Reviews
In conclusion, Prototype is worth the purchase if you’re after a Crackdown-style open world brawler with superhuman shape-shifting parkour powers. The viral infection premise is a little clichéd but at least it’s executed well with the city gradually changing as more of the population become infected. There is a real sense of doomsday as you’re perched on top of a building and seeing the chaos unfold below. There are some issues with the draw distance and textures but any developer who tries to recreate New York City after GTA IV’s hi-fidelity version of Liberty City is going to come up second trumps. Despite its technical shortcomings, Prototype’s core mechanics and the organic movement of Alex Mercer are executed brilliantly and most importantly, gives you the sense that the city is your little sandbox of fun and destruction.
If you’re the type who flips to the last chapter or page of a book before reading it in earnest from the beginning then you’ll notice a similar take when you first boot up Prototype. Downtown Manhattan is like a warzone from a scene in 28 Days Later. As the protagonist you’re not sure which side you’re on because you hardly seem normal with the ability to shape-shift and parkour entire skyscrapers. In fact, the beginning of the game is confusing both in terms of the story as well as the controls because neither are explained to you and you’re thrown into the thick of it. After some copious button mashing, taking out entire city blocks and head scratching the story starts back at the beginning a couple of weeks earlier where you wake up with a headache and an annoying case of amnesia. From here, your story as Alex Mercer begins and you soon find out a virus has spread amongst the population and you’ve been subjected to some experiment connected to the virus, hence your newfound superhuman abilities. It’s now up to you to seek out who did this to you whilst trying to survive against the infected and the military alike.
Being endowed with such powers means that the major premise of the game is about exploiting your superhuman skills and developing your one-man army. Attacking enemies, grabbing and jumping are mapped to the face buttons and various combos and specials are executed with a combination of the three attack buttons. The left trigger is used to target enemies (flicking the right stick lets you cycle through targets). This works well but when things get hectic you will struggle trying to pick your target accurately but most of the time it won’t matter as you will want to kill everything around you anyway. The shoulder buttons are used to call up your secondary commands (such as calling in a strike team when masquerading as a soldier) or to change your abilities on the fly with a radial menu like swapping out your fists for some sharper limbs. This slows down the action so you have time to choose amidst the mayhem. Your special attacks, called Devastator moves (when upgraded accordingly) are available once you’ve consumed over your primary health bar or down to your last breath of health. You can also pick up equipment from the military like assault rifles, rocket launchers and commandeer tanks and helicopters to aid your destructive tendencies. The right trigger is mapped to the run button, which lets you scale obstacles such as benches, fences, cars and buildings with utter fluidity. While in the air, you can also modify your glide or dash for even more control. The ease at which Alex can navigate the concrete jungle is a highlight of the game and you can have fun just running or jumping around. The fact that he is brilliantly animated makes it even more of a treat.
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