A great sandbox experience, though a bit too gamey
Ah,
. Ever since I played
I have been truly enamored with this genre. There are few gaming genres that have gracefully evolved over the years, and I'm happy to say that sandboxes are one of them.
,
, and
are just a few titles proving that sandboxes still have a place in the current generation. In a lot of ways, Prototype returns to the root of sandboxes back when they lacked focus but made up for it with crazy action. I suppose it's up to the gamer to figure out if this is a good thing or bad thing.
Prototype has you take on the role of
, a scientist (kinda) gone superhero (kinda) thanks to some mysterious infection (kinda). You wake up in a military hospital to find you're able to withstand a boatload of bullets, jump over 20 foot walls like it was nothing and the military wants you dead. Yeah. From beginning to end Prototype is absurd, but mostly in a good way. The remainder of the game sets you loose in New York city where a strange infection is spreading. It's your job to figure out who did this to you, stop the infection, save yo...ah forget it. You're here to kill huge crowds of civilians and infected with your gross sword arm. I know it, the game developers know it, and even Alex knows it.
As I mentioned, Prototype does away with a lot of current generation sandbox elements. Cohesive story? Gone. Interesting side quests? Gone. Encouragement to explore your surroundings? Gone. You won't find any of that in Prototype, and at this point the reader might be wondering why they'd play this game at all. Well, what it lacks in substance it makes up in insanity. Grab a dude, run up the side of a building, toss him into the clouds, drop kick a helicopter, then eat a police officer to consume his delicious thoughts and memories. Prototype is what would happen if sandbox games were somehow put in an arcade machine in your local laundry mat; everything you do feels arcadey and over the top while lacking any sort of depth.
Thankfully, though the game focuses on little else besides killing dudes, it does its job well. The powers system is robust, featuring many different powers and transformations that in turn can be upgraded with evolution points. You'll have powers that can kill dudes better, powers that kill tanks better, and powers that make it harder for dudes to kill you. I found, however, that they give you a bit too much. By the end of the game I only had 50% of the upgrades, yet I had no trouble whatsoever beating missions or wreaking havoc. Indeed, you'll probably find yourself using your powers more outside of missions then in them, if only to test out your new killin' powers on the various groups of infected, civilians, and military. Many of the missions can be completed with only a handful of your powers.
My biggest gripe, the one I keep coming back to, is how gamey it all feels. It might seem absurd to accuse a game at being too much of a game, but damn if it isn't true. Nothing you do has an effect on the city. The game has you believe that you can fight the military or infection as a war of taking part in the "war". Unfortunately, the only reason to fight either group is for more evolution points. Anything and everything you kill simply respawns a few minutes later. Many other common tasks also feel far too gamey, such as evading the military when they're out to kill you. A simple change of disguise is enough to fool them literally every time, even if you change disguises while in the process of running up a skyscraper.
"Side quests" are a joke as well - they don't even exist. Scattered throughout the city are various challenges you can attempt that in no way affect the city or Alex. They usually involve some sort of weird challenge like flying through rings ala StarFox or racing up buildings collecting glowing orb things. It's boring and there's no reward other than evolution points, something you'll be swimming in by mid game. I'm falling asleep just explaining it.
I've purposefully stayed away from the story because
it is trash
. I can respect a game choosing to have a very light and shallow story or even no story at all. Not all games need them. Prototype, however, opts to have an involved story that makes less and less sense the more you dig into it. By the end even the most casual of observers could note the 40 foot wide plotholes and horribly inconsistent attitude of Alex and co. However, I will say the web of intrigue mostly makes up for it. Certain humans are knowledgable about events relating to Alex, the infection, and the backstory. By tracking them down and consuming them you are rewarded by a short little video clip and audio file of a memory that person had. At most they last maybe 15 seconds each, but you'll find many are related to each other. It's a neat way to unfold the back and side stories of the game, and I found myself going out of my way to consume them.
In the end, I wondered how many flaws of Prototype were on purpose. Yeah, it felt like an arcadey freeform game of little depth or purpose. But what if that's what they wanted? If the game feels like it's on a "kill a bunch of things will cool powers" simulator and nothing else...well...maybe that's because it's suppose to. But in the end I felt it was too much of a step backwards from establish sandbox design elements, and honestly, I would have a hard time justifying a $60 pricetag. I liked Prototype, and I beat it, but after that I put it back in its case and I have't had the urge to play it since.
Time Played:
17 hours to complete the entire game. I didn't do any side missions, though I did spend a bit of time grinding some evolution points. I also spent a ton of time killing people. 'cause, you know, that's what Alex does.
