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| Source // Steam |
It's easy to compare games to each other, especially when they share the same kind of DNA. Open-world American city besieged by viruses and plagues and a huge military presence, watched over by a single white man with no memory of how he got all these powers or why he was chosen to have them in the first place - because surely they are behind this, right? Whoever they are...
Are we talking about inFAMOUS or are we talking about [PROTOTYPE], another comic-book-like story of a guy with a lot of questions capable of causing an insane amount of damage to everything that stands in his way of the answers?
The two games were compared to each other a decade ago and it's easy to see why. While it took me a couple of years to get around to playing inFAMOUS, it has taken me more than a decade to get around to [PROTOTYPE] - should I have tried to save Manhattan sooner? Or are we just in this to save ourselves?
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| Source // PlayStation |
Frustrations
Intending to play [PROTOTYPE] on the PC, I fired it up to be met with problem after problem when trying to get it to run. They're known problems with solutions, but when the first few solutions don't appear to work for you and it starts to become a chore to get a game up and running, well, it doesn't make for a good first impression, does it?
But I'm willing to blame Windows 10 for that. It's probably not even to blame, but while these problems were going on, P2 was out shopping, and the second-hand video game market is quite sizeable. A couple of (her) quid later, and I'm playing [PROTOTYPE] on the PlayStation 3 instead - perhaps an even better way to compare it to inFAMOUS.
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| Source // Steam |
Fun Times
[PROTOTYPE] opens with a taster of a fully powered Alex Mercer, a dead man who is very much alive thanks to some biological experiments, but they're the kind of the experiments that have unleashed all hell on the city. The military fends off the infected with a shoot to kill policy, and you're the most infected of the lot.
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| Source // PlayStation |
Like Cole from inFAMOUS, Alex is a gruff character. He has quite the reason to be angry, coming back from the dead as a biological weapon and all, but he takes things to the extreme. If inFAMOUS was not edgy enough for you, [PROTOTYPE] has you covered. [PROTOTYPE] is as edgy as an edge weapons convention. Black and red your favourite colours? I've got the game for you...
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| Source // Steam |
Alright, not everything is black and red, but look at the guy. Jeans and a hoody, but wearing a shirt and turning an entire arm into a blade? Come on. The 1001 write up describes [PROTOTYPE] as Grand Theft Auto meets Devil May Cry. Just imagine all the edge you can drain out of those games, distilled into its purest form in [PROTOTYPE]...
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| Source // Steam |
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| Source // MobyGames |
The taste of things to come happens 3 weeks after the start of the story, so you're whisked back to the morgue to awake from the dead and find yourself right in the middle of this unusual tale. But you're not stripped of everything you've had ten minutes to get used to.
Holding R2 engages your sprinting abilities, which for Alex mean the ability to sprint up the side of skyscrapers like gravity doesn't exist. Cole climbs. Alex flies. The developers used to work on Incredible Hulk games - the destruction is coming, but let's get used to something closer to Spider-Man first.
The actual controlling of Alex, even with the ability to run up walls, is a tad tricky to get used to at first. You might be expecting to do a fair bit of work to keep him pointed in the right direction or to input your own jumps to avoid cars and the like, but no, Alex is more than capable of bouncing over any small obstacle that you find yourself running towards, or through it if it's destructible.
There are times when you'll fly up and over the edge of a building and start hurtling down the other side, instead of landing on top, but the movement options you have available - with more locked behind upgrades later on - are easy to get you back on track in no time at all.
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| Source // MobyGames |
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| Source // MobyGames |
What'll stop you from moving the most are the two competing factions in the city, the military hunting you down, and the infected also hunting you down. You're not a very liked man, but if the two factions meet, they will at least fight each other as well as fighting you.
Combat is a case of jabbing the square and triangle buttons, with an L2 lock on that tries its best, and the ability to pick up and throw objects and people on the circle button. Despite its simplicity, I was thankful to be playing [PROTOTYPE] on Easy, because your health bar is also your resource pool for the fancy things you do - I think.
It basically means you'll have to avoid combat by running away and finding somewhere quiet, or consuming the bioenergy from a helpless individual, be they a citizen or a soldier.
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| Source // MobyGames |
The benefits of consuming (read: killing) someone in this fashion also includes the ability to absorb their memories, and take their identity, as though you were a clone - and the plot and gameplay make heavy use of both.
You'll be tasked with getting through the front door of a base. Alex is a wanted man, so turning up to a military base as him will raise suspicion. Turning up as a civilian won't raise so many eyebrows, but you still won't get through the front door. Turn up as a soldier, and now you can walk around with a bit more freedom, but perhaps you're not ranked high enough to get to where you need to go, but at least you're getting closer.
Taking over certain people will give you a glimpse at some backstory to the unfolding events, or give you new abilities, like being able to hijack APCs to get some vehicular combat into your gameplay.
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| Source // MobyGames |
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| Source // MobyGames |
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| Source // Steam |
You'll almost constantly be hounded by angry helicopter pilots, so having a weapon to quickly take them down is nice, but throwing an air cooler or car at them is alright in a pinch, too - so long as the target doesn't fly out of the way first.
Eventually, you'll be able to whip yourself up into the skies and latch onto these helicopters directly, hijacking them too and getting your revenge on everyone from above.
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| Source // PlayStation |
Further Frustrations
It's a good job that [PROTOTYPE] gives you lots of abilities to play around with in this giant sandbox because the story and characters are nothing to write home about. Alex is edgy, his sister happens to be a super sleuth to give him intel when he needs it, his girlfriend happens to be a biological scientist of some sort, no doubt heavily involved in the problems we now face...
Every few missions you'll get a flash-forward to Alex standing on a rooftop as the city crumbles and burns beneath him, reminiscing about the past few weeks, explaining to someone what happened to lead him to this point, presumably minutes away from the final fight of the story.
These cutscenes - all of the cutscenes, really - last for a few sentences before they stop as abruptly as they started, and you're back in the city playground with an objective marker to seek out. It feels like the game mechanics were all done without knowing how they were going to be justified. "Quick! Why can he run up walls?" "Uh, erm, super... legs?"
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| Source // MobyGames |
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| Source // MobyGames |
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| Source // MobyGames |
Hundreds of collectables and side missions and abilities to purchase reiterate the point that [PROTOTYPE] is perhaps more about having fun than it is about following a story. The story is there because it has to be. It's nothing captivating. The characters are bland.
But a minute later, you're back into the heart of the action, chaos erupting all around you, the only escape to sprint into the skies and bounce from rooftop to rooftop before dropping into an alley, losing line of sight, transforming into someone else and walking away.
Final Word
When you're just playing [PROTOTYPE], rather than caring about it in any way, it is fun. You can almost zone out, bash the buttons, and go with the flow. Almost. Even on easy, the first boss fight I had kicked my arse to the point of me quitting.
That it was a few hours in is a testament to the gameplay, however. I played much more of this than I thought I would. I pushed past the edge - even poked fun of it with P2 - and ignored the story to get stuck into the action.
While a little fiddly at times and annoying at others, that action is chaotic, explosive, and simply action-packed. It's Hulk without being Hulk, Spider-Man without being Spider-Man, and if that's the kind of game you want, [PROTOTYPE] is well worth a look.
But to return to it means getting better at controlling it, perhaps buying some new abilities, perhaps hoping for some luck or for the boss to not be such a dick. I hope this guy doesn't end up being the thing that puts me off [PROTOTYPE], because for a couple of quid you could do far worse than this.
Fun Facts
Alex Mercer would embrace the edge and become the antagonist in the sequel. Well, someone whose life was forever changed because of him would seek the ultimate revenge, but who cares about details in [PROTOTYPE]?
[PROTOTYPE], developed by Radical Entertainment, first released in 2009.
Version played: PlayStation 3, 2009.