[PROTOTYPE] Review (360)

Beautiful Chaos

I have been keeping tabs on Prototype for a very long time; since 2007 in fact when I saw the very first trailer that Radical released for the game. Prototype is Radical Entertainment’s open world, third person brawler with some serious twists. You are Alex Mercer, and after waking up in a morgue with no recollection of who you previously were you realise you have access to limitless power, the ability to transform your body into any shape or anyone, super strength and agility and nothing is going to stop you in your mission to find out what happened to you and the zombie infected, military controlled New York. Over the recent months Prototype has been looking better and better and when I finally got hold of the game itself I was more than excited to get home and play it.

Upon loading the game one thing struck me instantly. The graphics. Unfortunately it seems the Prototype’s graphics are a tad sub-par considering the Xbox 360’s potential, and after making it to the top of the tallest building I could find in the hope of a brilliant view of New York I was hugely disappointed by simple shadows of building that I saw before me, among a dull reddish brown haze. On top of that the textures of buildings, enemies, civilians and to my disappointment explosions looked bland and unfinished at best. However I’m not sure that the wonderful gameplay this game has would have been possible if radical had given Prototype the graphics of, let’s say Grand Theft Auto IV. Simply because there is so much happening on screen at one time. In a choice between brilliant graphics and framerate, smooth flowing gameplay is going to win every time.

And as far as gameplay is concerned Prototype is awesome! In my opinion it’s exactly what a open world sandbox game should be. You have unparalleled power, you can run along rooftops and walls without ever slowing down, jump 80feet before you even start gliding or triple jumping and transform your body into an array of weapons and armour, as well as being able to lob vehicles and miscellaneous scenery around and nick guns dropped by soldiers for some good old fashioned running and gunning. Radical have certainly geared Prototype to being as action packed as possible, and if you’re not under fire from at least 40 different enemies at any moment in time then you’re doing it wrong. But sadly this leads to the majority of the game’s missions following the same typical format such as go to this place, kill these guys, destroy those things and repeat. The game’s side missions are also lacking originality, consisting or timed checkpoint races or killing lots of people in a certain amount of time. Thankfully Radical do bring something unique to the table in the form of consumption and gliding events, these ask you to consume certain targets and glide as close to a certain point as you can respectfully. It’s just a shame there weren’t more of these little flares of originality throughout the game, for example the body surfing ability is brilliant but it’s more or less useless, a few events that make more use of it would have been fun. But despite lack of originality Prototype is still a blast! Alex Mercer’s abilities look fantastic when used and are a really good laugh to just run about and mess around with and you really get the feeling of being an unstoppable super weapon, especially with the devastator attacks that destroy just about anything and everyone within a small radius, although these do have some dodgy button combinations linked to them; for example trying to press X and B at the exact same time while in mid-air trying to dodge incoming missiles is nigh on impossible.

And as far as gameplay is concerned Prototype is awesome!

Other than this minor problem though, the controls ore pretty much perfect. Holding down RT not only causes you to sprint at high speeds, it also allows you to pass any obstacle with little effort, whether it be vaulting over cars, walls or giving passers by a completely unprovoked elbow to the head to get them out of your way. Selecting abilities is also just as simple; you have 4 different types of power: Offensive powers, Defensive Powers, Disguise Powers and Sensory Powers which can be set to your directional pad buttons by hitting LB to go into a slow motion ability select wheel (which looks awesome in itself by the way) and using the right stick to select a power, Alex will then instantly switch to that power on the fly, no matter what position you’re in. Combat is just as simple, each weapon has normal attacks that are used by hitting X and special attacks such as the sword’s quick slashing combo and my personal favourite: the Hulk Hands Elbow Drop are used by hitting Y, B is both pick up and throw with any weapon equipped, and if you happen to have grabbed a humanoid character you can consume them for a quick health boost with Y. LT allows you to lock onto enemies and destroyable objects so you can attack them from range or simply keep the camera on the amongst the chaos; I did have some trouble with this system though, often the camera angle isn’t great while you are locked onto an enemy and there is nothing you can do about it because trying to move the camera causes you to automatically switch target. Also there are some situations where you just cant lock onto what you want to, one mission in particular asks you to destroy several machines within a large well protected base, I opted to grab a missile launcher and try to take them out from a safe distance but it seemed I could only target the enemies around them until I got a different, more dangerous angle. Which was annoying.

The story in Prototype isn’t great, the idea in that you’ve woken up, lost your memory and want to find out as much as you can about yourself is starting to get old, but at least it’s told well in the form of Alex narrating it to another character through a series of flashbacks, and it all merges together nicely at the end with some interesting plot twists. What I do really like about the story though is the whole Web Of Intrigue idea; throughout the game world are about a hundred or so ‘collectable’ targets for you to consume that only appear on your HuD when you are nearby. Consuming these targets gives you a flashback giving you some information about that character or Alex’s past.

The game’s sound isn’t bad, but it isn’t great either. The voice acting is good, the background music is appropriate, but also dull and forgettable and the sounds of ground mashing, cars smashing and people dying all sound nicely satisfying. A great thing about Prototype though is the constant streaming of military chatter you have access to; listening to them when you escape their strike teams with a cleverly timed disguise and how today was the day they almost caught Alex Mercer feels pretty good.

Overall I would defiantly urge you to go out and buy Prototype as it is certainly an excellent game, I just think it could have been so much better. The storyline could have been deeper and more interesting and the gameplay itself could have included some more unique and interesting ideas. But what we have on our shop shelves right now is still a very good example of exactly what makes a game fun that you’d have to be crazy to miss out on. Just a shame it couldn’t have lasted a bit longer.