform an autopsy on him raise the alarm. Having no previous memory of events from when he wakes up, witnessing military forces executing the people who where to perform his autopsy, the quarantining of Manhattan, the same military perusing him, as well as learning of his shape-shifting abilities, leads Alex to believe that he is a part of whatever is going on, and decides to find out, at any cost.

The game takes place in the past, with Alex current location been a New York rooftop with another unknown person. One of Alexe’s powers is the ability to consume people around him, an ability that gives him access to their identity, as well as their memories. He had vowed to track down those responsible for what happened to him, learn why, and extract his revenge. Alex is explaining what he has learnt to this unknown person, which allows us to be taken back to the beginning, 18 days before, when this all started.

Prototype is an open world action game and if you’ve played the fun Hulk: Ultimate Destruction or the newer, less impressive Hulk movie tie-in game, you’ll probably have a few flashbacks, as the gameplay is very similar. No surprise really as Radical Entertainment was responsible for Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. Alex’s shapeshifting abilities allows him to morph his body into a number of different states or identities, although you have access to very little abilities in the beginning, they are earned as you progress through the story and unlock them through the games point system.

The city itself is impressive in its scope. I’m not familiar with all of New York, but all the major landmarks are presented and it certainly felt like a complete representation to an outsider. The city itself also appears quite alive. There are people and cars everywhere. While on closer inspection they are repetitive pedestrians, most of the time you are moving through too quick to tell, or everyone is moving around so much that it looks realistic. You also get a really good sense of the virus spreading through the city. One minute you’re running around a nice calm district, before you spot a building in flames on the horizon. As you move closer you’ll notice the crows circling as you begin to see the devastation, cars left in the street and the panic of those fleeing, as the infected lumber around.

The gameplay is quite linear. While there are mini-game events to complete at your leisure scattered around the map, the main missions, 31 in total, take place one at a time. Most of these missions are pretty standard open world fair. Travel to set location and you’ll find yourself escorting/protecting/destroying something. There is a little uniqueness in the stealth aspect of the game. Some missions require you to enter military bases, a task achieved by finding the base commander and consuming him to assume his identity, allowing you to walk right in. The main missions are related to the story and contribute pieces to the overall puzzle of the origins of the virus and Alex. The mini-games are pretty basic, race around collecting checkpoints, killing enemies in different circumstances or using different abilities, or something a little different in jumping off buildings and trying to land on targets. They seemingly exist to give the player something else to do and to earn points for unlocks, and you do need points.

Upgrades can become very expensive for your upper level attacks, so these mini-games become necessary to earn more points, as there is no way near enough points in the story by itself to unlock everything. Unless you’re a thorough player and achieve max points on these games, you probably won’t unlock everything and may have to pick and choose which abilities to max out.

The story itself is somewhat convoluted and the manner in which it is revealed may be troublesome to follow. Generally, after consuming a target and acquiring their memories, you are given a flashback montage of the information that person held with a voice over from them divulging whatever information is relevant. These are very quick, 20-30 second clips and take place sporadically, so you feel more in Alex’s place, having a blank slate with little snippets given to you for you to attempt to piece it all together. As well as the people with information in the story, there are far more wandering around the map for you to find and consume. While you get a general grasp of what is going on and the events that have led up to it from the main story, unless you make the effort to track down these side people you’ll be left in the dark for much of it. Even doing this though you get the story in a jumbled sporadic manner, which is still a bit of effort to follow. The presentation could have been cleaned up a bit, maybe the ability to view things in a linear manner once you have acquired them. While this flashback clips are quite stylish and well presented, much of the character related cut scenes are quite wooden, even by video game standards, and several branches end up unresolved.

Controls are also a little problematic. Everything is fine for the most part, the parkour running and interacting with your environment gels together very well, however there are situations where the button layout can cause you a little grief, namely attempting to move, target an enemy and select and ability. You generally have to release your movement, select the ability and then resume control. A minor issue, but it is still there. Targeting can be annoying sometimes as well. The targeting system seems to go for the biggest enemy first, and then you flick around to select others, but plenty of times it seems to select every person except the one you are interested in.

The fun in Prototype is in your powers. Massive jumping and gliding power allows you to travel the city quickly, either running through the streets, on the sides of buildings, or through the sky leaping from building to building. You also have the ability to shape yourself into weapons, Alex can shift his arms into claws, hammers, a whip and a giant blade. Each has attacks specific to that state. Alex also has access to devastator attacks, specially charged attacks that will kill everything in the area surrounding him.

You’ll need all this too, as enemies come pretty thick and fast. The game does a good job in this regard. While you are incredibly overpowered you can quickly become overwhelmed if you try and go into battles or boss fights too gung-ho. Most situations will require a little tactics and planning, as running head on into something will usually get you into a giant firefight that you might not be able to sustain. While consuming people around you gives you health, and full health opens up the devastator attacks, it’s hard to consume people in a firefight, so you really do need to go into missions or battles with full health and/or a plan of attack.

With your consume ability you can always take the stealthy approach. Military targets, which you deal with most of the time, only attack you if you have done something to attract attention, usually attacking them or landing in a base without a military disguise. It is amusing to have characters and helicopters on alert looking for you, but reporting nothing suspicious, despite the person gliding through the air next to them, or running up a building. You’ll be thankful that this is the case though, as otherwise it would be very slow going moving throughout the game. Having a military disguise will allow you to move into bases freely, and if you can get behind a target you are able to perform a stealth consume. This ability is can be purchased pretty early, otherwise you’ll reach a story point which you are forced to buy it before you can proceed. You have to pick your moments for this though, as you need to be behind a target and out of the line of site of those around you. It can be a lot of fun getting into a base and slowly picking off the personal one by one, or stealthy removing guards to make missions easier.

Overall the game itself is really nothing too special. Standard open world game play and missions, as well as a difficult story to piece together. What sets it apart is the action and the powers you are given, which turn this into a lot of fun. Running up buildings to perform elbow drops, dive bombing tanks with a blade for an appendix or using your arm as a whip to jump onto a flying helicopter, take out the pilots and assume control turn what would have been a very meh experience to one that is quite enjoyable and fun to see through to the end.

8.5/10

Achievement/Trophy Difficulty:

500/1000: 4/10

You’ll probably get 300-400 on a single playthrough, with a minimal amount of effort to get a few that you might have fallen short of during your game which would push you over the 500 mark.

1000/1000: 8/10

There are a couple of time consuming achievements, namely killing 53, 596 infected and collecting all the collectables. There is also achieving a platinum medal in all events, which is extremely hard (this achievement is what gives this game an 8/10). You’ll also need to play through a 2nd time on the hardest difficulty, unlocked after completing the game on medium.

What Should I Know Before Playing:

Purchase the gliding ability as soon as possible, it makes traveling much easier. Unless you’re planning on a thorough playthrough, upgrade the abilities you use the most of first, as you may lack points to upgrade everything.

You might run into trouble in the mini games, if one approach isn’t working, trying something different, you’ll find there is a specific approach that will net you points. Depending on the mini game, you may need upgraded abilities to complete them, so if you have trouble, come back when you’ve maxed out that particular skill.

Achievement/trophy wise, you’ll unlock most through playthrough, and can play on at the end for ones you have missed. These are mostly cumulative ones, plus the collectables. There are two you need to worry about on playthrough though: Nice guy and Hard to Kill. Nice guy requires you to play through the game consuming 10 pedestrians or less. Basically just avoid the normal people on the street: military, marked targets and infected are all fine. Hard to Kill requires you to finish the game without dying. The game has an auto save feature, so if you die, simply quit to the main menu and reload. It’s like your death never happened.

Resources: Interactive map with checklist of the location of collectibles throughout the world