Prototype

"Prototype - It's all been done before."

I'm going to jump right in to it.

Story: The game's story is extremely lacking. The whole thing is about the main character, Alex Mercer, trying to figure out this whole government conspiracy that ended up in him having these shape shifting abilities. The whole government experiment gone wrong thing is a bit old now, wouldn't you say? I skipped every cut scene and still knew what was going on. The game is very predictable.

Visuals: The game isn't necessarily pretty either. All the people on the streets are wide eyed and are not very animated. I don't feel as if there is enough variety in the civilian character sprites, either. As I was about to type this, I walked down a street in the game and saw the same guy in a basketball jersey 5 times in one block. Another thing I noticed is that the shadowing is very funny looking. The only way I can describe it would be to say that the shadows are too sharp and defined, if that makes any sense. The numerous vehicles all look like cheap plastic toys.

Controls: The controls in this game are very simple, yet effective. All of the running around you do, flying across rooftops, leaping over cars, and such is accomplished by holding down RT and using the control stick. You don't need to constantly tap a button to hop over smaller objects. It does that part for you, basically. Fighting and/or using your ability is accomplished by using X and Y. The controls were just fantastic, in my opinion.

AI: Normally I wouldn't devote a whole part of a review to a game's AI, but I feel I need to for this game. The AI in Prototype is good. Too good. I say too good because, on numerous occasions in the game, as I was fleeing from the military, I'd jump from one spot to another, and immediately be hit by a rocket from a tank that is a few blocks away, This, of course meaning that the tank AI knew where I'd land and shot the missile in advance, so as soon as I would land, I'd be blown away. However, on a more positive note, the AI of the civilians ads to the environment of the game. One occasion I'd like to mention specifically shows what I mean. In the game I was just standing around because I was doing something on my computer real quick. As I picked up the controller and looked at the screen I saw a pedestrian falls to his knees, cower in fear and yell "Please, someone help!" as an infected human slowly walked towards him. He then scrambled to his feet and ran away. The fact that the civilians can react in such a way impressed me.It made them seem more real to me.

Gameplay: Have you ever played one of those free roaming Spiderman games such as Spiderman 2, Spiderman 3, or Web of Shadows? Well, imagine that in those games you can change your arm in to a sword. You'd then have Prototype. It plays like any other free roaming game. And, let's be honest, that concept stopped being innovative quite a few years back. You will have tons of fun with the game, though. Free running across rooftops and fighting bad guys never gets old.

There is a few things I'd like to mention here that I feel are pretty major problems in the games. One, once you get the blade ability, you're pretty much unstoppable. One enemy in the games, the Hunters, are pretty difficult to beat at first. You may even struggle to beat just one. But as soon as you get the blade arm you can kill them in one well executed combo. There's never a reason to use another weapon again. You'll use that blade arm for the rest of the game.

Secondly, a problem I run into CONSTANTLY is the overhangs on numerous buildings. You will be sprinting away from enemies for your life (if you haven't noticed, a lot of this game revolves around hit and run tactics) and you'll try to sprint up the side of a building when all of a sudden you hit an overhang, start running upside down, then just fall back to the ground. At this point your camera angle gets all messed up and you have no idea where you are or what you're doing and by the time you've figured it out you have 181,000 tanks and guys wielding rocket launchers directly behind you blasting you to oblivion.

Replay Value: The game has a lot of boring side mission type things, none of which are exciting. You can also run around and destroy the same military bases and infected hives over and over and over and over again. But it's still fun to just run around and beat the life out of things. So there's a little replay value in that, I guess.

Overall, the game is a 7/10. Not worth a buy, but certainly a rent.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/31/09

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