Plus XP

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.

The concept – you are some kind of lab experiment gone AWOL, named Alex, and you don’t know what’s going on – only that you have some godly powers and people want to catch you. Add in the fact that the city is getting overrun with zombie-like infected creatures and we have good basis. The idea is that you can shape shift in various ways, and absorb DNA from anyone in the city to gain powers and memories, shaping your character into an unstoppable beast with superhuman powers.

Sounds awesome doesnt it? I’ve always thought – I’d love a free roaming 3rd person action game and here it is, staring me in the face, so why am I not more excited? Its a fear of disappointment. The reasons for this arent totally unfounded, as I have seen, time and again, games companies making claims they cannot live up to.  So, here are my major concerns:

• Taking DNA from *anyone*. From a gamers point of view, this gives the impression of limitless customisation and powers – I see myself absorbing person after person getting power after power, allowing me to create a wolverine-tpye character whose near invincible with claws, an Iceman-esque character surfing around on pillars of ice, or blasting through enemies with laser eyes. But we have two possible issues here, Either:1) There wont be such a big range as they make out – often “limitless” combinations are more along the lines of “limitless, but theyre all virtually the same” – would you like green claws or red ones, sir? Or getting different length claws, or simply different powers that all do the same thing, just with different appearance.or

  2) There will be a huge range of powers, but they will be very clunky and programmed badly, since the company cant possibly have had the ability to program hundreds of different powers effectively and with a lot of attention to detail.

  Now, apparently there will be at least 750 unique combinations, but when you realise how quickly combinations build up, thats not necessarily as much as it sounds. Say you have 10 abilities, and 4 ability slots. Combining those ten abilities  into different combinations of four could actually amount to a LOT of combinations – I cant say I’ve worked out the exact figures but 10 abilities could account for more than 40 combinations. Not necessarily as much as it sounds, in perspective.

• The open world gameplay – sure, I’m sure itll be a nice big area, but will there be anything to do? People who have played games such as Spiderman 3 will know that even though a map is big, its not necessarily interesting – what will there be to do? What will there be to find? Personally, as much as I like the idea of free roaming, the world needs to be more than a static open arena with nothing to do but fight – for as with real life, theres more to do in the streets than attack people and steal their DNA. You can supposedly shapeshift into civilian disguises, so what can we do whilst acting “normal” other than walk around without getting attacked?
• Open ended story – now this we don’t know much about. This could be the make or break of the game – apparently as you absorb abilities you find things out, supposedly some sort of conspiracy behind everything. I cant say much about it – but all I can say is that open ended stories often suffer from loss of detail, and missions that are impersonal to your game as to incorporate it into the story no matter which path you take.

Now, by saying these things I’m not saying the game is doomed – I’m simply saying that the game claims it can do a lot, but taking on the sheer amount of things they say it can could likely mean that other aspects of the gameplay have taken a back seat, and we could be left with an open world killing generic enemies and doing nothing else.

Now, that was the “worst case scenario” view. But now let’s look at the positives. Believe it or not, I’m actually getting a bit excited for this game.

I love the idea of free roaming and running amok – as much as the Spiderman games managed to get boring, there was something satisfying about traversing a city with superhuman powers.  I believe at one point I even saw a clip where you could fly – sounds pretty cool to me, the possibilities are amazing – you could swoop down, grab an unsuspecting enemy and take him to the skies, forcing him to give you information or threaten to let him plummet to his death – or use stealth to break into the enemy base, assassinate their leader and watch them all go into disarray as their organised system collapses – perhaps assume the identity of the army general yourself and command the army to do your bidding. But at the moment thats all just me dreaming.

One aspect that does sound good is the fact that it has coop mode. Full 2 player coop mode allowing two prototypes to do everything together – personally this is something that really does appeal to me, this seems to be the kind of game that would incorporate this rather well, especially if you can customise yourselves to be essentially two unique entities with different powers – have one player wielding bladed hands, assaulting soldiers from the sky, whilst the other uses his powers to bludgeon tanks to death with his bare hands.

Hopefully we’ll see some decent missions in here – killing things is all well and good, but I’d like to see some variation. Perhaps chasing a helicopter through the city, or saving people from near death situations (if you so choose). The stealth aspect intrigues me greatly – I’ve seen plenty of clips of all out assaults, but I would love to see some missions where you can take down a squad in stealh, picking them off one at a time whilst remaining completely unseen, as they go about their business – not knowing you are there at all.

Apparently you *can* take the form of a higher ranked officer in order to access restricted areas, order soldiers to kill other soldiers (on grounds of blaming them to be Alex), or order some kind of airstrike – so this is a ray of hope, that hopefully will expand into a host of other special abilities depending on whose form you take. I have yet to see whether or not Alex has any type of gunplay skills when taking the form of a soldier or other armed characters, but that could be a nice touch.

So there you have it. Prototype looks interesting, and I’m actually rather looking forward to it, in the end if I can fly around a city, leaping from building to building and absorbing people for more powers it cant be a bad thing. Doubly so in two player co-op. I just hope that the game has some depth, and that the gaming gods havent handed this task to men who are not up to the challenge of building something so monumental.

-Leon