[PROTOTYPE] Review
Karate Kicking Choppers and Consuming Names (Om Nom Nom)
Good: Vertical Movement, Combat Options, Amount of Stuff on Screen, Replayability
Bad: Lateral Movement, Difficulty 'Curve', Detail of Stuff on Screen, Replayability
Oh, the lovely saga of the Trench Coat Wearing, Fedora Adorned, Conflicted Personality anti-hero. You can be a master of manipulation (Yhelotharbatman), a master of detectiveness (The Question, anyone?), or a master of boring your enemies into surrender via boring, Ayn Rand-y type rants (Mr. A...oh, screw it. Anything Mr. Ditko has drawn.) Since your beginnings as a Private Eye in the 30's to the masked avenger of a totalitarian 1980's Britain, you've captured our hearts, minds, and our money. Games, movies, and books with the lovable (Or anti-lovable?) anti-hero sell like hotcakes. Some people, however, aren't content with the anti-hero. They want darker. They want even more villainous schemes. They want...popped collars and hoodies? Will [PROTOTYPE]'s (Henceforth referred to as 'Prototype') dark, anti-hero/borderline villain Alex Mercer come to answer our dark prayers, or will he merely end up a kitty cat in dark clothing?
Review
You are Alex Mercer, PHD, and if the opening sequence is to be believed, a moonlighting cadaver at a local morgue. You fail your moonlighting by waking up mere moments before being cut open, and, as you might guess, hurting the tender sensibilities of the morgue workers. You stumble outside to a hail of bullets as some not so nice black clad soldiers are lovingly dispensing in your general area. You escape, and start your vengeance filled quest to rid the world of the people who have wronged you, the people who might of wronged you, and anyone who happens to be around the people who may of wronged you.
Prototype's story is somewhat hard to pin down. It's standard 'government conspiracy' plot for the first half, and suffers because of it. It moves slowly, and the attempts to get you to feel sympathy with the obviously not-quite-cuddly Mercer fall flat. By the second half of the story, however, some pretty unexpected twists get thrown into the mix. The pace quickly takes a turn towards the quick and Radical stops trying to get you to bond with Alex, and instead just lets you revel in what a man with no scruples and super powers can do in a crowded city.
In fact, this is one of Prototype's greatest strengths. Alex Mercer isn't a hero, or even an Anti-hero. He's a villain who ended up on the 'correct' side of the Karma fence, and who's not quite sure how he got there. This gives the game unparalleled freedom to use the ped's of New York city as you please. Toss them into a helicopter? Sure. Piledrive them off the Empire State building? Go right ahead! Pick up a car and run down the sidewalk, tossing anything not nailed down away from you in a flurry of death and destruction? Why not! As the plot moves along, you learn just what an evil man Alex used to be/is, and it generally keeps the plot from falling totally flat. The true savior of the plot, however, is the Web of Intrigue. These full motion video snapshots can be accessed by 'consuming' marked targets, and they serve to fill in plot holes, add new questions to the conspiracy, or just generally make statements about how bad/good faction X is. The voice acting for them, and for most of the game, is hit or miss, but actors such as CSI's Paul Guilfoyle (Jim Brass) generally make it bearable.
In the big picture, though, the plot is just used to give you an excuse to rip up virtual New York city with a legion (MS John not included) of abilities. This is, unquestionably, the games strongest point. You have five offensive powers (Rock fists, a whip, claws, a giant bladearmthing, and super muscles), two defensive powers (Shield and armor), four types of handheld weapons (rocket launcher, grenade launcher, machine gun, and assault rifle), several different vehicles, including what can be best described as a nuclear tank, and NUMEROUS straight up melee combos all give you a ton of ways to take out anyone in your way. To top it all off, most of them don't overlap, meaning that no matter what you chose, you'll generally be getting a unique experience.
Let's take, for example, a tank. I can punch and kick it to death, shot put myself and my rock fists towards it, elbow drop it from air, slice it in half with the blade arm, bullet dive into it, cannonball into it, ground pound into it, throw cars at it, destroy it from range with my whip, blow it up with explosives, take it down with another tank/APC/helo, shoot underground spikes at it, Falcon Punch it into a building with super muscles, hijack it, or merely jump from a large height and drop next to it, the shock wave from my landing knocking it over. And that's just a tank, let alone a helo, squad of soldiers, or a building. You won't just be bashing things, however. The game includes a semi-decent stealth mechanic in as well, although it never forces you to use the stealth mechanic for any length of time if you don't want to. If there's one major gripe with the combat system, it's the difficulty 'curve'. I say 'curve' since, if you were to graph it, it would look more like a graph of some mountains than a curve. You'll be running along, crushing story missions under your popped collar, and suddenly the game will take a 180 turn in difficulty and make you run to your mother sobbing. There are only 3 or so of these jumps in the game, but one of them comes pretty early on, and can be horribly frustrating. Other than that, the combat system is flawless.
Falcon...PUNCH!
Combat isn't any good without the ability to move from place to place with ease, and this is perhaps where Prototype falters the most. By simply holding a button, Alex with go into 'hyper-parkour' mode, sprinting at highway speeds, flipping over cars in his way, and running up buildings. He can also double dash and glide, which makes for easy movement across the city. This is the best movement system since Assassin's Creed, but it suffers some of the same faults. Alex will sometimes go in directions you really didn't want him to, and climbing up small surfaces can be a lot more trouble than it's worth. It also makes it quite hard to make precise lateral movements, especially from small roof tops to small rooftops, but it makes up for this with some very good vertical control. Jumping off of a large building and landing on the roof of a car eighty stories down isn't a rare occurrence, and getting up and down large buildings couldn't be smoother.
So, you can move pretty well and you can smash things to itty bitty tinee wenee bits. But how do those bits look? In a word: bad. The graphics for open world games are notoriously sub par, but Prototype takes this to new lows. Most things look blurry and somewhat blocky, and the draw distance can be absolutely horrendous. Alex's character model is the lone standout, but even that can't make up for the sorry state of the world around him.
And then you get into your first hive fight.
Sure, each individual unit may not look like much, and having twenty of them on screen at once won't make up for that. Toss 100 units on the screen at the same time, with reinforcements streaming in, crows flying overhead, a building *pulsing* with evil material, and crashed cars and random debris lying around, and all of this with the game cruising along at a rock solid 60 FPS, and you'll start to forget the games graphical woes.
The game is chock full of replayability as well. Once you're done with the story, you'll still have about 110 (Yes, one hundred and ten) or so Web of Intrigue targets to go after, as well as sixty or so 'side quests', 30 or so 'consume' events, along with the usual assortment of collectible and mayhem that comes with any open world game. The side quests are where the meat of the end game is at. The events are generally varied, with straight up 'kill' events (Kill X amounts of units using Y weapon in Z amount of time) mixed in with races, glide events (Think darts, but with Alex and his gliding instead of a dart), and 'war' events, in which you fight alongside either the infected or military to do X amount of damage to the other side in Y amount of time. There are 5 different scoring levels (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and 'Radical'), although only the first three are open until you beat EVERY side quest with a Gold rating. The side quests, however, also suffer from the same difficulty mountains as the rest of the game, with certain side quests being snore worthy while others will make you destroy your TV in frustration. For the most part, though, the end game will keep you entertained for quite some time after you've finished the main story.
Sadly, it will only entertain you and you alone. There's no multiplayer to speak of. No score sharing, no co-op, no competitive multiplayer, nada. This gives the game a unique feel to it. Sure, you can play it virtually forever, but without the ability to share your awesomeness with others, why would you want to?
Conclusion
Prototype is perhaps one of the better games of 2009. While nowhere near as technically proficient as its peers, the sheer amount of stuff you can do in game more than makes up for it. You'll occasionally get lonely with nobody else to play with, but then you'll throw an air conditioning unit at a helicopter and forget about it. Perhaps the best way to describe how I feel about this game is thus: Whenever I'm not playing Prototype, I'm thinking about Prototype and when the next time I'll get to play it is. Buy It
Post Script: My apologies about the IGN water tags. I spent about half an hour getting the correct images off of google images, only to realize that they were all from IGN, even those from other magazine's websites. Go figure. This was also my first time using images, so if you see anything wrong, please let me know! And, as always, feedback is appreciated. Unless it's negative feedback.
Karate Kicking Choppers and Consuming Names (Om Nom Nom)
Good: Vertical Movement, Combat Options, Amount of Stuff on Screen, Replayability
Bad: Lateral Movement, Difficulty 'Curve', Detail of Stuff on Screen, Replayability
Oh, the lovely saga of the Trench Coat Wearing, Fedora Adorned, Conflicted Personality anti-hero. You can be a master of manipulation (Yhelotharbatman), a master of detectiveness (The Question, anyone?), or a master of boring your enemies into surrender via boring, Ayn Rand-y type rants (Mr. A...oh, screw it. Anything Mr. Ditko has drawn.) Since your beginnings as a Private Eye in the 30's to the masked avenger of a totalitarian 1980's Britain, you've captured our hearts, minds, and our money. Games, movies, and books with the lovable (Or anti-lovable?) anti-hero sell like hotcakes. Some people, however, aren't content with the anti-hero. They want darker. They want even more villainous schemes. They want...popped collars and hoodies? Will [PROTOTYPE]'s (Henceforth referred to as 'Prototype') dark, anti-hero/borderline villain Alex Mercer come to answer our dark prayers, or will he merely end up a kitty cat in dark clothing?
Review
You are Alex Mercer, PHD, and if the opening sequence is to be believed, a moonlighting cadaver at a local morgue. You fail your moonlighting by waking up mere moments before being cut open, and, as you might guess, hurting the tender sensibilities of the morgue workers. You stumble outside to a hail of bullets as some not so nice black clad soldiers are lovingly dispensing in your general area. You escape, and start your vengeance filled quest to rid the world of the people who have wronged you, the people who might of wronged you, and anyone who happens to be around the people who may of wronged you.
Prototype's story is somewhat hard to pin down. It's standard 'government conspiracy' plot for the first half, and suffers because of it. It moves slowly, and the attempts to get you to feel sympathy with the obviously not-quite-cuddly Mercer fall flat. By the second half of the story, however, some pretty unexpected twists get thrown into the mix. The pace quickly takes a turn towards the quick and Radical stops trying to get you to bond with Alex, and instead just lets you revel in what a man with no scruples and super powers can do in a crowded city.
In fact, this is one of Prototype's greatest strengths. Alex Mercer isn't a hero, or even an Anti-hero. He's a villain who ended up on the 'correct' side of the Karma fence, and who's not quite sure how he got there. This gives the game unparalleled freedom to use the ped's of New York city as you please. Toss them into a helicopter? Sure. Piledrive them off the Empire State building? Go right ahead! Pick up a car and run down the sidewalk, tossing anything not nailed down away from you in a flurry of death and destruction? Why not! As the plot moves along, you learn just what an evil man Alex used to be/is, and it generally keeps the plot from falling totally flat. The true savior of the plot, however, is the Web of Intrigue. These full motion video snapshots can be accessed by 'consuming' marked targets, and they serve to fill in plot holes, add new questions to the conspiracy, or just generally make statements about how bad/good faction X is. The voice acting for them, and for most of the game, is hit or miss, but actors such as CSI's Paul Guilfoyle (Jim Brass) generally make it bearable.
In the big picture, though, the plot is just used to give you an excuse to rip up virtual New York city with a legion (MS John not included) of abilities. This is, unquestionably, the games strongest point. You have five offensive powers (Rock fists, a whip, claws, a giant bladearmthing, and super muscles), two defensive powers (Shield and armor), four types of handheld weapons (rocket launcher, grenade launcher, machine gun, and assault rifle), several different vehicles, including what can be best described as a nuclear tank, and NUMEROUS straight up melee combos all give you a ton of ways to take out anyone in your way. To top it all off, most of them don't overlap, meaning that no matter what you chose, you'll generally be getting a unique experience.
Let's take, for example, a tank. I can punch and kick it to death, shot put myself and my rock fists towards it, elbow drop it from air, slice it in half with the blade arm, bullet dive into it, cannonball into it, ground pound into it, throw cars at it, destroy it from range with my whip, blow it up with explosives, take it down with another tank/APC/helo, shoot underground spikes at it, Falcon Punch it into a building with super muscles, hijack it, or merely jump from a large height and drop next to it, the shock wave from my landing knocking it over. And that's just a tank, let alone a helo, squad of soldiers, or a building. You won't just be bashing things, however. The game includes a semi-decent stealth mechanic in as well, although it never forces you to use the stealth mechanic for any length of time if you don't want to. If there's one major gripe with the combat system, it's the difficulty 'curve'. I say 'curve' since, if you were to graph it, it would look more like a graph of some mountains than a curve. You'll be running along, crushing story missions under your popped collar, and suddenly the game will take a 180 turn in difficulty and make you run to your mother sobbing. There are only 3 or so of these jumps in the game, but one of them comes pretty early on, and can be horribly frustrating. Other than that, the combat system is flawless.
Falcon...PUNCH!
Combat isn't any good without the ability to move from place to place with ease, and this is perhaps where Prototype falters the most. By simply holding a button, Alex with go into 'hyper-parkour' mode, sprinting at highway speeds, flipping over cars in his way, and running up buildings. He can also double dash and glide, which makes for easy movement across the city. This is the best movement system since Assassin's Creed, but it suffers some of the same faults. Alex will sometimes go in directions you really didn't want him to, and climbing up small surfaces can be a lot more trouble than it's worth. It also makes it quite hard to make precise lateral movements, especially from small roof tops to small rooftops, but it makes up for this with some very good vertical control. Jumping off of a large building and landing on the roof of a car eighty stories down isn't a rare occurrence, and getting up and down large buildings couldn't be smoother.
So, you can move pretty well and you can smash things to itty bitty tinee wenee bits. But how do those bits look? In a word: bad. The graphics for open world games are notoriously sub par, but Prototype takes this to new lows. Most things look blurry and somewhat blocky, and the draw distance can be absolutely horrendous. Alex's character model is the lone standout, but even that can't make up for the sorry state of the world around him.
And then you get into your first hive fight.
Sure, each individual unit may not look like much, and having twenty of them on screen at once won't make up for that. Toss 100 units on the screen at the same time, with reinforcements streaming in, crows flying overhead, a building *pulsing* with evil material, and crashed cars and random debris lying around, and all of this with the game cruising along at a rock solid 60 FPS, and you'll start to forget the games graphical woes.
The game is chock full of replayability as well. Once you're done with the story, you'll still have about 110 (Yes, one hundred and ten) or so Web of Intrigue targets to go after, as well as sixty or so 'side quests', 30 or so 'consume' events, along with the usual assortment of collectible and mayhem that comes with any open world game. The side quests are where the meat of the end game is at. The events are generally varied, with straight up 'kill' events (Kill X amounts of units using Y weapon in Z amount of time) mixed in with races, glide events (Think darts, but with Alex and his gliding instead of a dart), and 'war' events, in which you fight alongside either the infected or military to do X amount of damage to the other side in Y amount of time. There are 5 different scoring levels (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and 'Radical'), although only the first three are open until you beat EVERY side quest with a Gold rating. The side quests, however, also suffer from the same difficulty mountains as the rest of the game, with certain side quests being snore worthy while others will make you destroy your TV in frustration. For the most part, though, the end game will keep you entertained for quite some time after you've finished the main story.
Sadly, it will only entertain you and you alone. There's no multiplayer to speak of. No score sharing, no co-op, no competitive multiplayer, nada. This gives the game a unique feel to it. Sure, you can play it virtually forever, but without the ability to share your awesomeness with others, why would you want to?
Conclusion
Prototype is perhaps one of the better games of 2009. While nowhere near as technically proficient as its peers, the sheer amount of stuff you can do in game more than makes up for it. You'll occasionally get lonely with nobody else to play with, but then you'll throw an air conditioning unit at a helicopter and forget about it. Perhaps the best way to describe how I feel about this game is thus: Whenever I'm not playing Prototype, I'm thinking about Prototype and when the next time I'll get to play it is. Buy It
Post Script: My apologies about the IGN water tags. I spent about half an hour getting the correct images off of google images, only to realize that they were all from IGN, even those from other magazine's websites. Go figure. This was also my first time using images, so if you see anything wrong, please let me know! And, as always, feedback is appreciated. Unless it's negative feedback.
