Recently played this again to hype myself for Prototype 2. Did it get me excited or did it feel dated? Find out!
Gameplay -
The gameplay is very fluid and works most of the time. While doing the free-running mode Alex can scale buildings with ease and makes exploration much more satisfying. He can glide in mid-air to get to far away buildings with no sweat, he also has a double air dash to make that jump from one roof to another much more possible.
The fighting mechanics work for what they are. No complicated combos like Ninja Gaiden, but also not to simple. He can use his fist which is basic punch combos and his feet which can be combined into some cool strike that feel very smooth to pull of at times. That isn't his main weapon though which is surprising. You can also pick up enemy weapons like assault rifles, rockets, grenade launchers, and such. At a certain point of the game it lets you use enemy vehicles such as tanks and helicopters which adds more diversity that is well needed. Alex's main weapon's of choice though is his Powers. He has Claws that can cut through his enemies in mere seconds. A giant blade that is one of his most lethal power in the game. A whip that can also be used to pull his enemies toward him and two large Rock-fist which can destroy tanks and vehicles in a couple of hits. He also has defensive abilities which include a shield for when he runs he can protect the front of his body without worrying about getting hurt at all and a full body shield which just makes him take less damage which is very useful later in the game. He also has vision abilities so he can see if anyone is infected that is around him.
He also has a super move that kills all the enemies around him with one blow which is very useful when you are surrounded, but it has a start-up animation and during it the enemies can hit you which can be annoying at times. His last and most useful ability is to take the body of anyone he can get his hands on and change to them. This is extremely helpful when trying to get away from the military when they are chasing you. Last thing is that he can not get into the water he will just jump out if he falls in it.
They have challenges all around the city for you to do which will give you experience to upgrade Alex most of them are simple like killing this amount of enemies with this weapon or do this free-running in this amount of time. They also have original ones like to absorb this guy and then sneak in this military base and absorb these other guys all without being noticed. The challenges are just extra and are for you to do to test your skills with the game.
Story -
The story is kinda confusing at first until you start getting into it. How the story develops is through cut-scenes of the main missions of the game. That will give you the main story of Alex and his "Problem", but for the real gritty details and to learn more about the city and why it is getting infected. You have to find these people walking around the city and on the map it will show a red icon to those people you absorb them and it will tell you about what they were and how they are involved in all this. Which gives you a much more in-depth story.
Graphics and Presentation -
The games graphics aren't that good, but they work for this type of game. It has chaos going on at every corner. Explosions, Destruction, and monsters killing everything in sight. Not once has the frame-rate dropped for me which surprised me. One thing I have to complain about is the cut-scenes which are very low quality and is supposed to be the best looking thing in the game, but is very disappointing especially because some of the scenes are only 1 minute long or even less.
The presentation is well done if you don't press start at the beginning they show in-game scenes of Alex destroying the city and free running on buildings and it actually made me more excited to play the game from what I was seeing. They made it look exciting and fun which is what it was.
A.I. -
Here is why I refuse to give the game a higher score. The A.I. This has to be the cheapest and laziest A.I. I have ever seen in a game for a long time. I don't mean lazy like they would just do one attack over and over, I will actually admit they were kind of smart at times. They would leap over me to hit my back, roll away from danger, and even run away for a bit then attack me when I was venerable. They were pretty smart, but that ended once I died in 3 hits. The developers knew you would be overpowered, so what did they do to counteract that? They made the A.I. way to strong. I fought 3 of the mutants at once and the would attack me while I was blocking and never let up. Next thing you know I would be in a corner trapped and if I tried to attack back one hit would take out about a quarter of my health. It was just dumb how they did that. There are times where I would try to escape from the military and they would just rain missiles down on me until I died and I couldn't do anything about it. Even when I used the body armor it didn't help just made it worse because I was slow and sluggish. The bosses are just unbearable to fight. One is in the city streets and its a humongous tentacle thing(I won't spoil it.) and all it did was shoot these green missiles and I wouldn't mind if it went to you in numbers and that's it, but no they made it so these missiles track you regardless of where you are.
Overall -
The game is good I wouldn't say its great, but it was fun and very playable just some sections wanted me to throw my controller at my wall because of how much damage the A.I. took out from you. I would recommend it to anyone who is into superheroes because this game does a great job to make you feel like one. This is a good sandbox game and in a way it actually made me look forward to the second one. Just fix the A.I.