I am Alex Mercer (well, at least that’s the name of the character in the game I’ve been playing for the last couple of days). I am a terrorist, a callous mass murderer, a super-antihero with powers that are simply out of this world and will boggle your mind. The story goes that a virus was released as an experiment that has gone out of control, and Alex seems to be the most potent example of what the virus can mutate into. The city is heaving with thousands of other infected civilians, some of whom are just shambling zombies, but there are others that have mutated into massive, blood-crazed Hunters, who hatch whenever Alex goes near them and immediately see him as their first meal!
Mere seconds into Prototype and you’ll be in no doubt that it’s one of the maddest, weirdest ultraviolent games that have ever been made, but you won’t be sure exactly what the heck is going on, or why. The plot (or “Web of Intrigue’ as it’s known in the game) slowly unfolds as you literally “consume” various characters who figure in the plot in order to see their memories, and you do this in a particularly messy way, sucking the very essence from them and reducing them to… well… ex-human ooze. Once you’ve consumed someone you can also mutate into their physical appearance and use their abilities.
Two things will impress you from the start; how quickly and smoothly everything moves, and just how jam-packed with hundreds of cars and pedestrians the city is. This is a truly bustling, thriving and terror-stricken representation of the world’s most famous city - New York’s Manhattan Island. The post-9/11 NYC in which the game is set is the perfect backdrop for this kind of story, and Prototype’s impressive game engine produces the closest thing I’ve seen to the atmosphere that the movie Cloverfield portrayed so well; you start to create havoc right at the start of the game, experimenting with your frighteningly violent superpowers and mutations and killing Army troops and civilians alike as if they’re just annoying flies to be swatted aside. The sound of the crowds of panicking people is amazing to hear, and you can stand atop a high building and watch the Army fight it out with hordes of violent infected. It soon becomes clear that these amazing mutations and powers are the reason why Alex is being hunted down, and in a plot not unlike The Incredible Hulk (which is unsurprising when you know that the developer Radical Entertainment made The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction a couple of years back) Alex wants to control these powers and find out what caused the mutation and if possible reverse the effects of the virus that is spreading out of control across one of the most sprawling, populated and believable representations of Manhattan yet seen in a game.
You move around the city in a variety of ways; you can learn to commandeer military vehicles, including Apache and Black Hawk helicopters, Bradley fighting vehicles and massive Abrams tanks, but as Alex can leap huge distances, run up sheer skyscraper facades and even glide like a bird it boils down to moving with a sort of wildly fantastic tripped-out style of Parkour, with the New York skyline’s monstrous verticality adding a massive third dimension to the gameplay. As you kill, complete the story missions and side missions you earn EP (Evolution Points) and can add, mix and match genetic traits from victims to create more mutations, abilities and enhancements, including massive razor sharp claws, armoured skin, shielding, infrared vision, increased strength and speed - even armour that makes you invulnerable to all but the most powerful of enemies.
The infected spread out from buildings that have become hives and the army have been sent in to wipe them out. You can pick up dropped weapons from soldiers and use them, but the lack of an aiming reticle and the game’s steadfast reliance on its lock-on system means they’re not much fun to use or particularly effective. Taking on the appearance of consumed civilians and soldiers and using the right disguise allows you to enter army bases and consume more senior officers and specialists in order to unlock more of the storyline and weapon/vehicle skills. The army aren’t blind and there’s an alert gauge that acts like GTA’s wanted level. Cause too much havoc and they’ll call in a strike team with Apache attack choppers and try to spoil your day, but they don’t seem to know what they’re dealing with… You can use a stolen tank or chopper to completely destroy army bases or infected hives (and even call in air strikes when in a military disguise) to clear an area and gain lots of EP but they soon get rebuilt.
Alex moves with remarkable speed and fluidity, and where in Assassin’s Creed Altair moved with believable human grace and athleticism, Alex moves and fights like the Anime & Manga heroes he was so clearly inspired by. Alex can of course, sprint extremely quickly, leap huge distances, do an air dash move, slam into the ground to create a shockwave (like the Hulk), use his mutations to form his hands into huge claws, and then produce a ground spike attack that sends huge spikes right up anything that’s targeted (ouch!). Alex’s health gauge can be replenished by consuming live enemies, and when it tops out and overloads he goes into a critical mass state. During this time he can perform (initially one, eventually three) critical mass attacks either on the ground or when airborne. The Groundspike Graveyard devastator produces a huge radius of spikes, the Tendril Barrage devastator is a visually stunning attack that destroys anything within a radius of a hundred metres or so with spike tentacles, and the Critical Pain devastator paralyses an enemy and causes it massive pain damage. There’s also a powerful blade weapon that can destroy tanks, muscle mass attacks and a “whipfist” attack that stretches Alex’s mutated arm hundreds of feet to reach distant enemies, and can even be used to grapple and board helicopters. It’s visually impressive and frighteningly empowering stuff - and completely daft. Combat can rarely be a carefully planned or measured affair, and despite being able to use your hard earned EP to unlock dozens of the things, you’ll most likely use the same 3 or 4 special weapons and attacks throughout the game. The game uses a flawed but workable lock on system to target enemies, but it frequently locks on to a different target to the one you wanted to. The lock-on blues are improved slightly by the fact that locking on puts everything into slo-mo for a while, and you can flick through potential targets with the right stick. Like I said, this system is workable and makes for fast and frenzied gameplay but I’d much rather just aim attacks and weapons myself, thanks all the same.
Radical Entertainment who also made other sandbox games such as The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, Simpsons Hit & Run and Scarface: The World is Yours have done another fine job. The game engine doesn’t impress immediately but after a while you’ll wonder how they managed to have so much going on on-screen without the 360 crashing. During some battles there’s SO much smoke and dust in the air that you’ll need Alex’s infrared vision just to be able to pick out enemies. It’s vaguely comparable to other games of the ilk and gameplay draws inspiration from games like Crackdown, GTA, Just Cause, Spider Man, The Incredible Hulk and Mercenaries 2. The story is well padded and the Web of Intrigue must have hours of video footage to pad it out. It’s a good story but I’d have liked more options to at least appear to be acting like the good guy, as in Prototype’s “brother from another mother”, Infamous (a recent PS3 exclusive). By the end of the game I still didn’t know whether I was a goodie or a baddie, and wasn’t particularly satisfied. A sequel is inevitable, and welcome. And as a final note; if done by the right people it’d make an amazing movie – an Anime might be even better suited.
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