Prototype simply is not the great game that developers and their hype promised.
- Shape-shifting powers are, at first, an awesome idea.
- Good stealth elements, wich are unexpected in the context of the game.
- Some voice actors are quite good.
- Lots of action.
- You can destroy hives and military base out of missions.
What i disliked :
- Incredible confusion during the larger scale battle.
- Sketchy targeting system, mostly while driving aircrafts, making them very hard to aim at ground target.
- Lamest mission types ever.
- Unoriginal side-missions, half of them aren't fun.
Prototype is a hard game to review. Not really because of the game itself, but most likely because of the hype around it. Most people are completely monkey-balls about it, and saying anything negative about it is incredibly risky, because it was supposed to be the big summer action game, and people don't want to hear otherwise.. You don't piss off an angry mob with forks and torches. Except me.
So here you are, Alex Mercer, the hero of the game. Albeit his odd choice for clothing ( just look at him ), he does the job as a videogame protagonist. His storyline, while sometimes confusnig to follow, is relatively well told, even if its easy to guess its conclusion from a mile away.
The gameplay is, for the best and for its worst, unchanged compared to Radical's previous game ; Hulk : Ultimate Destruction. Actually, the game is almost identical on paper, except its artistic design. See, when Hulk could grab poles, Alex will grow a longblade out of his arm. When Hulk could transform cars into boxing gloves, Alex can grow maulings fists out of his arms. See the point? After a while, it's impossible not to see the '' re-hashed '' word stamped on the face of Prototype.
That said, if you actually dig Hulk : UD, you'll most likely enjoy your time with Prototype. The aiming system is relatively the same too, making medium to long range easier, but screwing up the close quarter combat. Sometimes, whenever you want to aim the closest target to you, Alex will decide to aim the helicopter overhead. In a sense, it does help you to take down the biggest enemies first, but in an other way, it makes you struggle against the controls to do things your way, not their way.
Speaking of close quarter combat, earlier in the game, you'll unlock an ability to dodge attacks. This ability isn't very useful, for the simple reason that you'll constantly get hit from every sides, and sometimes, you'll even recieve a blow from the enemy you tried to avoid, who is literaly meters away from you.
Most boss fights evolves around this principle too, making them very bland. You know, those movie action games with lame bossfights? They play out like that. There's no flair, no tension, to impression of power in these fights. Worse, the '' finishers'' you can do on some of them are incredibly lackluster. At some point, some tough-guy special military guy will go toe to toe against you with a stun batton. Alex can destroy helicotpers, withstand tank firing at him, but the stun batton weilding soldier gave me loads of troubles. Mostly because it's super hard to succesfully dodge his attacks.
You'll have access to a good ammount of fighting moves and different '' weapons '', yet at some part of the game, you'll ditch them all for the '' better '' weapon, that does the job better than any other. So you won't ever use your claws and fist ever again. You will keep using the leash-weapon to grappe helicopters, and that's it.
The game features something they dare to call '' Parkour ''. See, Alex can run up walls and along them, and he can also glide. By spreading his arms like wings. That's a little retarded, but hey, it's useful! Why not make him some kind of gliding-like demon-wings, or something cool?
The graphics are a mixedbag. Sure, I understand that due to the nature of the game, as a sandbox, it has to cut somewhere. So everything looks like an action game from the original xbox in 04, but, the framerate is solid, so it's alright. That said, they could have saved a lot if the artistic design was eye pleasing, and it's not. Everything is covered in a messy, organic, red-ish ooze and goo that corrupts the city. The game almost '' smells '' bad too, due to its gross artistic design.
Prototype can be beaten under nine hours, and its side missions aren't really a reason to come back. The main missions are extremely tedious and uninspired, and they'll never actually make you use your superpowers, they'll even take them away from you ( forcing you to stop free-roaming and speedrun through a series of lame missions ) and force you into vehicles way too often.
Unless you like to do what sandbox missions offers since years. Speed missions, gliding missions, helicopter missions, defeat-the-enemy under that ammount of time types of missions, etc. If it's your cup of tea, then you'll appreciate it. As for me, i've been doing this in all the spider-man, hulk and all the gta-clone games for years, and i'm fed up with this.
We've all seen it coming, Prototype isn't the grand experience the devs promised. A severe lack of good ideas and ultimatly boring missions prevent this game from being amazing. I can see people liking it, but I can also understand the other half of the gamers who felt like they've played this, and have been '' cheated '' by the developers into buying something they already purchased years ago.
VERDICT : Try it.