Prototype: A Case against Loners (NSFW)

Note: For those who haven’t heard, if you pre-order the upcoming game Singularity, you will receive Prototype for free. It’s a pretty sweet deal, and it also makes this review extremely relevant.

Prototype is a sandbox game, and if you want to classify it further, I guess you could call it a super hero game, but make no mistake about it: Alex Mercer, the game’s protagonist, is about as nice as a box of Cracker Jacks laced with cyanide. He doesn’t give a damn about you, your cat, or your bubby. He will (literally) grab you by your face, run up the side of a building, and consume you. Not in a pleasant way, mind you, but like Venom ala Spider-Man way. In other words, it don’t tickle.

They could be cousins!

The premise is simple yet interesting: an outbreak of some virus has started mutating Manhattan into infected. These are the quick and the dead, not your grandma’s shambling zombies. Well, some of them are, and that’s one of the things that makes this game cool: there are hundreds of people on screen at once. As the game progresses and the infection spreads, more and more areas are succumbed to the virus, and some citizens become special infected (not unlike Left 4 Dead I guess?) while others mull about waiting to be decapitated by Alex. Of course, the military is there, too, to help clean things up, and you can eventually hijack helicopters, APCs, and tanks. You will often stumble across the military fighting off hordes of infected. To say this game creates an atmosphere of chaos is perhaps the biggest understatement since this one: Keanu Reeves is the most important actor of the twentieth century.

Like every good super hero game (or a guess in this case, super ambiguously-moral-hero game), your character needs cool super powers, and Prototype does not disappoint on that front. There are five offensive forms, two defensive for Alex, and the ability to disguise yourself as the last person you’ve consumed. Each option morphs Alex in a different way. For example, my favorite is this long whip, which looks like barbed wire flying off of Alex’s arm as he whips the tendril around. Each power is upgradable with the currency you receive from beating missions, absorbing characters, or simply from blowing sh*t up, although some powers are more upgradable than others. The best part, however, is that the powers really encourage players to play as they’d like. For example, you can sneak into bases by disguising yourself as a base’s general. From there, you can sneak around, absorbing people like a cannibal at an eating disorder clinic.  Some people, however, might like the ability to transform into an armored brick house and, at the cost of speed, charge through enemies. Emphasis on through.

When I play games with some kind of morality system, I usually make realistic choices. Prototype streamlines this process by taking away choice. Alex Mercer does not care about good and evil. He wants to find out what happened to him, and he doesn’t really care who he has to get rid of to find out. I mean, the guy consumes people to find out information. It’s a far cry even from Sam Fischer’s interrogation techniques. The story, however, is fairly interesting, but even more interesting is what the game calls the Web of Intrigue. As you play, you’ll see icons every now and then on your mini map. If you absorb these targets, you will learn a piece of what happened to Alex. He has amnesia from being infected, but the cutscenes are interesting as they do a good job working the player: some will have you hating a certain faction, while others cause the player to sympathize with the poor bloke now floating around in Alex’s memory. It’s a cool twist, and it’s fun watching bits of the story get told, then revised by other characters’ memories.

My biggest gripe with the game is that sometimes things can get a little repetitious. This might be, however, because I like to fool around and not advance the stories. There is so much to do in the world of Prototype, and just moving from place to place is exciting, since the game does a great job of creating a sense of conflict. Military forces push into infected areas, and later special infected beasts will pour into green zones. Some of the side quests become repetitious, but the simple solution is to advance the story and unlock more content.

Another thing some gamers might not like (but I had no problems with) is the way the game is told. You start the game in a tutorial, controlling Alex with a full spectrum of powers. Quickly, however, you are whisked away to the past, when Alex firsts wakes up after being infected. It’s kind of a shock to go from badass to asshole. Later on, there is a moment where Alex loses his powers. I won’t spoil why, but it makes sense in the storyline. However, I actually liked this part. It made me play the game differently. Since I didn’t have all my offensive powers, I started picking up weapons soldiers dropped. I found that they actually are fun to shoot, and Alex has the accuracy of a Ranger while jumping through the air off of a skyscraper.

No, my biggest problem with the game is the fact that Alex Mercer is a loner, and not just a loner, but a psychopathic loner. In the course of a single mission, I killed about 1000 innocent civilians on average. I know these aren’t real people, but you gotta feel bad. After all, some guy is walking around, feeling pissed off already because the government has quarantined the entire city to the point that it would make the Soviets reminisce about the good ol’ days at Checkpoint Charlie, and suddenly he gets yanked from the street by some parkour-punk with memory problems wearing a hoodie that he doesn’t change out of for 18 days (unless you count the times he morphs into other people. I suppose he wears them in a creepy, Buffalo Bill way.) He takes the guy and pounds his face in, and I’m sure the last thing in this civilians head is, we really need to socialize our angst-filled youths better.

The good: cool super powers makes you feel like a badass; variety of different ways to play; story is actually pretty good, especially the Web of Intrigue; city feels like it’s being infested, and the game captures the sense of chaos; it’s simply fun to run around the city and getting in and out of fights.

The bad: side quests can get repetitive; some people might not like being stripped of super powers; sometimes hard to be precise with movements, as Alex moves quickly; targeting system doesn’t always work the best. Oh, and Alex Mercer is an asshole.

The verdict: Buy for some who really like this kind of sandbox games, rent for everyone else; you can find this game for cheap (about $30) at a store (or you could preorder Singularity and get two games for $60, but I don’t know much about Singularity, nor have a clue if it’ll be worth your cash). However, definitely check this game out, since it’s a unique experience and a hell of a lot of fun—certainly a good way to get aggression out from your emo days.

Written by Neutrally Chaotic