Prototype - Powerless And Hating It

There’s this bad kids movie about guinea pigs called G-Force (yes I’ve actually seen it). In the movie the lead guinea pig gets told that he’s not genetically enhanced. He gets depressed for 10 seconds or so until his tell him what a swell guy he is and that he does great things without being enhanced. It was a really bad character moment in the movie. I actually wanted the “no powers” section of the game to work just like that. No such luck, I have to deal with no powers for a few missions still.

Alex talks with Dana and he’s sent off to find a Dr. Ragland. The guy works in the morgue in a downtown hospital. I like that Dana gives a distinct warning not to eat him. So Alex makes his way across town. Now I feel that I have to be all sneaky-like. I want to run into the street and tear enemies up with my claws, but I don’t have my claws. In just have my fists. I also apparently have the ability to dropkick helicopters. I didn’t realize that before but it’s a sweet move and pretty fun.

Meeting Dr. Ragland harks back to the bad cutscenes at the beginning of the game. And here I actually thought the game was getting better with them. Alex walks in and the Doc goes, “I told you I won’t help” Alex says, “Pick a side.” Doc replies, “I’ll tell you everything I know.” End scene. It goes that badly.

Dr. Ragland is your new mission giver for a while since he seems to be the guy to cure you. He wants you to find “Patient Zero”. I’m not sure what makes this body special but it comes from Hope, Indiana, the original test town for the virus.

First up, grab a tank, excuse me, an APC. I actually found it easiest to jump in the tank, hit the checkpoint and then die. See, once I reloaded the military guys were no longer chasing me, where initially snagging the tank would get me in trouble. Dying suddenly made my task a lot easier. Once in the tank you have to find Captain Lim. See, this random Captain who’s going to die in 10 minutes gets a name, but the Special Forces Captain who’s a reoccurring character? Nope, no name for him.

Luring Lim out requires that you kill his men. Thankfully there are rocket launcher guys on a nearby roof and you have this stealth consume ability. The stealth consume is really overly powerful. There can be a line of guys standing nearly shoulder to shoulder and as long as they aren’t looking at each other you can consume one of them and no one will notice. No one questioned getting shot by their own soldier either, that part just made me laugh. I just stood there shooting rockets at tanks repeatedly and no one cared. Hunters will spawn in the area and they can make things annoying. I really wish I just had my powers to slice through all of this crap.

After all of the troops are dead Captain Lim arrives. You just jump in his tank and automatically consume him. Mission complete. There’s a small scene about Ragland. He has ties to McMullan, but Alex never seems to care about that. I’ve consumed people on the street that mention the ties between Ragland and McMullan, so far it’s not been a plot device.