Prototype

The Good
Alex Mercer one day wakes up to find that he's not a normal man. He's infected with this virus which allows him to tentacle rape people. It turns out Alex was an experiment at Gentek Labs. Now he must re-discover himself and stop what's causing the infection in Manhattan, NY along with a fucked up military and mutants. Activision Games and Radical Studios bring you the summer blockbuster of 2009 jam packed with intense action, predictable plot twists and your usual action cliches.

Thankfully Prototype also comes with enjoyable gameplay underlined by interesting concepts. Alex Mercers infected body allows him to consume people and take their form and memory. With this we get room for stealth which is usually used to infiltrate into military bases and other locations or to escape being chased by them. Also consuming certain marked people gives you access to their memory which forms the web of intrigue and it involves the back story to Mercer. Alex also has the ability to run on walls all the way up--yes you'll be climbing the tallest skyscrapers in New York. Then jump off and glide your way around and not to worry as Alex is resistant to fall damage.

His main arsenal is basically himself, he mutates his hand into a claw, whiplash, big hands and even a blade. He can morph into this sexy looking armor suit or morph his hand into a shield. These along with all his other abilities gets unlocked and upgraded by collecting and spending EP which the game throws around like a horny old man would in a strip club. There's shit loads of these upgrades though and it's one of the reasons why the game doesn't get stale.

The other is because the game contains some extreme, intense action and stays focused on that. It's a sandbox game like GTA but rather than hijacking cars you'd travel by jumping/gliding building to building. The only vehicles you hijack are military vehicles, the rest can be picked up and tossed around like toys. As for the missions, well they always contain a lot of action and never really get frustrating. No escort missions which plague these kind of games but the closest to an escort mission would be where you're following a tank to make sure it destroys a hive while you protect it from mutants.

While a gamepad would work wonders Prototype still plays well with a mouse & keyboard. In fact controlling a Helicopter was a pleasure utilizing the mouse scroll to ascend and descend, good stuff. Also taking down helicopters never gets old as well as skyjacking them. You can come up with your own approach in taking on a mission. Use objects in the surrounding as weapons, intercept with a disguise, grab a rocket launcher, hijack a tank or helicopter. It never gets boring and there are checkpoints at very appropriate areas so no room for frustration. Special moves which require you to be in Critical Mass mode (which is basically when your health is full) are portrayed so fucking good especially Graveyard Devastator.

The Bad
Well being a sandbox game there are side missions which earn you more EP. They range from running from building to building passing checkpoints; to fighting on the side of the infected. But they're quite boring as you end up doing the same things in the main story missions. And if you stick to the main missions you aren't missing anything. Story-wise while I find Alex Mercers character somewhat intriguing the rest is just not played out very well. You've got the generic military commanders and agents. Also forgettable characters like Dana and Mercers girlfriend exist in this tale of predictable plot twists. The city is partially infected but they've made the city look lifeless. People just walk on the roads waiting to be blown apart or run over, they just serve as pawns in the game while all the important characters are indoors. The city as a whole lacks any memorable spots or landmarks, so unmemorable that they included the flagship feature of modern gaming know as the “hidden briefcase” in the form of blue balls which read out “landmark collected”.Storytelling is not all generic though I really loved the ending of the game from the video to the credits, I have to appreciate whoever did the credit screen, it's got very interesting art.

So yeah it's kind of cool to have thousands of upgrades and weapons but I highly doubt anyone would utilize 80% of them. Most of them serve as cramming up too much content in a can. You could say quantity over quality. Once you get The Whip and blade, the other weapons turn useless. The Whip is awesome as it can reel people from a distance and attack helicopters, to even pulling them down or grappling on to them to hijack. It's very dominating as is the Blade, it can deal good damage to organic and Machinery like tanks defeating the purpose of the Powerfists.

Lastly the game ships with an annoying crash bug which has no update or fix. Boooooo!

The Bottom Line
Prototype was a little more than I expected which was another style over substance modern gaming bullshit which to some extent it is. It does the action part well while letting you shit out the other aspects such as side missions, character development and overall story. It's underdeveloped just like how the first Assassins Creed was and hopefully they can get their shit right if they plan on a sequel. I'm pretty sure there's a sequel as in modern gaming, making a sequel is the first commandment and cliffhangers being the next.