Prototype

Moby ID: 41128
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

Alex Mercer has a problem or a gift - depending on the view. Thanks to a virus in his system he has several deadly powers and can change his appearance into any person he consumes which basically means the same thing as brutally killing the person he wants to be. Of course Alex didn't voluntarily get this "enhancement". Instead he was part of a genetic experiment at a company called Gentek. Having lost his memory about what exactly happened, he is now both looking for vengeance as well as his past. The second specimen, Elizabeth Green, on the other hand meanwhile infects more and more parts of Manhattan Island with a transmutation of the virus which converts people either into mindless zombies or brutal monsters.

Prototype is an open-world game similar to Grand Theft Auto IV where the player controls Alex through a 3rd-person-view. He is able to freely roam about Manhattan Island with iconic scenery like Central Park and Times Square. But instead of stealing cars and mugging old ladies, Alex feels more like going the Spider-Man route. By sprinting against a wall, he is able to climb and jump up to the roof fast. Thanks to his supernatural jump ability and his invulnerability to falling damage, he can then traverse the city from above instead of making his way through rush hour. Of course monsters like hunters as well as the military have the means to reach him even up there. To defend himself, Alex has several powers at his disposal. He can lift heavy objects and throw them at enemies, making it easy to take down even a full-blown helicopter. He also has the already mentioned ability to shape shift into any person he manages to grab and consume. When done without being seen, it removes the heat from Alex and will, just as hiding does, eventually put his human pursuers back to sleep. The monsters on the other hand will keep at him. It also enables him to enter areas he couldn’t access before. Other powers include claws, a shield, fists like boulders that make for a good punch and powerful lash. At any time Alex can only use one of those powers and he has to unlock them first. This is done by investing the evolution points he gains for killing enemies and fulfilling objectives into upgrades.

Divided into several categories, these upgrades increase for example his sprint speed, give him new abilities like said powers or enable him to do new moves like gliding through the air instead of just falling straight down. In addition some abilities like driving a tank or improving his ability to handle normal weapons can only be learned by consuming specific persons marked with a symbol over their head. This is also necessary to replenish his health and to uncover the Web of Intrigue. The Web of Intrigue fills in the blanks on Alex’s background and what happened to him at Gentek. Some pedestrians, military personal or police had more or less direct contact with Alex or the project he was part on and if he finds and consumes them, a short cutscene shows what he learns from that person. To keep an overview of his progress, the player can access a detailed map from the menu. There he can not only rewatch every movie but can also see what information connects with others, giving the player an understanding how every piece of the puzzle is connected.

If the player isn’t doing the missions of the main storyline or destroying military bases or hives, he can find several different kinds of mini-games in the city. Ranging from kill/consume missions and waypoint races over the roof tops to fighting small skirmishes on either the side of the military or the infected. In any case the player gains additional evolution points depending how well he did. These mini-games are unlocked by progressing through the story line as well as by getting a gold medal in a mini-game. Another past-time that grants evolution points is the search for landmarks and hints hidden around the island. The more the player collects of these, the more evolution points he gets for it.

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Credits (Windows version)

742 People (644 developers, 98 thanks) · View all

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Reviews

Critics

Average score: 79% (based on 63 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.3 out of 5 (based on 50 ratings with 4 reviews)

Interesting for a few hours, but dull when taken as a whole

The Good
I like it how the story is told by Alex Mercer consuming the people who have information regarding the situation, it's a new and interesting way to tell people a complex conspiracy-story in a way that makes it easier for the audience to keep up. They also gave Alex Mercer amnesia to minimize the amount of story told through actual dialogue and after completing a set of missions we get a cut-scene where Alex talks to some guy who sounds like the Combine from Half-life about everything that was discovered during those missions.

The way Alex moves is fast and stylish, the way he jumps from building to building, dashes through the air and walks on walls is amazing to see and it looks like a movie until you realize that you are holding a controller and doing all that stuff yourself. It's also a lot faster than in other sandbox games like Crackdown 2 where you have to climb each individual building, Alex can just run up that thing in seconds and doesn't have to plan each jump, fearing that he might mess up and have to climb back up all over again.

I just love to consume people and then walk around disguised as them, this allows you to walk among the people or right into enemy bases, it is probably meant to be a tactical thing, but I mostly just used it to mess around and have forty year old women jump down skyscrapers. I understand you can also use it to take over military commanders which can call in air-strikes, but I never figured out how that is supposed to work and I never really needed it.

The Bad
There is just no challenge anywhere in this game, there was one sequence right at the start where I had to fight several hunters with only my fists and the first weapons you can use, but you pretty much keep fighting the same enemies throughout the entire story while you keep unlocking new ways to deal with them more effectively. I also ran into a "Leader Hunter" which was a stronger version of normal Hunters, but that wasn't really something new nor did it matter anymore because the game was pretty much nearing the end at that point.

You have a ton of powers which you unlock as the story progresses; giant fists, blades, tentacles and so on. This may sound like something positive, but there is no reason to use more than two of them; one to deal with Tanks and one to deal with pretty much everything else. I never really had an urge to be creative with how I deal with my enemies, even more so since the button used to switch powers is broken on my controller. Here is my advice: Take the fist power and the blade power at the start of the game and you can play the entire game using just those.

You have to do the same side-quests over and over again in order to unlock points which are needed to upgrade your powers and tricks like air-dashing. These side-quests always involve killing a certain amount of enemies under a special condition or racing, none of which are really interesting because you do both of those things all the time only without a time limit. The real missions are a little bit more interesting, but most of them are pretty much the same ones every sandbox game has done (chase this, kill that target, defend this etc.).

The city doesn't really seem to give a damn that at the point where I stopped playing almost 50% of the population was dead, they just walked around and thought it was weird that the guy that must be all over the news by now was looking weird at that nearby military base. Mafia II might have been a decent game and not really much of a masterpiece, but it at least showed us how well we can present a city with our current technology and knowledge. I want a population that at least seems to care about me using them as target practice.

The Bottom Line
Maybe Prototype was just about to blossom into a great game right before I stopped playing it, but any more of it and I would have gone insane. The combat is boring, the missions are boring and the town is boring, the only two things that are interesting in this game are the story and the way you can free-roam through the town. I have seen better stories, but I have to admit that I am still amazed by the moves you can pull-off in this game, it's simply amazing.

I suppose it's just a fact that I don't like and probably will never like sandbox games in the style of Grand Theft Auto, but I doubt even fans of this genre will think this game is amazing. It's decent at best and below-average at worst, but you could do a lot worse for the money it will cost you and I'd much rather play this then another freaking Call of Duty game.

Xbox 360 · by Asinine (957) · 2011

Entertaining action with wasted potential.

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.

Windows · by dreamstealer (126) · 2011

Prototype - "They're all dead...Except for me"

The Good
They got mission-based gameplay right. There were no fetch quests and only a few protecting missions in the entire game. That's a major plus in my eyes seeing as there are so many games out there with the problem of too many of those missions.

The Web of Intrigue is a very original take on story telling. I personally like getting as much story out of a game as I can, so I went for every WoI icon I saw. The addition of the web gave players the option to delve deeper into the story or to just go through the main story and leave it at that.

The Parkour mechanics are amazing. There's a true feeling of freedom when you are able to move from one block to the next in what is sometimes a free flowling movement.



The Bad
There really isn't much not to like about the game.



The Bottom Line
Prototype succeeds where many other games have failed. It successfully creates the feeling of having super powers. Whether you play games for the story or the action or both, Prototype is for you.

Xbox 360 · by TalesOf777 (7) · 2009

[ View all 4 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Prototype appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Awards

  • GameShark
    • 2009 - received the I've Got Blisters on My Fingers! Award (Game of the Year Awards)

Information also contributed by Big John WV

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Sicarius.

Xbox One added by mars_rulez. PlayStation 4 added by Sciere.

Additional contributors: Sciere, LordAndrew, Starbuck the Third, FatherJack.

Game added June 19, 2009. Last modified March 6, 2024.