“Prototype… Prototype… a game with a lot of potential. But, as I’ve experienced many times before, games with potential often go awry – its almost as if a concept is so good it cannot be shaped by mortals. But occasionally, we get the odd gem that just does it right. I’m on the fence about this one – I so badly *want* it to be good, but I fear it is something just too good to be true.”
Those were my words on Prototype in May this year, and a couple of months later I have experienced the game first-hand and can finally give a real verdict.
The game revolves around the player becoming a character called Alex Mercer – a man who has emerged into the middle of a viral outbreak with no memory of previous events and an unusual assortment of superpowers to hand. Monsters are quickly overrunning the city and soldiers are being dispatched to deal with them. You are in the middle of this war – both sides seemingly against you and barely a friendly face to speak of. Only through absorbing people and enemies can you uncover their memories and piece together your past and the reasons behind the current crisis.
The game takes place in Manhattan and is a free roaming game similarly to the previous Spiderman titles, which were also created by Activision. Fluid movement allows you to traverse the city with ease and speed, Alex able to sprint at inhuman speeds and run up walls effortlessly. This works very well as the controls are intuitive and clean, making it feel as effortless as it looks. A couple of other skills are also available, namely the Glide ability which lets you glide distances to further ease your travels.
The game follows a simple story-related mission system – one mission at a time which, when beaten, unlocks the next which can be started by going to the relevant start point on the map. Simple but it does the job. As you progress through the missions the story progresses and the percentage of viral spread throughout the city increases, with more infected people littering the streets.
Enemies consist of basic infected “zombie-like” people which are easy to deal with but cause little threat, acting more like a health supply as you can absorb life forms to regain HP. Then you have soldiers – as easily killed as infected yet packing more firepower – from machine guns to rocket launchers. Naturally these are fairly weak alone but can make up for that in larger numbers. Next, we have Hunters – evolved infected which are bigger, stronger and quicker creatures who pose a bigger threat to Alex – and cannot be simply grabbed and absorbed but must instead be weakenend to low HP before it is possible. These are probably the most troublesome of the regular enemies – but can be dealt with as long as you take due care. There are one or two later enemies that I wont mention, but that was the larger part of the lineup.
Abilities, as I expected, werent as varied as the previews seemed to suggest – 750 combinations sounds a lot, but in truth it amounts to 10 main equippable abilities – five weapons, the disguise ability, two defensive skills and two types of vision. Each of the abilities is gained during the story’s progression, and more upgrades become available for each as you continue. Upgrades are purchases with points that you earn for doing most things – killing enemies, doing missions and general tasks within the game.
The stealth is much like Assassins Creed, if you’ve played it – essentially there is a meter telling you whether you can currently be seen or not, and whether or not they are suspicious/chasing you. Sadly, although this works to a degree, its not done overly well. You can assume the form of the last human you absorbed and when you are out of sight, switch to this disguise and you will lose them. It sounds alright but then you realise that its almost too perfect – seeing as you can look like Mercer whenever you feel like as long as you aren’t killing anyone. Considering the enemies know exactly who you are, you’d walking around looking like the most unique person in the city (who they’re looking for) would attract a guard or two along the way – especially seeing as you can wallrun, glide and do anything right in front of their face without them caring – only when you actually attack someone do they realise you’re not a normal human being and decide they want you dead.
The combat allows you to more or less use whichever weapon you wish and do ok – no weapons seem to be especially effective or not against most enemies so its largely due to personal preference. The combat itself isn’t perfect – weapons have quite limited combo options and there are very few ways to actually integrate different attacks into worthwhile combos – and enemies dont really make it any easier, either. Most enemies are either weak enough to kill in a couple of hits (human, basic infected) or are too strong to pull off a full combo (hunters). Sadly, this often ends up with the game being a very “hit and run” experience, having to get the odd attack on a stronger enemy whilst running around avoiding getting hurt – considering Mercer is supposedly some “super shapeshifter” he loses a little of his shine when you get the impression that the majority of the enemies are actually more powerful than him. Alex also has access to a couple of “devestator” attacks which are essentially wide-range area of effect attacks he can pull off when he has certain amounts of HP – essentially killing or doing high damage to all enemies in a certain radius. They’re nicely animated – but one large problem with them is the amount of time you need to “charge” the attack before it activates – most times you really *want* to use a devastator, you are getting too bombarded to be able to actually pull one off – seeing as you generally need full HP, and to be un-interrupted while preparing to use it.
The game seems to have a wide range of things to do – melee combat, gun combat, vehicle hijacking, destroying bases, etc. but in the end I couldnt help feeling that each of the aspects felt a little unpolished and/or simplistic – guns cannot be reloaded, running out seconds after being picked up, making them almost worthless in most situations. Vehicles are limited only to tanks and helicopters – which sounds alright to start with, until youve seen the same hijacking animation twenty times and it sort of loses its shine. Around the city are scattered bases for Infected and Military, which can be destroyed or inflitrated for upgrade points. It sounds good – but then you realise that every base looks identical and its all very rinse and repeat – steal a tank, drive to the base and mash the shoot button until it collapses, or take the identity of a commander (the same guy standing in the same place at each base) and walk inside a simple single room warehouse and dispatch generic enemies within. The concepts are there but the game feels like it gets you to repeat the same tasks again and again – with no sense of variation, or that destroying these bases is actually making any kind of difference.
The actual missions consist of various tasks – fighting, chasing enemies, using vehicles to blow up bases, escorting or protecting certain characters, or absorbing a key target. The missions aren’t bad as such, but the story is quite loose and they feel fairly generic – very much “go from A to B, killing enemies along the way”. I don’t really know what more could be expected, but seeing as the combat and vehicles lose their shine quickly, it becomes fairly tedious as you go. The missions aren’t too hard but its not a walk in the park – the difficulty was fairly well done and was hard enough to be a challenge without being overly frustrating.
The bosses, however, are a different story. Much like the stronger enemies of the game, the bosses feel very much “hit and run” – rush in to do a tiny bit of damage, and soon enough you’ve been hurt enough to have to back off and run around looking for people to absorb to regain your health. Many of the bosses are also assisted by an assortment of enemies, which often took the focus off of the actual battle, almost overloading you with things to look out for. There were (almost gladly) a scarce amount of bosses, however, only three or four in the whole game. None of them were especially fun, adding no real depth to the gameplay.
Side missions consist of other tasks to gain upgrade points – helping either infected or military forces during a battle between them, free-running time trials, gliding challenges and missions to absorb web of intrigue targets within a time limit. They’re a nice touch, with a ranking system (Bonze, Silver, Gold) that determines how well you did and how much experience you get for succeeding. However, personally I find these tasks to be tedious after a few goes, aside from the odd mission that equips you with an infinite ammo gun that allows you to actually enjoy a little gun combat.
The last thing I want to mention is the web of intrigue – this is essentially a grid of short FMV’s that explain points of the story as you unlock them by absorbing certain people. Once you absorb a person you get a short video, “a memory” that offers some small insight into the plot. Once you absorb that person, each person that has a memory linked to that one on the grid become available to absorb elsewhere in the city. Its an interesting idea, but in reality the plot is fairly predictable and aside from one or two little things the memories dont give up any major surprises at all.
As you can tell, I wasn’t overly impressed with the game in the end. But thats not to say I hated it – the freerunning was done very smoothly and felt easy to pick up, and the game looked rather nice visually. I did complete the game, but by the last few missions I felt as though I were doing it for the sake of it, more than for enjoyment.
Overall, the game offers very simple sandbox gameplay and would probably appeal to the kind of person that just wants to forget the plot and run around killing things. Personally, however, I found the game to be quite shallow – offering a lot of things but only doing a half-baked job at most of them. The game offers some nice ideas but in the end doesnt really have enough depth to keep it fresh and interesting – recycling the same tasks again and again. If you just want to run around slashing up people you might love this game, but if you’re looking for third person action with depth and longevity, I’d personally avoid this game – the potential was there but it certainly wasn’t met.
-Leon
