So no votes on the poll. That makes it my choice.
[Prototype] is a third person action sandbox game. It was developed by Radical Games and published by Activision for the PS3 June 2009. The game stars one Alex Mercer, a man who has been experimented on and now has super-human abilities. This is the first time I’ve played the game and I’ll be playing it on Normal. Well, after the update I’ll be playing it. It is an older game so I’m not terribly surprised that there’s an update, but whatever happened to the days of buying a product and that was it?
Ok, 10 minutes later and I’m in the game. The first level drops you into a world of chaos. Alex comes in with all of these major abilities. He’s turning his arms into massive claws, clubs and swords. He’s taking out tanks and monsters on a regular basis. It’s a good bit of fun. It’s also very bloody and very chaotic as the streets are filled with civilians and military troops. Nobody dies without spilling gallons of the life giving fluid and there are plenty of people running around on the street to literally paint the town red with.
But this level is just a tease. At the end of it Alex is shown talking to some guy as he plots his revenge for the experimentation. Then the game jumps back… is that 13 days? I can barely read the number. It’s all red and glowy, and very hard to make out.
Anyways, the game takes you back to the beginning of the story. Alex is looking pretty dead lying in a morgue with two people in containment suits examining him. This is, of course, when the guy wakes up. The examiners run out of the room calling for some strike team. Flash-forward a few minutes and we see a group of heavily armed soldiers execute the examiners. They then notice Alex and execute him, at least they attempt too. Alex can apparently take a good bit of gun fire and keep on moving.
I got to play a little chase/tutorial scene. Alex can dash up walls. It’s a fun trick, but it can be a little disorientating as the camera has to swing around erratically to show you where you are. You get to throw stuff at helicopters and that’s always a good time. Alex can no longer shape-shift his arms and that’s a major disappointment. Guess that will show up later.
Alex learns that he can absorb people and then change into them. It’s a neat trick and it helps him regain some of his memories, like the fact that he has a sister. Yes, Alex is dealing with a little amnesia. Such a wonderful plot device.
Alex decides to go to his sister’s apartment, but these military guys have it under heavy surveillance. This is where the Prototype experience fell apart for me. I had to find a military guy and absorb him so Alex could turn into him. This would allow Alex to sneak into the apartment undetected. When I dropped to the street I thought I could just absorb anybody, so I did. That pissed off the cops and since I thought I had to stay undetected I ran away. That was how I got lost. There was no waypoint marker of any kind and any enemies displayed on my map were cops, not military personnel. I could not figure out how to get back to the apartment at all. It was frustrating and it showed some bad design choices.
First, let me zoom in on the map, that’s not asking that much. Second, keep a waypoint on where I need to be even it I need to absorb somebody to get to it. How about a region volume that says “hey, there’s a guy here you should absorb!” Third, I kept thinking the games telling me to press Up, Right, or Down on the d-pad to change shapes since they were lit up. Instead I was supposed to press left on the d-pad.
I eventually had to restart at the last checkpoint to finally do this mission correctly. I don’t know how a guard falling 10 stories and living didn’t raise suspicions in the end, but I was just happy to move ahead with the mission. What followed was a confusing and badly done cutscene.
Alex walks in on a guard holding his sister hostage. The guard is literally holding her with his arm around her neck with a gun placed to her head. Why not tie her to a chair or something? That would at least make sense. The rest of the cutscene moves by at a fairly fast pace with everyone talking very quietly. Somehow Alex got his sister out of her apartment and to a safe location. She then tells him where he lives and that gives him his next goal. But the execution of the scene is so horrible, they’re trying to set up that Alex has been estranged from his family for a long time, but the information is dropped as a side note. The fact that Alex has been investigating the company he is working for (same company that experimented on him, apparently) also comes off as a side note. It is just so awful. This is very disappointing since the game started off so strong.
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