Gaming FTW

Prototype (360)

Down with the sickness

Manhattan Island has been over-run by a deadly virus (codenamed Blacklight), rapidly infecting the population and turning them into hideous creatures, hell bent on destroying everything. Enter a group of Marines and a shadowy organisation known as Blackwatch, determined to clean up a mess they created. Now throw in a super strain of the same virus and you have the main protagonist of Prototype, Alex Mercer.

Alex’s story starts on an operating table. Unaware of who he is or what he’s become, Alex vows to find out who’s responsible for the viral outbreak. The story in Prototype isn’t entirely original and does borrow from films such as The Omega Man/ I am Legend but the way the story is told keeps the plot interesting. Key information is obtained through a mix of absorbing the body and thoughts of various Gentek (the company who created the Blacklight virus) employees and standard mission progression, meaning if you don’t really care about how Alex ended up a superhuman virus carrier, you don’t need to find out. Alex is a genuinely interesting character though, which is a rare treat in amongst the current “big guns, big muscles, small brain, small cock” style shooters that are cropping up everywhere so finding titbits of information about Alex’s transformation is almost as fun as chopping infected up with massive blades.

Speaking of chopping things up, I think now would be a good time to say that Prototype really deserves its 18 rating. Even the weakest attack abilities cause civilians and basic infected to explode in a shower of blood and entrails where stronger moves include things like spikes erupting from the ground and impaling anyone unlucky enough to be in the vicinity.

As you’d expect from a superhuman protagonist, Alex has a lot of neat tricks for you to unlock which, aside from the various body morphing weaponry such as claws, hammer fists and whips, include full body armour, infrared vision and the ability to glide. Prototype also allows a variety of choice in how you complete each mission.

For example, you need to enter a military base but only the general has the key. You could go in claws flailing, kill all non essential military, assimilate the general and walk into the now empty base, you could absorb the general in plain sight of everyone then use a patsy move to dupe the witnesses into killing one of their own or you could carefully stalk the general, waiting for him to stray from his comrades before going in for a stealth attack. All the methods are equally fun although in later levels, Military bases become far harder to infiltrate, often meaning your only choice is a full on assault. Overall, Alex plays a lot like Venom in Ultimate Spider-man, in fact the whipfist move and absorb ability have even been taken directly from it, but there are enough differences to stop the feeling of derivation.

At around 30 missions long, Prototype is a decent length. After 11 hours play through I’d only reached level 22 and had hardly touched any of the mini-game side missions and the addition of new game+ means that after completing the game, you can play back through with all your powers from the start. Prototype’s difficulty is also very well balanced. Levels are challenging but never frustratingly so and enemies progress well as Alex unlocks new powers. One of the first boss fights is a room full of hunters but as the game nears the end, hunters can be killed with a few slices of Alex’s blade while a hunter leader takes over the boss role. The only down side to the enemies is the lack of variety. Human enemies come in Military/Blackwatch or super soldier form and infected come in standard, enhanced and a few variations of hunter types and while this sounds like a lot, the only real difference between enemies is they look slightly different and do more damage.

Overall Prototype is a great game. The story is told in an interesting way, much akin to Bioshock’s audio tapes and the game play is extremely fun. The in game graphics might not be stunning but they never look bad, although the short draw distance when gliding over the city does detract from the experience a little. While the addition of New Game+ mode and unlockable hard difficulty don’t add much replayability to the game, the 11 hour story missions and large amount of mini-games mean that Prototype is definitely worth the purchase.

2 Comments so far
Leave a comment