Gamers like freedom. Nobody enjoys a game that constricts you to a limited area, and doesn't allow you to tamper or mess with anything in the vicinity; and the more space open to explore and the more things available for you to do, the happier a gamer becomes. So in this sense, Sandbox games are a delight to the hardcore game players out there, granting you a massive area to explore and complete freedom to do whatever you want, when you want. Prototype, a sandbox action game developed by Radical Entertainment, wins points straight out of the starting grid by not only giving players the whole of Manhattan to explore at their leisure, but granting them a vast array of powers and abilities to tear the place up with, and incredible speed and maneuverability to be able to swing themselves into the sky, and scale and run across tall buildings. Sadly, how awe-inspiring the game may be at first glance soon gives way to a slight feeling of monotony, as it becomes apparent that Prototype is a decent but rather repetitive game, with a fun concept but bad environment and mission design, an unintelligible story and no real sense of immersion in the experience.
In modern day Manhattan, a virus is infecting people and turning them into mindless zombies. You are Alex Mercer, a man also infected but gaining superhuman powers for a reason I never quite caught onto. The military is hunting to kill you, and it's your job to fight back while also killing the infected and facing off against mutants to battle the virus in the city. The story is twisted and convoluted but beneath all the confusing one-liners and visions it's just a bog standard plot which serves merely as an excuse for you to run around killing everything. It's unnecessarily confusing while really having nothing going for it, and it gives the impression that the game somehow thinks highly of itself or is trying to be something it's not. Still, in contrast to the screams of your foes being crushed or torn in half, a basic story like this one should quite rightly stay as an underlying point to drive your killing sprees. But you wouldn't think so judging by how many cutscenes and bizarre visions the game throws at us to try and make sense of it all.
The gameplay is more superior and far less full of itself than the sub-par story, allowing you an impressive selection of different moves and powers to rain destruction down upon your foes. Right off the bat you can run up walls almost as if they're not there, jump extremely high and far, and even glide across the sky for long distances. When in combat you have the advantage of super strength and speed, knocking enemies away from you with the touch of a button and picking up cars to throw at anyone who looks at you the wrong way. Your character also has the ability to shape-shift into the bodies of people he has 'consumed' (yes, you effectively cannibalise people in this game, even though it's viewed in a rather 'magical' way) and you can morph into them to stealthily infiltrate enemy fronts or to evade capture. His shape-shifting abilities also extend into more brutal uses though, as he can change his hands into deadly claws, or a gigantic club that can destroy tanks with ease. You can even shoot ropes out of your arms and pull things towards you like Spiderman. There are far more options available than just the things I have mentioned though, and you 'buy' new moves and powers by spending your Experience Points that you gain from combat or completing side missions. Many of the powers are useful, fun and devastating; but you will most likely pick a favourite move and use it repeatedly. Regardless, playing with all your abilities, destroying anything that gets in your way and whizzing across the rooftops at high speed is an absolute joy to play and to behold.
For a game with such variety in the combat area, you would expect Prototype to be a game that doesn't wear off so easily; but Prototype actually turns repetitive fairly quickly. It's partly because the game's version of Manhattan is generic and uninteresting, full of samey-looking buildings with very few actual landmarks or anything that catches the eye; and the game hosts a slightly drab colour palette of many dark yellows, oranges and reds; lacking any real vistas in the graphical area. But the main reason Prototype becomes repetitive is because of the missions. The mission structures are all fairly similar to each other ? go here, kill these things, escape. The city being dull doesn't help this notion because the places missions take place in all look very alike, sometimes almost identical to each other. Eventually you will have to steal a tank to blow up a building, and the game starts to show signs of more interesting mission layouts, but then you'll find you have to steal another tank to blow up another building a few missions later, and then again. Everything feels like it happens more than once. There are a few chase scenes, escort missions and big boss fights but they always seem to follow a similar pattern when you get into them no-matter what you're doing. Having a sandbox world gives you the opportunity to approach some missions in different ways, adding some depth, but it's all for naught if they all end in exactly the same way and follow a similar pattern in very similar looking areas.
Sadly, the side-missions suffer from the same lack of variety and originally that the main missions suffer from. There are a couple of different types of side missions you can partake in, but again, most of them are just variants on killing everything, which you already do quite enough of in the story missions. There are some checkpoint races you can try, and these are fun enough because they make use of the game's best feature, which is that great feeling of soaring through the air and running across buildings. But as a whole, these activities are best left alone because you won't be needed that extra EP anyway once you start getting a tonne of it from the story missions.
While the combat is brutal and fun at its core, there is nothing really special about what the game throws at you; and the challenge comes mainly from facing off against way too many enemies at once which sometimes feels a bit cheap. The combat can get chaotic at times when everyone is attacking you at the same time, including tanks and helicopters, which makes things a bit frustrating; and this is punctuated further by controls that are not bad but far from perfect, making movement clumsy in times of panic, and combat imprecise when there are many enemies on screen. Some of the buttons the game asks you to press to perform certain moves are just impossible to do without adjusting the way you're holding the controller, which breaks flow and is honestly just bad design.
Destructible environments would have been nice, and the only real devastation you can create is limited to civilians, cars and the military; which puts a damper on the big fights because your abilities feel restricted. It seems wrong that you can destroy a tank with your bare hands but all the buildings stay rock-solid regardless of what you throw at them or how many well-placed rockets are aimed in their direction. The few buildings that can be destroyed are merely scripted mission set-pieces, and even then, the explosions are pathetic and the building laughably sinks into the ground while a pile of rubble rises in its place.
Prototype looks very much like a last-generation game at times; the visuals are bland, repetitive, and lack any artistic style. Cars look very blocky, the draw distance is limited, and the only things that look decent are the character models and animations. As mentioned already, the game also lacks any striking colours which keeps things looking much too similar everywhere you go. During cutscenes, the graphics are toned up a notch with added detail for effect, but outside of cutscenes much of the environment lacks detail, and textures tend to be very blurry with low resolution. There's nothing really outstanding in the sound area either, but it's at least competent and the music helps set the scene for the combat. The voice acting is actually pretty good, but there's nothing amazing here and you really won't care either way.
Alex Mercer's devastating and unbelievable powers definitely make up for the rest of the shortcomings, but Prototype is without any doubt a game that is less than the sum of its parts. Prototype feels unfinished, like a lot of effort has been put into making the character feel powerful but the actual missions we're almost like an afterthought; copied and pasted a couple of times and then changed slightly. Even so, I still enjoyed the game just for the brutality of it all and for the number of powers available at my fingertips; and if you enjoy that type of feeling, Prototype might be the game for you. Think of it as the summer action blockbuster of games; it's mindless and stupid and thinks too highly of itself, but it's fun and action packed and will keep your heart pumping throughout.
In modern day Manhattan, a virus is infecting people and turning them into mindless zombies. You are Alex Mercer, a man also infected but gaining superhuman powers for a reason I never quite caught onto. The military is hunting to kill you, and it's your job to fight back while also killing the infected and facing off against mutants to battle the virus in the city. The story is twisted and convoluted but beneath all the confusing one-liners and visions it's just a bog standard plot which serves merely as an excuse for you to run around killing everything. It's unnecessarily confusing while really having nothing going for it, and it gives the impression that the game somehow thinks highly of itself or is trying to be something it's not. Still, in contrast to the screams of your foes being crushed or torn in half, a basic story like this one should quite rightly stay as an underlying point to drive your killing sprees. But you wouldn't think so judging by how many cutscenes and bizarre visions the game throws at us to try and make sense of it all.
The gameplay is more superior and far less full of itself than the sub-par story, allowing you an impressive selection of different moves and powers to rain destruction down upon your foes. Right off the bat you can run up walls almost as if they're not there, jump extremely high and far, and even glide across the sky for long distances. When in combat you have the advantage of super strength and speed, knocking enemies away from you with the touch of a button and picking up cars to throw at anyone who looks at you the wrong way. Your character also has the ability to shape-shift into the bodies of people he has 'consumed' (yes, you effectively cannibalise people in this game, even though it's viewed in a rather 'magical' way) and you can morph into them to stealthily infiltrate enemy fronts or to evade capture. His shape-shifting abilities also extend into more brutal uses though, as he can change his hands into deadly claws, or a gigantic club that can destroy tanks with ease. You can even shoot ropes out of your arms and pull things towards you like Spiderman. There are far more options available than just the things I have mentioned though, and you 'buy' new moves and powers by spending your Experience Points that you gain from combat or completing side missions. Many of the powers are useful, fun and devastating; but you will most likely pick a favourite move and use it repeatedly. Regardless, playing with all your abilities, destroying anything that gets in your way and whizzing across the rooftops at high speed is an absolute joy to play and to behold.
For a game with such variety in the combat area, you would expect Prototype to be a game that doesn't wear off so easily; but Prototype actually turns repetitive fairly quickly. It's partly because the game's version of Manhattan is generic and uninteresting, full of samey-looking buildings with very few actual landmarks or anything that catches the eye; and the game hosts a slightly drab colour palette of many dark yellows, oranges and reds; lacking any real vistas in the graphical area. But the main reason Prototype becomes repetitive is because of the missions. The mission structures are all fairly similar to each other ? go here, kill these things, escape. The city being dull doesn't help this notion because the places missions take place in all look very alike, sometimes almost identical to each other. Eventually you will have to steal a tank to blow up a building, and the game starts to show signs of more interesting mission layouts, but then you'll find you have to steal another tank to blow up another building a few missions later, and then again. Everything feels like it happens more than once. There are a few chase scenes, escort missions and big boss fights but they always seem to follow a similar pattern when you get into them no-matter what you're doing. Having a sandbox world gives you the opportunity to approach some missions in different ways, adding some depth, but it's all for naught if they all end in exactly the same way and follow a similar pattern in very similar looking areas.
Sadly, the side-missions suffer from the same lack of variety and originally that the main missions suffer from. There are a couple of different types of side missions you can partake in, but again, most of them are just variants on killing everything, which you already do quite enough of in the story missions. There are some checkpoint races you can try, and these are fun enough because they make use of the game's best feature, which is that great feeling of soaring through the air and running across buildings. But as a whole, these activities are best left alone because you won't be needed that extra EP anyway once you start getting a tonne of it from the story missions.
While the combat is brutal and fun at its core, there is nothing really special about what the game throws at you; and the challenge comes mainly from facing off against way too many enemies at once which sometimes feels a bit cheap. The combat can get chaotic at times when everyone is attacking you at the same time, including tanks and helicopters, which makes things a bit frustrating; and this is punctuated further by controls that are not bad but far from perfect, making movement clumsy in times of panic, and combat imprecise when there are many enemies on screen. Some of the buttons the game asks you to press to perform certain moves are just impossible to do without adjusting the way you're holding the controller, which breaks flow and is honestly just bad design.
Destructible environments would have been nice, and the only real devastation you can create is limited to civilians, cars and the military; which puts a damper on the big fights because your abilities feel restricted. It seems wrong that you can destroy a tank with your bare hands but all the buildings stay rock-solid regardless of what you throw at them or how many well-placed rockets are aimed in their direction. The few buildings that can be destroyed are merely scripted mission set-pieces, and even then, the explosions are pathetic and the building laughably sinks into the ground while a pile of rubble rises in its place.
Prototype looks very much like a last-generation game at times; the visuals are bland, repetitive, and lack any artistic style. Cars look very blocky, the draw distance is limited, and the only things that look decent are the character models and animations. As mentioned already, the game also lacks any striking colours which keeps things looking much too similar everywhere you go. During cutscenes, the graphics are toned up a notch with added detail for effect, but outside of cutscenes much of the environment lacks detail, and textures tend to be very blurry with low resolution. There's nothing really outstanding in the sound area either, but it's at least competent and the music helps set the scene for the combat. The voice acting is actually pretty good, but there's nothing amazing here and you really won't care either way.
Alex Mercer's devastating and unbelievable powers definitely make up for the rest of the shortcomings, but Prototype is without any doubt a game that is less than the sum of its parts. Prototype feels unfinished, like a lot of effort has been put into making the character feel powerful but the actual missions we're almost like an afterthought; copied and pasted a couple of times and then changed slightly. Even so, I still enjoyed the game just for the brutality of it all and for the number of powers available at my fingertips; and if you enjoy that type of feeling, Prototype might be the game for you. Think of it as the summer action blockbuster of games; it's mindless and stupid and thinks too highly of itself, but it's fun and action packed and will keep your heart pumping throughout.
