Prototype
Prototype is one of the most visually amazing and play-tastically original video games in years – and if you haven’t ordered it by the end of this review, I should be sacked!
New York is in the grip of a virus. It’s turned the entire population zombielike and our hero, Alex Mercer into an enemy absorbing shape-shifter. Interestingly the game starts in the present – or it could be the future – anyway, it starts at a point when Alex is fully tooled-up and fighting helicopters and tanks in a city literally crawling with walking dead and spec-ops. Having experienced a little of what Alex is capable of, you are then dragged back in time, to a troubled, as opposed to demented, Manhattan and a ‘dead’ Alex lying on a mortuary slab. The narrative then follows a familiar route, as Alex wakes, learns that genetic engineering corporation Gentek have given him the power to ‘consume’ anyone and learn their memories and skills and starts fighting back, right up to the threat of a nuclear blast that will wipe out the entire city.
A huge sword where your hands should be? Yeah, I know! Cool or what?!
While I found some of Alex’s more advanced skills a little difficult to access, the flow of the gameplay is quite spellbinding. An annoying helicopter gunship bothering you? Just pick up a taxi and chuck it at it! Want to escape to the incessant bombardment from special-forces and crazed New Yorkers? Jump onto a tower block and parkour your way up and onto the roof. Bio-whips, Hulk-like fists, a pair of razor sharp claws and a stunning ground-spike which burrows underground and grows underneath your foe like a giant and deadly spiked Yukka plant are just some of the tools Alex can sprout from his genetically modded body.
Alex’s adventures are essentially mission-driven, but Prototype does employ the sandbox style of gameplay popularised by titles like Grand Theft Auto and made possible by a generation of consoles capable of a living, moving city on a huge scale. Alongside the free-roaming environment that sits at the centre of the game are a number of mini-games or side-missions – checkpoint races and crazed killing sprees – which earn you Evolve Points. EPs can be used to mod Alex across all the games. It’s all part of a developer strategy designed to squeeze as much play out of the vibrant and fully interactive cityscape as possible. Even when playing the main game, there’s are a bunch of what can only be described as stealth missions – people who, when pursued (and consumed) reveal interesting memory snippets that allude to the history of the city-wide infection.
In many reviews, Prototype has been compared to InFamous, but in the opinion of this reviewer, while InFamous is the more polished title, Alex Mercer’s story is the most compelling and on the 360 at least, the gameplay is more cinematic.
For more gadgets and games talk from Jason, check out his personal blog www.jasonbradbury.com
