Prototype

Since the character of Frankenstein, scientific tinkering unleashing a dangerous superhuman into the world has stirred a frightening idea. To amnesiac Alex Mercer, this doesn’t exactly frighten him, though it does frenzy him through the streets of Manhattan on a quest for discovery. Ironically, Alex uses his ruthless arsenal of comic-book style abilities to find out who changed him into a shape-shifting super human. And along the way, he and a few companions try to piece together how a virus has mutated and caused a military panic throughout the city. Alex’s tale is just as endearing as his methods of mass-murder, making Prototype a thrilling adventure fraught with exhilarating brutality. But much like the fretful and confused Alex, the general pace of things can sometimes get too frantic for their own good.

After escaping a morgue with no memory, Alex finds himself warding off copious groups of soldiers, tanks, and aerial strike teams – a situation that permeates the entire game. Initially, you have a few basic punches and kicks and can throw objects, including trees and cars, basically wherever you want (at helicopters, too). Travelling is a matter of sprinting and leaping through the streets and up the faces of buildings. You don’t have to worry about falling off even the tallest skyscraper because it can’t hurt you. Plus, at any time, you can snatch people and feast on their bodies for a quick health boost. This also allows you to disguise yourself as the person you most recently consumed, and not only is this entertaining but a creative way to evade the armies and helicopters that ceaselessly pursue you. 

As you complete missions and slaughter hundreds of enemies you gain “evolution points” that can be attributed to a number of character upgrades, combos, and most importantly, shapeshift forms. For the most part these forms are implemented well and are fun to mix and match with other abilities, thanks to the radial menu that can be brought up at any time. Say you want to annihilate a clump of civilians (don’t feel guilty, we all want to). You can dive-bomb into them with your hammer-fists from a skyscraper, stand back and drive your claw into the ground causing giant spikes to come up from beneath them, and much more.

You’re probably noticing that there are many facets to Prototype’s gameplay, and this is true: Prototype is more complex than the typical beat-em-up game. The only problem is that all these posits of gameplay come at you like an oncoming train. There’s a lot of tutorial early on, and even toward the end of the story mode there’s always some new interface option to warm up to or combo to learn. And the high-maintenance control scheme doesn’t help. Button-mashing will often invade your tactical plan simply because the controls have a hard time keeping up with the break-neck pace of the combat. Even basic moves, such as grabbing a foe while sprinting, have you pressing three controls at the same time (R and L are used most often). You can pick up guns that soldiers drop but there’s really no point, except for during the early stages, because using guns is often a sloppy process due to the finicky targeting system. Even when not using guns, targeting is a completely random affair that can make for some stressful battles. For instance, if you want to kill a soldier who’s calling a strike team, you just have to pray that you target him first and not a distant police officer or irrelevant object.

Although these hindrances result in a frustrating learning curve, once you begin to understand Prototype’s ever-bubbling cauldron of features and chime into its groove the action becomes stupendously fun. Surprisingly, most of the fun comes not from free-roam but from doing the storyline missions. Mission designs are varied, making the goals distinct from one mission to the next. You may jump from rooftop to rooftop tearing monster incubators to shreds in one mission, then hijack a tank and destroy infection-spreading hives in the next. The groundwork tends to be grassroots and linear, giving you simple tasks such as killing mutated freaks and collecting their “genetic material” (glowing orbs). Still, these missions feel extremely meaningful and make the action more than just a playground for your cool tricks. They feel like significant conflicts as the plot unfolds before you.

However, this isn’t necessarily true for the side missions scattered about the city, though they’re still satisfying in their own respects.  At anytime between the thirty-one storyline missions you can visit certain locations which challenge you to a sort of time attack. There are missions that have you soaring across rooftops against the clock, devouring random pedestrians, and even military base infiltrations which grant you with new abilities. Since these side missions each focus on one aspect of Prototype’s gameplay, they prove to be a decent break from the whiplash of the storyline missions. They also boost the amount of time you’re inclined to spend hurdling through the infected streets of Manhattan, adding to the twelve-hour campaign without it feeling padded.

Though what does feel padded is Manhattan itself. Except for Alex’s devastating animations, Prototype is grand in scale but isn’t much to look at. The ratio of people on screen to frame rate is impressively stable, but the textures and environments are lacklustre and barely approach today’s visual standards. Fortunately, Prototype is a strong sounding game. Every noise from the military radio chatter to the hilarious, bloody splatter of tossing an enemy into a wall is well done. Alex’s emotional voice acting shines, and for someone who becomes less and less human he speaks like a truly distressed man.

It may seem like a macabre fascination, considering Alex’s lack of sympathy for the hundreds he kills, but Prototype is an intriguing experience. It’s hard to ignore all its noticeable quirks, but unravelling its whodunit story and finally gripping the slippery pole of its stockpiled features is a satisfying venture. There’s nothing wrong with a little -- or in this case, a lot -- of blood thirst from time to time. Luckily, Prototype can fulfill that and more.