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Prototype
(Playstation 3)
Prototype
casts players as a rogue super hero trapped within
New
York City
.
The player has to fight his way through military forces and evil mutants
to discover his true identity. Prototype gives players incredible powers
that allow him to battle, destroy and even consume enemies. As the game
unfolds, additional abilities are given which make the character even more
powerful, giving Prototype a fairly good sense of progression. The
question is whether this is enough to make for a challenging and
entertaining gaming experience or if the game’s technical achievements
are undermined by poor play mechanics. Look inside and discover the
answers. |
Activison's latest has an interesting concept, with some solid execution
making this a successful game from a technical standpoint, but the
question is whether it delivers a memorable storyline that makes it worth
playing. Prototype puts players in the role of a mysterious character
named Alex Mercer who awakes one day with amnesia, not knowing what's
going on. As soon as he regains consciousness, he finds himself on the run
from a mysterious quasi-military corporation. They have apparently
performed an experiment on him, granting him some kind of super-human
power. However, this also makes him extremely dangerous, and these forces
are out to kill him. He must escape these pursuers throughout the game.
Unfortunately, they're other experiments have gone out of control,
unleashing hordes of out-of-control mutants in Manhattan. This has led the
military to impose a lockdown on the city, in a vain attempt to control
the outbreak and gives the city a sense of chaos. It has the added effect
of keeping Mercer trapped in the city. While the basic outlines of his
story are known, he needs to find and consume key figures in the
conspiracy to figure out what went wrong, while keeping his friends and
family safe. Its not as easy as it sounds, since you're under assault from
all sides. While you can explore the city in free-roam mode, Prototype
isn't as simple as an open-ended sandbox world usually is, since you need
to complete specific missions in order to unlock additional abilities and
discover what to do next. This creates a very real sense of drama and
makes for an engaging storyline that will keep you playing from one level
to the next.
While its storyline is complicated,
Prototype's controls are fairly simple, you run around using the d-pad and
attack with the shift keys. You can sprint through the streets and run up
the sides of buildings as well, which is a cool feature. Another cool
aspect of Prototype comes when you land on the street and create a large
crater. As you gain additional powers, you'll be able to glide or fly
which allows you to cover more ground quickly. An impressive combat system
allows you to attack enemies at close range, grab them and throw them
around. You also have a great deal of strength and can pick up and throw
large objects such as trucks and cars around. This causes a great deal of
damage as well. This is all fairly interesting, but not much different
than other sandbox games like Crackdown. Where Prototype really sets
itself apart is in your ability to consume enemies. This is done by
grabbing them and pressing the triangle button. While it gives you an
immediate energy boost, the more important aspect is the ability to assume
the identities of fallen foes by pressing the d-pad. When you do this,
your appearance is instantly transformed. Most of the enemies won't
recognize you and you can enter their installations and buildings
undetected. It doesn't always work, since many of the military bases have
detectors set up to alert them to your presence, but it can fool the
average soldier. You'll also alert them by using your super-powers, even
if you're in disguise. It's a fairly interesting idea and works well in
the game's existing context. Consuming enemies is also important in
unlocking some of the key elements of the storyline, since by doing this
you unlock that character's memories which you can view later on to
connect the storyline. This creates the sense of being inside a realistic,
believable world where different strands of the storyline interact,
creating a complex and involving narrative.
 As
the missions progress, Prototype's story takes some interesting and
unexpected turns - this is where you need to stay on your toes. You start
off on-foot but there are several sequences that break this up, and
spoilers aside, don't really work as well as they would in other games.
Prototype's strongest aspects come when you feel like it's you against the
world - given extra powers and some armor distances the player from the
action to a degree and makes the game feel a bit too easy. Mercer is a
very strong character and there are some points where he seems almost
invincible, which detracts from the challenge somewhat. Of the enemy waves
you face, most of the feel fairly disposable, even the mutant legions
perform in predictable ways which makes them seem less like adversaries
that you need to work at defeating and instead resemble obstacles that
need to be rolled over. This makes the challenge feel less one of skill
and more one of endurance. This problem is even more apparent when you
face the human soldiers, who don't put up much resistance and only cause
significant damage when you're basically ignoring their attacks. As you
upgrade Mercer's skills, he becomes even more efficient with his attacks,
but the game doesn't ratchet up the difficulty as much as it should. While
the hand-to-hand combat with its morphing abilities can be quite engaging,
other problems crop up that detract from the overall experience.
Facing off against helicopters and tanks
should provide more of a challenge, but instead feel like more things to
just swipe away. This makes Prototype feel oddly unbalanced, and its
open-ended structure works against it as the streets and objects basically
exist as something to destroy. This makes it difficult to care about the
onscreen action after awhile, and makes you want to skip through the
actual gameplay sequences to the storyline itself, since that's a lot more
interesting. Unfortunately, despite some cool gimmicks and a high degree
of production polish, the game itself doesn't really offer much in the way
of new or engaging experiences. Prototype has some cool ideas, but the
execution of its gameplay isn't as innovative or challenging as it could
be. This makes for a title, that despite its excellent production values
and occasionally interesting storyline, feels undeveloped from a gameplay
standpoint. There are definitely many exciting and fun moments in
Prototype, and the developers did a decent job in making the story
interesting. However, the gameplay suffers from predictability and
monotony. Adding new abilities makes things feel even less challenging
which ends up making Prototype a somewhat unsatisfying experience that
doesn't quite live up to its initial promise.
- Michael Palisano
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