Rampage your way across familiar gameplay.
Prototype came into the world alongside the PS3 exclusive InFamous, which, upon first impressions, looked like basically the same game, but better. I'm going to get out the way early that I have not played one second of InFamous, and therefore this is the last time I will refer to it in this review.
This game is, like so many games of the current generation, a whole lot of things we've seen before, put together in a somewhat unique way. When I first turned this game on, my first impression was that this is exactly how a child bred of Spiderman 2 and Gears of War would look. You are in a bustling, populated city, running, jumping, swinging and gliding in a fashion not unlike Spiderman, with all the requisite browns, grays, crazy monsters, and angry protagonists you'd expect from Gears of War. Fortunately, the more I played Prototype, the more it began to differentiate itself from these ideas, and while it never quite took it far enough, it was enough to keep me from just getting annoyed.
Basically, this game is about upgrading yourself. There are tons of upgrades in areas related to combat, movement, new powers, and even some stealth related stuff. You earn experience from just about anything, so you could really just start tearing up the city as soon as the game starts and with a few hours put in you'd be well into your upgrades without doing anything meaningful. Obviously though, there are storyline missions and side missions aplenty to speed up the process, as well as give you something specific to do.
Unfortunately, this game's story suffers from an extreme case of post God of War syndrome. I'm not sure why some developers think all you need to make a story good is to put you in control of someone who is just pissed off at the world, but that's what this is. The story and characters are just about bland enough to convince you to skip the main quests altogether. Fortunately (or unfortunately) the story missions change the landscape of the city as you complete them. The city plunges further into a devastating infection spawning crazy mutant zombie enemies, and the military increases its presence as the game moves along. Both of these are good for experience, but bad if you just want to get from A to B. The military is especially annoying because in the late stages of the game just the sight of you will have a squadron of helicopters on you in mere seconds.
Aside from story missions, though, there are tons and tons of side missions. And by tons and tons, I of course mean tons and tons of about 5 different types of missions. Then there are your collectables that are necessary to any open world game. I have to give Protoype some props here, because instead of collecting CDs or flags, your collectables involve catching and consuming marked people. Hardcore, right? It really is a step up, though, because while killing any one person isn't a challenge ever, getting to a marked target in the middle of a street full of marines without accidentally killing him (or him getting blasted away by his own people) is a bit more interesting. Also, each consume target gives a brief cinematic which reveals a bit more of the backstory of the main character, the virus, the military, or whatever. Overall, this system works well.
That's basically Prototype in a nutshell, but before I wrap up I should mention that despite its flaws, Prototype can be great fun. The combat is quick and epic, and you have all sorts of moves to dish out on anyone you well please. The movement controls are also very satisfying on the large scale, even though they start to fall about when trying to perform precise manouvers. The game is also decently long, and has a ridiculous amount of content available to anyone who enjoys the core experience. This certainly isn't a stellar game, but its worth a look if you like big action and big worlds.
