Prototype Preview
Just let the virus run its course.
May 21, 2009 - I've heard Prototype described many ways. It's Resident Evil meets Grand Theft Auto. It's just like Infamous. It's a slicker looking The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, an unsurprising claim given the fact that developer Radical Entertainment is responsible for both. None of these descriptions are off the mark, but Prototype brought back memories of another game for me: Crackdown.
My first introduction to Prototype came this week at an Activision press event. Though the smoke machines and thumping music prevented me from really understanding what was going on in terms of the story, I was able to play the first hour or so and get a good feel for how it plays. Prototype puts you in the shoes of Alex Mercer, a man with a head full of lost memories and superhuman powers. He can run up the sides of buildings, fall 50 stories and not suffer a scratch, toss cars like beach balls, and morph his hands into deadly claws. A monster-ridden Manhattan that is suffering from a viral outbreak is Alex's playground, its citizens his playthings.
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Prototype opens with a bang, quickly tossing Alex into a full-scale battle in Times Square. Just as you get into the swing of things -- and by swing of things I mean elbowing dropping tanks and tearing soldiers to pieces -- the game flashes back to a time when Alex's powers are more of the fledgling variety. To gain abilities, outfits for disguises, or even just a little health boost, Alex quite literally absorbs his enemies in a bloody explosion. You'll learn all of this during a brief tutorial section that must be played through before you can gain access to the entire city and its spoils.
Once the world opens up, Prototype offers all of the usual distractions of an open-world game and then some. Scattered around Manhattan are 200 landmark orbs to collect, each offering some EP to use towards powering Alex up and unlocking new moves. You can spend time hunting down and absorbing special NPCs to unlock the Web of Intrigue series of memories. Races across the rooftops can be tackled.
Or you can just mess with civilians. I found this to be perhaps just a tad too much fun.
You see, Alex Mercer is a bit of an anti-hero. Though he's fighting a horde of infected monsters that are ravaging the Big Apple, the civilians are fair game too. With a tap of a face button, he can grab any bystander by the neck and take them for the ride of their soon to be ended life. I made sure he was carrying a person at all times. There's something about the way they flail about wildly as Alex runs up the sides of buildings that is just plain entertaining. Periodically I'd get bored with the person being carried and chuck them at a wall or off of a rooftop, but another would soon be grabbed to start the cycle anew.
You can grab guns and shoot them, but wouldn't you rather use a person or car as a weapon?
It was in the midst of these shenanigans that I started to get the same feeling that Crackdown offered. There's a huge city to explore, the rooftops are your playground, and you play as your average Joe with super-hero strength and abilities that you get to work towards leveling up. Sure, there's a set of main missions to tackle. But there are also cars to be picked up and tossed at helicopters, tanks to drive, and claws to crush people's heads with.
Prototype is an open-world game that doesn't take itself quite as seriously as the likes of GTA IV (the fact that you can run up the side of a building while carrying a car should be enough proof of that). That's not to say it's goofy and tongue-in-cheek like Saints Row 2. Simply put, it's an action game for those that love action. It's coming to PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 this June.
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