[Prototype] GAME REVIEW (its my first- so I need all the feedback I can get)

[Prototype]

"Finally, a sand-box game that you can break trees"

-Horribly quoted from Jennifer Kettlewell

Most sandbox games tend to start with a tag line saying “Like GTA but…” and in this case, [Prototype] is “Like GTA but with a sword for an arm”.

Although its unfair to compare this game to GTA as they have nothing else in common (other than being set in “New “Liberty” York City) so its safer to say its more that Spiderman 2 (which is like GTA with web-slinging… I’ll stop that now). In either case not much credit can be given for level design as it’s just copy-pasted, not much freedom can be had from designing maps of ACTUAL PLACES.

Map aside (for the time being) the main character you play as is a living/dead, man/living swine flu time bomb, Alex Mercer. The game’s story starts with Alex waking up on an operating table with a convenient case of plot-progressing amnesia. As a result you then go through the game trying to unravel one of the most complex, straight forward plots ever encountered in a video game. The story is told so sporadically there’s a game mechanic built in which Alex has to munch on the brains of randomers just to get a glimpse into what may or may not have been the cause of his new big black phallic tendrils.

But nobody plays these games for the plot these days, right? If you want a good story, go read a book, or watch a film based on a book, or read the spoilers for films that were based on books (Jesus dies in the end, but comes back). But if you want to run up the side of a building, back-flip off, drop 50 stories and slice a man clean in half then you buy a game. This game in fact.

The free roaming aspect of this game is where the main fun is to be had, primarily down to its combat system. The infection in Alex’s body allows him to turn his arms into a wide variety of weapons: a huge blade, a whip arm with a blade tip and sharp claws to slice all you’re foes up (or any number of passing pedestrians) as well has huge arms and giant boulder fists to pound the crap out of any enemy, vehicle or cross-eyed granny that crosses your path.

Endless ours of fun can be had turning everything into a weapon. Picking up cars/trees/helicopters/people and throwing them into other people/tanks/giant mutant zombie things is more fun than seducing a siamese midget.

The actual Brownie points go into how you get around the grand city of perpetual disaster. The answer- any way you want. And first you can run, jump, skip and glide around the city by shooting blood out of your wrists, which is all good fun. But when you learn how to pilot tanks and helicopters- a whole new world of needless destruction is opened up to you. I wasted hours and hours just killing army men like they were unwelcome ants at a picnic of sugar and cocaine, waiting for the air support so I could steal one of they’re generous amounts of choppers and shoot the rest down with an array of missiles. Then to finish it off, fly over to their base and shoot until it was no more than a pile of rubble, resting neatly on the lifeless bodies of the brave men that risked their lives to save the United States of New York. Beautiful.

This said I couldn’t help but notice I had favoured the “dicking around” element over the actual story. The story is fine- it does the job and all- but all I ever wanted to do was run around, find a granny and throw her into the blades of a helicopter. So in the end, this game falls into that ever-growing “casual game” category for my money. Sure you can do the missions and sub missions and collect all the tasty information from eating people and run up buildings in a certain time- but in the end you won’t want to do all that. We’re too simple to do that. All we want to do is hear the screams of a crowd that tend to frown upon being wedged between a taxi and a wall. Hell, stick some boobs onto the side of the Empire State building and we’re happy for another 6 hours.

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So to sum it (for all you lot out there skimming through this just to get a simple “yay” or “neigh”) (Which lets face it, is all of you) - it’s worth the money. Free roaming semi-hero games don’t get much better than this. It serves all your dicking about needs, and the story missions are too bad either. Well worth a look.

PROS-- Enough variety to keep you going a while. Plenty of variety in attacks, huge variety of weapons. Story missions not too bad. Killing randomers, taking on their form, accusing someone else of being you and watching the army kill them instead? NEVER tires of being fun.

CONS-- I found myself leaving it on pause and watching TV a fair bit. More of a “background game” to unwind with. Story is quite short. Side Missions get tedious and some feel impossible. The map is just a copy of Spiderman 2… Oh, and New York.