Prototype

"Is Prototype the new epidemic, or is it just another common cold?"

One of the most anticipated titles of 2009, Prototype is Radical Entertainment's newest foray into the free-roam genre. Based around action-packed frenetic combat, Prototype is slated to be the action-junkie's fix for the summer. For many fans, it's the spiritual sequel to Free Radical's previously frenzy-filled title, Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. But does Prototype deliver in regard to this? Let's see.


Story

It seems it's just another day at the office for two military personnel. They are gathered in a morgue standing over a young man, preparing to begin an autopsy upon him. It seems the deceased man was apparently a worker at the illustrious GENTEK when he met his end. Suddenly, as one of them begins the procedure, the man wakes up in a craze, stumbling off the table. In a rushed terror, the two men bound out of the room and holler for assistance. The man, not knowing who he is or what happened to him, barrels out of the building, trying to find safety.

Enter Alex Mercer, the game's amnesiac protagonist. Alex has no idea what happened to him, but moments after his escape he is attacked by teams of soldiers, and quickly finds he possesses superhuman capabilities. Strength enough to throw cars like toys, to jump dozens of feet in the air, endurance to eat bullets like candy, to fall hundreds of feet and walk away without a scratch. But perhaps most importantly, he finds that he possesses the ability to consume living matter, to absorb it and use its biomass to his advantage. Using this ability, he finds that if he consumes people, he gains their memories and even their appearance, if he so wishes.

Alex uses this to his utmost advantage. With his newfound powers, he resolves that he will find the man who caused this to happen to him and destroy him. However, everywhere he goes, Alex is incessantly hounded by the military. Moreover, it appears that a virus has begun to sweep the city; it bears properties similar to that of Alex's powers, and monstrosities Alex hadn't dreamed of begin appearing left and right, intent to destroy him. It seems that Mercer has his work set out for him.

It's a workable premise, but it promptly falls on its face the farther the plot advances. As time goes on, it seems as though the developers simply stopped caring about the storyline. Characters are introduced and then promptly killed without any concentration or development, plot points come out of nowhere, and twists are some of the most hackneyed seen in the gaming world. To put it simply, there is a story here, but it's very, very plain. With work it could be quite intriguing, but as it stands it just doesn't pull in very strongly at all.

Final Score: 6/10


Graphics

The visuals of Prototype, to put it quite bluntly, are horrid. Environments are plain and uninspiring, textures are sub-par, and the draw distance jumps between sufficient and at times well done to utterly poor. For the most part, nearly everything looks dull. It doesn't require long for the average player to notice the game's dearth of graphical ability in this regard.

However, on an upside, the textures for some player characters, notably Alex himself, are well done enough to be above passing. Moreover, the actual animations for Alex at the least are very, very good. Playing as Alex just feels badass. He moves fluidly, and every motion has a very appealing look to it. Finally, worth noting is the large amount of action that can take place on the screen at once.

It's good, and it's also terrible. It is oh so incredible to be able to play with helicopters, tanks, soldiers, infected, and Hunters trying to all kill you at once. It's even better that the framerate doesn't hiccup a second of the time; however, it's also disappointing that this could not be combined with exemplary textures and environments. All in all, it's passing in terms of the means by which it supports the action, but the image itself can be very mediocre.

Final Score: 7/10


Gameplay

This is easily Prototype's strongest point. Free Radical is not a stranger when it comes to making action-packed slugfests, and Prototype rarely disappoints in this regard –at least at the beginning of the game. Gameplay is fast and frantic, and Alex can frequently be seen hopping from building to building slaughtering left and right. It's a real sight to behold, and even moreso to control it.

The primary gameplay operates in a manner similar to that of most open-world games of modern ilk. Alex is left with the ability to explore the entirety of the game city's map from square one; interspersed throughout the game are various quests. There are the primary missions centered around, of course, the storyline. However, as the plot opens up, the amount of different side quests that can be accessed increases.

These missions range from consuming a series of marked targets under a certain time, to blowing up a base, to killing a certain number of infected or military with this or that weapon, to even trying to jump and glide into a target as efficiently as possible. It's really quite entertaining, in that there is almost something to do instead of progressing through the story. Until about halfway through the game, there is rarely a dearth of new mission-types. There is more than one point in which the player cannot finish some sidequests adequately without purchasing extra abilities, which can be bought through the pause menu after a certain point in the story.

The gameplay itself works in a hack-‘n-slash sort of format; There are two buttons by which to create combos with any melee weapon, and there are around half a dozen bio-weapons to gain as the game goes on. It starts off being easy to understand, but as one plays further and unlocks more and more, it almost becomes overwhelming in the sheer workability of weapons and combos. This is definitely a good thing, in that there is really variety here in how a player wants to play, and stylish abilities peppered throughout that really make them feel awesome when they destroy someone.

Each mission or side-mission a player completes gives them Experience Points, referred to in the game as simple EP. At the outset of the game, there are few abilities to purchase, and they are all relatively easy to obtain; however, as time goes on, the number of abilities that can be purchased at the same time increases dramatically, and so do the costs that come with them. This means that near the middle of the game, there will be a very wide ability to tailor Alex as a player sees fit, and a large incentive to participate in side missions so as to make their character move faster, jump higher, take more damage, or just have more bio-weapons in general.

The combat ends up being easily the game's strongest point, but it is certainly not without its irritations; as the game progresses, the feeling of invincibility the player is endowed with at the beginning of the game slowly evaporates, until by the end of the title it is nigh impossible to enter into any sort of armed conflict without constantly retreating and then returning. Initially the battles become pitched against your favor, and then right out ridiculous. It is as though practically every person in the game has with them some sort of explosive to devastate Alex with near the conclusion.

You might think that this is an interesting premise. This might draw you in. It will, at first; however, after awhile you will become irritated by it to no end. All you want to do is utterly destroy your enemies, and the amount of effort it takes in constant running away begins to leave the realm of tactical withdrawal to being cheated. This is assisted by the fact that your pursuers could probably shoot the wings off a butterfly at three hundred yards, meaning that even with Alex's several rolls and hops, the probability of him being nailed by some mortar or rocket is pretty high.

But this is not the most irritating portion of the gameplay. No, this is reserved most primarily for the Infected Hunters and Super Soldiers, the latter being several times worse than the first. Hunters are large and bulky zombie-like Infected that have a habit of trying to pulverize Alex until he's a nice bloody pulp. One would think that, being the engine of destruction that Mercer is, that they could easily dispatch with these enemies; such is not so.

In fact, until the later portions of the game, it feels simply cheap to even enter into a fight with these creatures. This is because one of their particular attacks consists of them freaking out and thrashing their arms back and forth in Alex's direction. The player can be in the middle of a combo, and the Hunter will wind up with this attack, ending with them hitting Alex three, four, or maybe even five times before the player has the time to react and get out of the way. The more irritating thing about this is that the Hunter cannot be staggered when it is doing this. No matter how slash Alex swings away at them, they will inevitably come swinging with this ability, and it makes fighting them feel more like a chore than a fun experience; add to this the fact that they are all over the place and have a habit of chasing Alex for a long period of time, and you have a primary source of irritation for the player until near the conclusion of the title.

If the Hunters were bad, the Super Soldiers are even worse. Being large and intimidating, they have the tendency to grab Alex and then slam him around, often dealing around thirty to forty percent of Alex's total health in damage, even when one's health abilities are maxed out. And when I state that they have the tendency to do this, I mean they do this practically every other attack that they come at you with. They can be evaded with timed button presses, allowing you to kill them with ease, but this then requires that the player not attack them, for fear of inadvertently hitting the wrong button.

This means that either the player has to resort to cheap tactics to kill the Super Soldier (such as continued vertical helmet splitter slash from Alex's Blade), or sit back and wait for the soldier to grab him, probably suffering a large amount of damage from the times in which they decide to actually physically attack. This is then made even worse by the fact that they are able to withstand gigantic amounts of damage. It takes more than two fully charged versions of the abovementioned slash, which can without even being fully charged take out tanks in a single blow. This is completely forgetting that they are capable of holding up their arms and stopping themselves from being staggered, thus leaving you completely open to attack.

Prototype is a terrific game when it comes to the gameplay department, but it is also unceasingly frustrating in the final portions of the game. It somewhat tarnishes the title, but not so much that it renders the all-around frantically action-packed fun non-existent. It just makes you wonder why they would make the enemy so needlessly annoying. If you're looking for some beat-‘em-up action, regardless of the cons of this portion, it's definitely worth a few of your hours.

Final Score: 8/10


Sound

Again, Prototype ends up leaving me feeling conflicted. At times the sound was particularly horrible, and at other times it was absolutely immersive and fun. As a general rule of thumb, sound in any of the cutscenes is hopefully poor, usually on account of the fact that sound effects are almost entirely absent. Generic sounds from the game are instead used, and it really ruins what needs to be a very immersive point of the game. It leaves you dreading the next cutscene, foreseeing how unfinished it will feel.

This is then once again conflicted by its use in gameplay; explosions and bullets fly everywhere, and all sound quite adequate. In addition, the voice acting during gameplay can usually leave a feeling of immersion that really puts you in Alex's shoes, as though you are indeed running from the army. Screams and voices being cut off when you blow up vehicles is done well, and ends up making your kills feel more real at particular moments.

Unfortunately, there is not one memorable tune in the entire title. There are various short songs that play during, say, a chase from the army as Alex struggles to find a hiding place. However, none of them are particularly terrific, and they usually end without really giving the player a stronger sense of atmosphere from the game. On the other hand, while a strong tracklist would have made the gameplay far more entertaining and able to be played before monotony set in, it is not necessarily the worst loss. It's just somewhat of a disappointment.

Final Score: 7/10


Play Time and Replayability

Prototype can be a fairly lengthy title in terms of action games; if one approaches at least half or more of the sidequests and completes them properly, beating the game can take around twenty to thirty hours. Beating the entire game without upgrades can be done in around fifteen hours, but nearly a third will probably be spent on multiple continues on account of the fact that Alex will be much easier to kill without harvesting the valuable EP that the sidequests afford upon the player.

There is not a large amount of replayability, but the incentive to start a new game certainly exists; this is because there is the option after the player has completed the game to start a New Game +. This allows one to begin the game once again with all of their endgame Alex's abilities transferred to the very beginning of the story. It makes traversing the city so much faster, and it gives Alex the godlike feeling that he possessed at the beginning a gigantic leap. It makes the player feel as though the army really stands no chance of battling Alex. On one hand, this is a plus, as it affords the player the ability to fight to their heart's content without suffering any real troubles; on the other hand, some will find it boring that there is no challenge. Either way, it is quite a boon for many gamers that Free Radical decided to implement it.

Final Score: 8/10


Final Word

Prototype is an action-packed rollercoaster ride, and a hair-pulling ordeal. It is a beautiful masterpiece, and a hideous beast. Few games in recent memory are so divided as this title, and few are doing as successful as Prototype has been. It's a fun title that deserves a rent for gamers that like blowing things up and rendering enemies into a bloody mist, but its shortcomings means that those looking at this title for setting the bar in the graphical, sound, or story department are going to be sorely disappointed. Go into the game expecting only gameplay, and you will probably come out with less frustration.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 06/22/09

Game Release: Prototype (US, 06/09/09)