Prototype review

Prototype is an open-world action thriller conspiracy. That sentence pretty much sums up the entire game.

First, as always, the good. The action of Prototype, what it's all about, is pretty damn crazy and chaotic. Never too chaotic, just plain chaotic. The number of people on screen is awesome, usually about 100-200 people on screen at one time, all for you to brutally murder with a number of different weapons. The weapons in this game are bad-freakin'-ass, including an extendable razor-sharp whip, 2 giant claws of death, and a 7-foot blade arm. The number of upgrades for these weapons and your character Alex are great, and it's gonna be at least 2 playthroughs before you get them all unless you do all the side-quests. There are so many ways to kill people in this game, it's unbelievable. You can grind them to dust by skidding them on the ground like a skateboard, smash them to a bloody pulp with hammerfists, rip the IN HALF with the beefed up muscle-mass powers, cut them to shreds, impale them with a few spikes that pop out of the ground... too many ways to explain. It all amounts to GREAT FUN.

Relating to the side-quests, they're fun, but fall a little short of Radical's last game, Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. In Hulk, you could punt cars through a ring of fire and go golfing with people as the balls. Off buildings. In this game it's pretty much: kill a bunch of people in a time limit, kill a bunch of people in a time limit with one pre-selected weapon, and rooftop-races. I was hoping for something a little more engaging.

The story is... I don't know. There is some mundane dialogue and bad voice acting, but the story does take some pretty interesting turns (none of which I'm going to spoil...) and Barry Pepper does a good job of voicing a brooding Alex Mercer. Not much to say here, but it does take the turns often enough to keep you interested. Also, the way you figure out some of the loose ends is the Web of Intrigue. You hunt down people, absorb them, and retain their memories. Every time you absorb a WOI target, you get a 30 second-ish flash of some of their memories. It's pretty cool.

Now, the bad. The graphics. Sorry, but some of the graphics are just awful. The draw distance is probably the worst I've ever seen, especially when riding a helicopter, and some of the character models are lacking. The cutscenes are all done with the in-game graphics, so the close-ups look terrifying. Luckily, most of the animations are top-fucking-notch and the framerate stays steady throughout the chaos of the game.

Later in the game, ut gets pretty difficult and almost forces you into one path each mission, like using the blade-arm (the most powerful weapon) and riding in a tank to finish the mission successfully. Luckily this is only the last few missions, not the entire game.

Overall, Prototype is a fun, rewarding experience with some crazy moments that make your eyes pop out of your skull. It has a flaws here and there, but it usually doesn't distract from the fun.

Final rating: 8.9