Prototype (Xbox 360) Review

Posted by Trace Aber on 06.30.2009

Activision's latest shape-shifting game finally gets released, but will it consume you enough to warrant a purchase? 411's Trace Aber adds some nodes to your web of intrigue in his latest review!


Title: Prototype
Publisher: Activision
Developer: Radical Entertainment
Type: Action
Players: 1
Rated: M for Mature

Activision has finally released the long-awaited Prototype, a sandbox-style game that gives you near-limitless power and a closed-off Manhattan is your playground. What you do on the island is up to you, but the real question is whether or not there is enough do and if the game truly does live up to the hype. And the answer depends on the type of player more than anything.

Gamplay

Prototype puts you in the shoes of Alex Mercer, who at this point in his life is facing some serious drama. Suffering from amnesia, Alex wakes up on a morgue slab in the basement of GENTEK, a genetic engineering company. Like most people who wake up on a morgue slab, Alex awakens with a slew of unexplained powers and begins killing his way out of the compound, which the military seems wholly unhappy with. Once you escape from the lab you begin your true mission – to figure out your past and track down the people who are responsible for the situation.

The story in Prototype is extremely convoluted and requires players to do more than just play through the main story quest. In fact, if one were to play only the main quests they would be completely and utterly confused as to what was going on. In Prototype, one of the most common things you will do is consume people. You can consume any living human being and become them, gaining any useful knowledge they may have, along with being able to take their form at your pleasure. A large portion of the story is told through consuming certain citizens (who happen to be mostly military personnel and doctors) who are marked with an icon over their head. When you consume these citizens, you open up a node on the game’s Web of Intrigue, which is essentially a map of memories that link together to tell the story of Alex Mercer. A short video plays after each successful consume that gives you tiny hints that will let you answer one question while having to ask another. It is a great and revolutionary way of telling the story that I hope catches on soon. It can be a bit overwhelming at first (especially with 131 nodes to collect in total) and even confusing, but well-worth it once everything comes together.

Consuming serves another useful function is providing Alex with a disguise and access to certain areas. Since the United States Military (and later the Infected) are all after Alex, you cannot simply walk around town in your true form without alerting some people. You are given a meter that tells you whether or not you are around military personnel and, if so, whether or not they realize who you are. Once the meter fills up, all hell breaks loose and before you know it you’re getting shot at, tanks are circling you, and when you look to the sky you see three helicopters looking to kill you. All in all, it’s a pretty rough life for Alex Mercer. Thankfully, if you consume someone and can evade everyone (thankfully having superpowers helps out), you can shape-shift into their form and they will lose you until you do something stupid. This system works nicely though sometimes you feel as though you cannot do much on the ground without pissing the military off, but overall it’s balanced.

The final use of consuming is using it to get into certain areas and gaining abilities. If you want to get into a military base they are not going to let you walk in as Alex Mercer – no, they are going to attempt to kill you on site. So what is a genetically-modified brother to do? Consume a military commander, of course. You can do this by the normal method (which generally causes quite a stir) or using stealth consume, a skill you can obtain through upgrading your player. Stealth consume allows you to consume your target without anyone notice, though I do not understand the logic of this and the consumes typically look pretty violent and, well, noticeable. That aside, as the new commander you can now enter the military base, and this used often throughout the game. You can also consume certain citizens to obtain certain abilities such as driving tanks or even upgrading Alex’s effectiveness with certain weapons.

As far as the missions in Prototype go, they are a mixed bag. I rarely found myself annoyed at a mission and I never found myself not having fun, but at the same time I did notice a lot of the missions feel very familiar and some tend to drag out for a while. A lot of missions simply have you consuming certain targets to get into a restricted area, killing whatever it is you have to kill, or collecting items. Essentially, your typical open-world mission structure. With 31 missions total, it is likely you will have played a good majority of these missions in previous games, except this time with the added benefit of being able to destroy any and everything in your path. The one bright side to all of this is story itself is always intriguing and I found that being a main reason for more wanting to complete the various missions, which is oftentimes not the case. The story involves 40 years of conspiracy and genetic experiments – what more do you want?

As I alluded to earlier in the review, Prototype throws a lot at you at once. But, despite fighting military personnel with guns, tanks shooting you, Hunters and infected citizens trying to eat you, and helicopters doing everything in their power to make sure you never get out of their sight, it never feels as though there is too much to go up against. The control and design of Prototype really excels in this department and really sets the game apart from other open-ended games. In a typical battle, you can consume a military personnel, grab their gun and kill a good portion of the remaining ground men, hop on a tank, rip its cover off and shoot down a few helicopters with your missiles, then run up the tallest building in the entire city and disguise yourself, losing the living military. And you can do all of this within a couple of minutes and without any sort of slowdown or stutter.

Navigating the city is a breeze thanks to Alex automatically jumping over small obstacles such as cars and fences, and when people get in his way he simply pushes them aside. This allows for seamless gameplay and allows the player to fully realize the potential given with Alex’s powers. Running up building is a simple as jumping on them, gliding in the air is smooth and flawless, and the combat is simple. What’s great about all of this, however, is that as you play Prototype you discover new tactics and methods of traveling the city before eventually finding your preferred method of play. I have played this game with four different friends and we all have a completely different play style, which says a lot about the depth of the seemingly-simple mechanics.

One thing that needs to be noted about this game is that it is graphic. Extremely graphic, and may be the most violent game I’ve played in quite some time, if not ever. Though it’s graphic, it is in a completely over the top way that should, logically, prevent most people from complaining about it. Consuming people can take different forms, but often includes the body of the consumee being spilt completely in half before a shower of blood rains down upon the street. And it’s not uncommon to see limbs flying around during certain attacks, and when you are given the ability to throw a freaking helicopter at a lone citizen, well, things are bound to get messy. Once again, the over the top violence doesn’t distract as much as it adds to the world of Prototype, which is an important difference.

The most impressive combat move in Prototype are the devastator attacks. Though they require Alex to be upgraded (more on that later), once utilized he will send out large amounts of biomass from his body at an alarming speed and essentially kill everything in his path. These are simple to perform and always sure to get a reaction out of new players, and, I mean, they’re just cool. End of story.

Graphics

This is perhaps the weakest point of the game, and I’m really torn on it. On one hand the animations all look flawless and there is an impressive number of things going on in the screen at once. The streets are almost always filled with traffic, the sidewalks lined with people, and the world at first seems breathing. In battle there is virtually no lag despite all that is going on, and this definitely is a huge benefit to the game.

On the other hand, Manhattan oftentimes feels half-assed. The city is not recreated to scale, which is forgivable, but what is not forgivable is how generic the city looks once you get used to it. After the initial awe of the world, you begin to realize a lot of the buildings look exactly the same and that the streets are not so much breathing than they are simply a few clones wandering the streets in mass. There’s not even a variety on the types of cars you encounter as I honestly believe I have seen less than ten separate vehicle designs. A lot of the color in the game also seems very drab, which I understand given the mood the game is supposed to give off, though some color would not hurt them.

The draw distance suffers at times as well, especially when attempting to jump from building to building, though the effect is not nearly as damaging as night. Anytime you are able to see certain effects and graphics up close you are shown just how poor the graphics actually are. Another big drawback is the lack of destructible buildings. Though you can destroy a few buildings, most of them cannot even have their windows broken, which, considering your ability to destroy everything in your path, it seems like a window shouldn’t stop you.

Not all is lost, however, as certain aspects of the graphics work out nicely. When jumping from a high distance (and you can jump as high as you want since there’s not falling damage) you can cause deformations in the area you landed on and even send nearby vehicles and humans flying in the air and into one another, which is always a nice visual. And despite the virtual Manhattan not being exactly to scale, the game is still large enough and gives you plenty to explore. I really don’t detest the graphics as much as I made it seem these last few paragraphs because you only notice it in certain areas.

Sound

The voice acting in Prototype is a mixed bag, much like the graphics. Some of the main quest voice actors lacked much emotion in their voices, especially the voice of Karen Parker, Alex’s former love interest. Other voice actors, such as Alex Mercer and many of the random web of intrigue targets, really get over the emotion and seriousness of the situation. All in all, the work ranges from passable to great, averaging out to slightly better than expected.

Sound effects are accurate and give you a good sense of what is going on, so there are not any complaints here. Sometimes when you are in the middle of an epic battle (which happen frequently) the sounds can get overlapped and you may not quite be sure of what is going on, but given the real life situation the same thing would happen, so it makes sense.

Overall, nothing is too exceptional but all of it is acceptable. The soundtrack gets the jobs done but nothing that you’ll remember once you turn your Xbox off.

Lasting Appeal

There is a lot to do in Prototype even after you complete the 31 missions. In addition to the 131 Web of Intrigue targets discussed earlier, Alex also has to search for 200 landmarks, 50 hints, and complete a series of events that range from racing events to jumping challenges, which are unlocked as you complete the main story. A lot of these events are painfully similar and are clearly nothing more than a distraction, so after a couple of them you’ll probably lose interest.

The one benefit of collecting and completing everything is that they all give you evolution points, which are used to upgrade Alex’s various abilities. Besides his ability to disguise as pretty much anyone, he also has offensive powers such as blades, claws, hammerfists, and whipfist. All of these names are exactly as they sound, except more badass. Each power also has upgrades within them, giving you a wide variety of attacks once you upgrade everything. You can also upgrade movements such as jumping and running, along with pretty much anything else you can do in this game. With all that you can upgrade, you will be well into your second game before upgrading everything fully (you can transfer your old character into a new game), which gives upgrade-freaks such as myself plenty of reasons to keep playing Prototype.

Fun Factor

I spent a lot of this game roaming the city and collecting WOI targets and upgrading Alex. The city is extremely fun to roam around and as you progress through the game the city is constantly changing with increasing rates of military and infected presence, as well as a battle for control of the city between the two warring factions.

As for those who don’t enjoy the city exploring and not willing to collect the WOI targets needed to complete the story, I don’t see them getting much enjoyment out of Prototype. This game requires a decent investment and you have to be willing to search for a while to find the right people. For me this was more fun than a chore, but for a couple of my friends it was the other way around, so just be aware what you’re getting into.

The 411

Prototype is an entirely different type of sandbox game that will attract and please most gamers. There are plenty of objects to collect, a wide variety of abilities to master, and the story is very engrossing. But, like most open-ended games, it suffers from its share of downfalls. They’re mostly typical of the genre, however, including downgraded graphics, lack of interactive environment, and hit or miss voice acting. Overall, however, Prototype creates an interesting character in Alex Mercer and hopefully is a sign of things to come in future games.

Graphics	6.5	The weakest part of the game, though once you get into actually playing it you barely notice the problems
Gameplay	8.5	Fun and frantic though at times repetitive
Sound	7.0	Gets the job done though nothing to write home about
Lasting Appeal	8.0	Depends on whether or not you are into upgrading and collecting, but if you are there is a lot to keep you playing
Fun Factor	9.0	The game is violent and ridiculously fun all while telling a great story
Overall	8.0   [ Very Good ]

Screenshots
All 26 PROTOTYPE Screenshots