PROTOTYPE, after a few delays, has finally arrived this summer, and offers some open-world and super powered action to enjoy. Although it shares a few similarities with inFamous, this game is mostly different, and much more violent, and unfortunately, very frustrating at times.
Let's start with the many positives that Prototype has going for it. The story, for instance, is pretty well put together, although there is the cliche: man has amnesia, man needs to find out what happened to him thing, only this time, crazy powers are involved. As Alex Mercer, you must uncover the truth behind the infection of New York City, as well as the origin to your powers. You start the game with most of your major moves to use, and then later on are striped of them, Ala Metroid. But don't worry, you will gain most of them back pretty quickly and even faster as you progress the story.
Another great positive are the powers and upgrades themselves that you can receive. There are a ton to unlock, and each will help you tremendously later in the game when you face the big guns and hard missions. Besides the powers, which include Blades, Shields, and whips, you will also be able to upgrade the Speed, Strength, and recovery rate of Alex. One of the coolest and most useful powers is the ability to consume people. Need to sneak into a military base undetected? Try consuming a high ranking officer that will have easy access to the bases. Need a quick disguises? Consume the many civilians walking around. The benefits of consuming are high, and there are even people scattered throughout the city that have clues to what exactly happened, and the only way to get that information is to consume. 
While the powers are great, it seems that even the fully upgraded ones still can't help you when it comes to the many annoying enemies you will face, and the addition of a semi-functional lock-on will not help much either. I can't believe there is an achievement in this game where you have to beat the game without dieing once, because I died about 50 times towards the end. I played on normal and love challenges in game, like Veteran mode on the Call of Duty Games, but there is a big difference between a game being challenging and frustrating. One example would include the fact that to start missions you must be undetected to the high military presence in the game. When you get caught, you must run and hide until things calm down, but when caught, it's like having 6 stars in GTA while trying to complete an escort mission. I'm sure even on easy it will still be hard to beat the game without dieing once.
That is probably the negatives of the game, but everything else is fine. There are fun side missions to do that reward experience points, which are needed to upgrade and unlock more abilities and many fun story missions to complete. The violence level is pretty high in this game too, which bodies splitting in half, and heads going flying. The crazy thing too is that if pedestrians get in the way, they too will fall victim to your powers, which makes for some gruesome results when upgrading your powers. In my opinion, it is the most violent open-world game yet.
Overall this game is a lot of fun, but also very challenging at times which wrongly turns into annoying frustrations. Prototype is pretty lengthy too, and getting all the achievements will take some time too. Will you help Alex Mercer find the truth while keeping your cool?
+ Great Story and Visuals as well as a great character to control
+ Tons of Powers to unlock and upgrade
+ Brutally fun and violent
- Frustrating enemies and Missions towards the end
- Hit & Miss Lock-On Ability
- No Co-op that was planned in the beginning of development. An extra hand would have been much appreciated.
4/5
Monday, July 20, 2009
