Prototype - And Then It Got Worse

I figured I should mention some things about Prototype. The military is called Blackwatch; they are part of Operation Blacklight. Their main goal is to contain the virus. This is not the first time this has occurred, apparently there was some small military town they tested the virus on years ago. There’s some General with one arm in control of the whole operation. McMullan is the scientist who developed this virus. Then there’s some Special Forces Captain who is in charge of the troops hunting Alex. He was just recently given some odd needle that should shut Alex down.

The story is fairly confusing so I never quite seem to know what is going on. But these people are important because Alex goes after McMullan directly. I really praised the last two missions as being fun and well designed. Sadly that all now comes to an end in one of the most convoluted, controller-throwing missions ever designed.

So Alex makes a play to capture McMullan. Alex has to shutdown all virus detectors in the area so McMullan will think the location is safe and then he’ll show up to get some samples. This is all pretty easy to do, but getting near a virus detector to heck it means setting it off first so there’s always a fight.  Once you’ve shut them all down you need a military disguise to call in McMullan.  Just to throw it out there, it is always a good idea to have a military disguise, they give a lot more options.

So McMullan show up just outside of a hive in a helicopter, but before he can land the hive goes active, McMullan realizes it is a trap  and leaves, but not before reporting to EVERYONE in the area that you’re actually Alex Mercer.  This is where the mission goes to shit. You now have to either defeat or flee the military. Good luck doing either of these.

Once you’re in control of Alex you’ll have about 5 helicopters and 30 troops firing explosive weapons at all times! You have zero room to breathe, to fight, to move, or to do practically anything. If I tried fighting I got shot from 50 different directions, if I tried running I got shot from 50 other different directions.

It became fairly obvious that fighting is an idiot’s task so I went with running away. But I could never figure out how to slip past the helicopters, they were constantly on me. I literally ran across all of town once trying to escape. To make matters worse I would set off viral detectors that were scattered across town and those would call in more troops. I died at least a dozen times on the mission. I would run out of the infected zone and avoid military zones hoping that would lower the troop count that I might encounter. It never did. I battled helicopters on top of a roof hoping that I could escape if I took enough down. They never stopped appear, I think I took down a dozen and I only abandoned the idea when I saw a helicopter spawn on my head. Healing was also complicated since if I stopped to heal I would normal get hit by a rocket and lose all of the health I just absorbed.

It was frustrating, infuriating, aggravating, and any other kind of “ating” you can think of. Did I finally beat the mission? Yes, but I’m not sure how. I was fleeing for the military. I had no health left and I figured that I was screwed. As I jumped between two buildings the prompt to switch disguises appeared, so I pressed it. Low and behold the mission was magically completed. I don’t know how and I don’t know why. All I know is that once I reached the ground some military guy fired on me and killed Alex. At least the stupid mission finally counted as done.

There's a difference between challenging and cheap and this mission failed to find that balance. The battle at the end of Heavenly Sword was challenging. This was just bad.