Prototype - FInal Thoughts

Oh dearest Prototype. I want you to know that I want to like you. There are good points to you and I will talk about them, but there are many things I need to complain about first.

The biggest problem this game has is the story. Alex’s quest for revenge makes very little sense, especially after the big backstory is revealed. It has something to do with a destructive virus, sure. But the key players in the drama don’t help to flesh things out. It helps even less that you never get to know any of these guys. Why was Cross able to turn into a Supreme Hunter? Why did Randall try to shut down Gentek in the first place? How much of a role did McMullen have with the Blackwatch virus? Why did Elizabeth Greene wait for Alex to show up before she escaped? What happened to Alex’s sister, Dana? Just how involved was Dr. Ragland with Blacklight? And finally, who the hell is Taggart?!

And that’s only a small portion of the questions that I still have after finishing the game. Maybe the little Web of Intrigue side quest would have answered more questions if I had finished it, I don’t know.

The side quests themselves is also an area of disappointment. There are Events scattered around the town. I never bothered to do them, I just wasn’t interested. All I appeared to get for completing them is a trophy and some EP. I don’t care about trophies and I was never lacking in EP. They were nicely varied so I couldn’t complain about that. I just never saw the point in doing them.

Then there was the ‘territory’ minigame. This one really had my hopes up when it was first introduced. The map would be broken up into Blue and Red circles. In these circles were bases. Blue would have a military base and Red would have a virus hive. Alex could destroy both the hive and base for bonus EP and to control the balance of that particular group. At least, that’s how I thought it was going to work. Destroying a base/hive clears the area of that particular type of enemy for about 10 minutes. I was hoping it would work more like the gang wars from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Virus or military would gain a strong foothold in the area, Alex would come in a clear them out and eventually one of the groups would take back over, that sounded like fun. Sadly it didn’t work that way. Each area was pre-assigned and that group would quickly just take back the area.

This meant that Alex didn’t really influence his world. His actions had no true consequences and that’s why I think the game went wrong by being a sandbox. Prototype should have been more in line with God of War or Devil May Cry. They should have left things on a linear, level based game style. This would have allowed the game staff to control the game encounters better. Instead of Alex being swarmed by 50 troops carrying rocket launchers, 5 tanks, 4 helicopters, and half a dozen hunters, this could have been controlled. This also would have gotten rid of the ‘alert’ meter.

At the start of the game I had no problem running over people and using Alex’s powers on a whim, by the end of the game I was very cautious about when I used them. I didn’t want to get caught, because then I would get swarmed and fighting off swarms was never fun. If the alert meter was gone then I wouldn’t have worried so much. With the sandbox style I knew that enemy troops would never stop appearing. In a level based system I would know that I would eventually kill everyone and be able to move on.

The biggest problem this has for me is that is stopped me from fighting and combat is the area that Prototype really excels in.  At least, for the most part. I liked pulling out my virus weapons and slashing my way through everything. I do wish that changing weapons was more fluid. If I was using the blade and I wanted the Whipfist instead I had to wait for Alex to put the blade away and then pull out the Whipfist. This didn’t make a lot of sense. Alex’s body is his weapon, why can’t he just change to the next weapon quickly so I can mix up my combos some?

Vehicles handle very well in this game however. Flying a helicopter was great fun and an unexpected treat. I really feared that they would handle badly. But stealing a helicopter almost seems out of place. Alex is a living weapon, why would he need to jack a helicopter?

Prototype 2 has been announced. It’s going to have a new protagonist by the name of James Heller. I hope they’re able to fix the issues that Prototype 1 had, especially in the story department because there is a lot of potential in this game.

Prototype - In The End, Just Nuke It All

This is it, the final battle. After this, Prototype is done. There’s nothing left to play story-wise. But before I go into this final fight I want to cover a little bit of odd backstory that’s been given to Alex recently.

Hope, Idaho was a Blackwatch project. This gets a big “NO DUH!” from me. It’s been pretty obvious that the Blackwatch virus was purposely spread in this town for a long time. The goal was to create a virus that could kill along racial lines. The virus was an epic failure in that sense. The virus wiped out everyone in the town except for Elizabeth Greene. Somehow she survived. Even more, she bonded with the virus. It also turns out that Elizabeth was pregnant. This little tidbit just seems to be randomly dropped in your lap. I don’t remember seeing Elizabeth being pregnant in any of the flashbacks, but somehow Alex learned about it.

Elizabeth’s child, codenamed Pariah, was extremely dangerous and could kill just by touch. Nothing is done with this information during the remainder of the game. You never find out was has become of the Pariah project.

Alex Mercer used to work for Gentek. The purpose of Gentek was to develop stronger strains of the Blackwatch virus; they used Elizabeth Greene for that. General Randall decided that Gentek needed to be shut down. Alex disagreed with this so he stole a vial of the Blackwatch virus for insurance. Alex was cornered in by the military in Penn Station. Knowing he was done for he broke the vial and unleashed the virus. Alex was then killed. He fell onto the pool of viral material and that is how he absorbed it into this body. This started the spread of the virus. The spread of the virus in Manhattan is Alex Mercer’s fault. Good thing he’s out for revenge.

Story doesn’t make much sense, but that doesn’t surprise me in the long run and the final mission does nothing to change that. Cross sneaks Alex onboard the aircraft carrier, the U.S.S Reagan, disguised as Taggart. Since Taggart disobeyed Randall and caused the current confusion in the streets Randall executes Taggart on site. It looks like he’s about to execute Cross too when Alex reveals himself. I can only assume that Alex absorbs Randall since a flashback occurs, but you don’t get to actually see it happen.

Alex then starts yelling about how “You could’ve stopped this!” But I’m not sure who he’s yelling at. Maybe at the General, maybe at himself, or maybe at Cross. I don’t know and it’s not really explained, big surprise there. Suddenly Cross picks up Alex by the throat. Oh Noes! It’s a double-Cross! See what I did there? Cross turns out to be the Supreme Hunter that Alex fought earlier. Yeah, the one I claimed that Elizabeth Greene puked up. If this guy’s the Supreme Hunter, then how did Elizabeth puke him up? He was around before that.

To make matters stupider, this is your final boss fight. The Supreme Hunter wasn’t that challenging in the first place. He just tried to overwhelm Alex with minions. That is what really made him difficult last time, plus you were in a more confined place so dodging his attacks was harder. This time Alex battles him on top of an aircraft carrier and there are no minions around. The military is still in this fight, but that’s to Alex’s advantage. Yeah, this is a pretty easy fight.

With the military guys around I was able to keep Alex fairly well healed. I was also able to use a wide variety of weapons/attacks. The Whipfist, guns, and helicopters were all to be had during this fight. The Supreme Hunter brought nothing new to the table that I saw. This guy really could have used a projectile weapon or something. Avoiding his attacks was just too easy.

Eventually a time limit is introduced. Alex is given 1:30 to finish this guy off or else the nuke goes off. I threw missiles at him and the fight was done with 30 seconds left. Not a very exciting fight and with nothing major revealed there’s no emotional draw to the battle. It’s just another round of kill everything because it’s there.

The end scene has Alex attach the nuke to a helicopter and fly it out to the ocean. The bomb goes off in the ocean and Alex’s helicopter is caught in the blast. This would be a great place for an ambiguous end to Alex Mercer but that’s not to be the case. His remains wash up on shore where the virus instinctively eats birds and whatnot to recover. Alex is eventually shown as alive. Since this is a sandbox game this is obviously done so you can keep playing around afterwards. Not the type of thing I normally care about. The story is done, I’m moving on.

Story wise, the virus is taken care of “off camera” during the credits. It at least wraps things up for it. We never see Alex’s sister again so I have no idea what happened to her. I assume Elizabeth Greene turned her into a virus monster and she woke up and ate Dr. Ragland, who we also don’t know if he’s alive or not. There’s apparently a hidden scene with Karen Parker, but even her final end is left a little ambiguous.

And that’s the game. Final Thoughts are coming up next.

Prototype - Naming The Opposition

So I actually took some time to do multiple missions and what would happen? I ended up beating the game. Go figure, I knew I was that close the end. I just didn’t think I was that close The ending makes about as much sense as the rest of the story, but I’ll go into that in my Final Thoughts.

First mission is to destroy the Bloodtox facility. This is all an elaborate rouge by Alex’s contact to help Alex reach McMullen.  Apparently Alex destroy the facility and then allows himself to get captured. Then the soldiers will randomly take Alex to McMullen. I don’t get the logic behind it, but that has never been Prototype’s strong point.

Attacking the facility sucks. In the mission briefing it’s mentioned that Alex is building an immunity to Bloodtox. I thought, “Great, maybe I can live a little longer around the stuff.” Nope, the stupid stuff will still rip Alex’s health right down to zero if you’re not careful. I did a lot of hit and run with the arm Blade. One of the few times I actually used something other than the Whipfist. With the number of solders (some are Super Soldiers) and tanks in the area I just couldn’t hang around for long. Add to the fact that the Bloodtox was destroying Alex’s health. The back and forth of the whole thing wasn’t a lot of fun, but it was the only safe way I found I could do the mission. Whatever works, right?

With the facility down Alex pretends to get captured. Skip to Alex breaking out of confinement and confronting McMullen. Boo! I wanted to play that section. The conversation between the two is pretty straight forward. McMullen says he know all about Hope, Idaho and then kills himself. That’s really about it.  Awww, Alex is unable to learn what happened in Hope, Idaho. This makes everyone cry.

Once again, back to the dealing with the contact who is finally revealed to be that Captain guy Alex fought earlier. He’s against nuking Manhattan so he’s helping Alex take out the chain of command.  That’s too bad. My money was on Karen Parker. I thought maybe she cared enough about Alex that she found a way to help him by being a shadow contact. At least the captain guy does have some motivation. Oh and they also give him a name, Captain Cross. So I’ll be calling him Cross from now on.

Cross (see!) wants Alex to take out Taggart next. Who the hell is Taggart? What has he done this entire game and why should I/Alex care about this guy? Apparently Taggart was in charge of the Marines during this mission. He wanted to nuke Manhattan early on but the General said “no”. There’s more to it, go read it yourself. I don’t remember any of this being mentioned during the story.

First things first, Alex has to destroy every helicopter on the Island that Taggart could possibly use to escape.  I failed this mission at first since I was a little confused about what exactly to do. I was chasing helicopters everywhere and eventually one of them got away.

When I beat this mission it was awesome! I was jumping from helicopter to helicopter, killing people that way and I was having a blast doing it. The Whipfist proved to be really valuable again. The thing might be a little over-powered.

Once the copters were down Alex had to force Taggart out into the open by destroying the military base he was in. Again, this took time since every time I attacked the base enemy soldiers would swarm my position. Didn’t help that there were virus detectors everywhere. The good part is that enemies with rocket launchers would show up on a regular basis. This allowed me to hit the base strong without driving a tank in on a suicide mission.

Once the base goes down Taggart runs away in one of those Thermobaric Tanks. These things still pack a punch and you have to be careful since this is actually a fairly long chase mission. I kept trying to get to Taggart early in the mission, but all that happens is Alex gets knocked off the tank for decent damage. During the chase you’ll encounter blockades where Taggart will hide for a while. The goal is to kill everyone in the blockade without killing Taggart. This means using a Devastator attack is a bad idea. I learned this the hard way.

After three blockades Alex finally gets the chance to absorb Taggart. Apparently Taggart pissed off the General guy, General Randall. The idea is to have Alex impersonate Taggart to get close to the General. Wouldn’t the General be surrounded by virus detection devices? I like how I’m learning all of the bad guy names at the end of the game. These guys have shown up every now and then and I had no idea who they were, at all.

Next mission is the last. I’ll talk about it next time.

Prototype - Battling Giant Vaginas

I am now glad that I had to quit this mission two nights ago. I had no idea what I was getting myself into at the time. That this mission ended up being a massive boss fight was a revelation to me. That the boss fight was badly executed did not come as a surprise however.

So Alex protected this Bloodtox antivirus tanker thing with the intent of pumping the Bloodtox into the ground. Well now that it’s reached its destination you have to protect it again. This time packs of hunters come swarming over the wall to destroy the tanker. I hate fighting hunters; once they start their combo you can’t knock them out of it. Plus this game has no limit on the number of enemies that attack you. This means that 5 hunters can be attacking you at the exact same time. I would know, it happened to me on a regular basis. So I go to slice them with my  blade arm and I end up being the guy taking all of the damage. It seems that you just can’t stop hunters. This makes them stupidly frustrating to fight. It doesn’t help that most of my attacks carry Alex forward and right into a hunters range.

The one good thing about this mission is that the military will leave Alex alone, at least at this point. Every time they attack Alex a call comes through from HQ telling them to focus on guarding the tanker. It’s a nice change of pace since dealing with half-a-dozen hunters is really frustrating. What I found worked the best would be to run around and absorb the military guys until I had built up my big devastator attack. Once I had that I would unleash it and destroy everything in sight. Not a bad way to deal with things. Occasionally there would be a leader hunter running around and he would need some personal attention but his buddies were dead and that made him easier to deal with.

The hunter packs come in 4 waves from all 4 directions, once I’d dealt with them it would’ve been a great time to call the mission done, instead they tack on a massive boss fight. I was a little miffed about this. Guarding the truck was bad enough but now I had to fight a giant tentacle vagina. Yeah, something that looks like a vagina sitting on top of a spinal column with tentacles comes popping out of the ground and Alex has to kill it. It’s frustrating that Alex has to declare this giant vagina to be Elizabeth Greene, there’s no connection that this creature and Elizabeth is the same creature. We never saw Elizabeth go through any sort of mutation so there’s no reason to think that she became a giant vagina.

The battle against this thing is really annoying. Elizabeth can hit you from nearly every angle if you’re within her line of sight. It took some careful strategies to take her down. And then I realized it didn’t, it only took some lucky timing and one very basic strategy.

We’re still in a town so getting out of Elizabeth’s line of sight wasn’t that hard. Once there I could absorb all of the people I wanted. Occasionally a hunter or two (or three) would come down the street to annoy me, but they aren’t a problem in small numbers. Once I had built up my big devastator I ran down the street with my shield in front of me to unleash my tentacle devastator. Rinse and repeat for an hour. Literally an hour, this fight was long and frustrating. You have to always be on the go since Elizabeth’s attack can cause massive damage to Alex. There’s no real safe place to hide. The side streets were nice, but if a hunter got to me and I was in a weakened state he could finish me off pretty easily. Hunters always got a few hits in. Eventually the military shows up and join the fight, but they don’t leave you alone this time. Having to deal with helicopters and tanks at the same time as hunters can be hair-pulling aggravating.

Add to the heap Elizabeth’s big wave attack. Thankfully you know when this is coming. The screen goes black and white and everything slows down. This is the cue to climb a building and fast. I don’t think the attack can kill Alex, but it will wipe out all of his health making him easy prey for other enemies.

After hitting the dumb vagina enough times it actually spits the real Elizabeth out. So she apparently didn’t turn into a giant vagina, she just attacked you from within one. That is so like a woman. I was expecting a chase across town or something now, but Alex doesn’t give Elizabeth a chance to move. He grabs her, punches her and then absorbs her. Well there ya go, Alex just absorbed his mom. Now I get to be mad. Where was my grand fight against an enemy that I recognized? The giant vagina battle was lame; I wanted to fight Elizabeth herself in a one-on-one battle to the end. But I was denied that. She should have run across town until we reached a certain location and then we should have duked it out. The she could have died in a cutscene. But I was denied that. I had to beat up a giant vagina instead.

Once the fight is over the military pulls out. I was expecting another “escape the military” sequence, but that didn’t happen. Instead the military has decided to purge the island. I guess they figure that no one will notice that every living thing on Manhattan Island is dead, there’s probably some social commentary in there. There’s a cutscene where important reoccurring military guys yell at each other, but I can’t remember their names, maybe they’re not that important afterall.

I am so happy that this fight is finished, but I want to know when Alex is finally going to meet this secret contact of his. The whole game is told through a backstory where Alex is talking to the Contact. Maybe it will be in the next mission.

Secret of Mana 2 - DON'T STEAL GAMES!

I’m going to start by saying that I do not support the theft of games in any way, shape, or form. However, there are times when emulation is the only way to play a certain game. Case in point, Secret of Mana 2. I have fond memories of the first Secret of Mana game. It was a multiplayer, real time combat RPG that I played with my brother and sister when I was young. I got to play the lead character, my sister was the girl and my brother was the sexually ambiguous not-dwarf thing. Imagine my surprise when I learned many years later that a sequel had been released in Japan, but it was never ported over to the U.S. Now some hacker has been nice enough to translate the game so it can be played in English. The only way to play though is on an emulator.

Secret of Mana 2 or Seiken Densetsu 3, as it is known in Japan, was developed by Squaresoft. It was not published in the U.S. and therefore has no U.S. release date. It has no difficulty setting so I’ll claim that I’m playing it on normal.

This is a really cool find and I’m always interested in hacked ROMs like this. Getting to play the older Front Mission games this way is also a treat. This game makes me miss older game styles. Sure 3D is nice and games are looking more realistic, but realistic seems to mean brown and grey. This game is bright and vivid. The colors pop and the sprites look good. They still hold up in quality after all these years. This was Squaresoft’s real heyday. They were inventive and daring, but they didn’t lock themselves into a Japanese stereotype. Sure it had the world is being destroyed by an unknown evil, but that was the premise of many games back in the day.

At the start of the game you get to choose 3 out of 6 characters. You know what this instantly means? Replayability! If this game had been made today then three of those characters would have been DLC that was already on the disk and for a low price of $10 dollars you could have unlocked them. But if you jumped on the pre-order bonus one of them would have already been unlocked, but you still would’ve paid full price to unlock the other two.

Yes I’m still bitter about the War for Cybertron DLC. Pre-order bonus my ass.

So I choose the Valkyrie, the mage, and the beast man. You know what I got to do to these characters? I gave them custom names! You rarely see custom names anymore unless you’re playing an MMO. It helps that there’s no voice over. When you have a custom name and voice over you tend to get awkward interaction like Yuna never directly addressing Tidus in Final Fantasy X. Or everyone is referring to your character as the Grey Warden, or just Warden in Dragon Age. But I enjoyed the chance to name my characters. Kitye, Aura, and Mon respectively.

So far the story has to deal with various kingdoms invading each other to collect these McGuffins called Mana Stones. There are eight scattered across the land and each one is guarded by a spirit. Our heroes’ main goal is to find the stones and with them reach the Holy Mana Tree and this will somehow bring peace to the land! I don’t quite know how that would work but I’m having a fun time trying to do it.

Prototype - Virus Protection Is GO!

So it turns out that this game actually takes place in Manhattan. I always figured that it was some kind of knockoff. It still doesn’t seem right. I haven’t seen Time Square or the Statue of Liberty anywhere. I should compare Prototype’s map with Spider-Man 2’s map. Spider-Man 2 had a great recreation of Manhattan.

I actually tried to do two missions last night, but I had something come up during the second mission so I was forced to quit. This is too bad since the first mission is another escort a vehicle mission. It’s pretty straight forward and the second mission was really an immediate tie-in.

I don’t really get the motivation for what is going on in this game right now. Alex has been working hard to suppress this new virus killing toxin, Bloodtox. Suddenly Alex is out to protect the stuff. When the military released the toxin last time it caused the virus to go underground. So now the military has a great plan to pump the chemicals into the ground. Alex wants to help since this will supposedly bring Elizabeth Greene to the surface. Sounds like we’re pretty close the end of the game.

You now have to escort this Bloodtox tanker to downtown. You can snag a tank or maybe a nearby helicopter. I was in a tank and that worked fine for the entire mission. Occassionally a Hydra tentacle would pop-up to harass the Bloodtox tanker. All you had to do was shoot it down. Rinse and repeat and the mission would be over. I will admit to destroying some of the other tanks that were in the convoy to protect the tanker. The mission might have been even easier if they had survived, but they got in my line of fire. So it’s their fault. At least that’s what I plan to tell the insurance adjuster.

The next mission is really highlights a lot of issues I have with the combo system in this game. I’ll talk about that mission after I’ve beaten it though. That should be tonight.