Well it's that time again. First of all I have to say I just haven't had the time to finish the game yet, so take it into consideration if you will. I think I spent around 5 hours total with the game, although my 360 keeps freezing and is in need of some DIY maintenance which is lame. But at least I don't have to buy a bluray diode and read up all that shit about how to replace it eh? :)



Prototype is a game that I thought looked pretty awesome in the trailers when it was announced, and then I just kinda forgot about it. I figured it would be some kind of open world game where you destroy a lot of shit without caring about it. Turns out, that is pretty much what it is. And it's glorious! If you haven't picked up this game yet, you probably wonder if it's any good. Well, it is pretty good.

In Prototype, you are Altair with a leather jacket. The game centers around a sort of virus infection and starts you out with 18 days after this infection started. You get to play around with a lot of the powers you will later have to earn, but it works well as an introduction and tutorial. After that introduction, you start out on Day 1 where it turns out you woke up from the dead with something wrong with you: you are not a zombie.

All you know, and need to know if yo haven't played it, is that you were part of some genetic experiment (original!) which gives you powers to fuck shit up. And with genetics, of course I mean that you can mold your arms into weapons and a shield. Because hell, why not? The game controls pretty easily, with RT being an Assassin's Creed style of 'run over all objects and up to walls' button. With a twist: you can run up buildings and over cars and pretty much anything that is in your way. X and Y are standard attack buttons while B serves as grab/throw. Fun thing is: you can pick up cars and heavy objects as if you were the Hulk. You can also jump long distances and keep jumping, just like the Hulk. So I guess you are the Hulk eh?



Well, not quite. As you progress, you gain claws for better attack against infantry type of enemies just like Wolverine. So I guess you are Wolverine eh? You can also grab enemies and consume them for health, as you don't really regenerate health that easily in this game. You can, but it's a bit harder than just crouching behind a car and waiting for 3 seconds.

The consuming element is more than just a means to gain health though. Since you wake up from the dead, of course you lost your memory (this is a videogame after all). But unlike other games, you can choose to regain all of your memory, or just ignore it. Your memory works as a neural network map, where unlocked memory nodes open up paths to new nodes to remember. To remember something and open up a memory node, you have to consume an enemy agent, scientist or soldier to literally consume his memories and make them your own. When you do this, you get a short and non-intrusive cutscene of flashes with a voiceover which works as a means to show you what happened from the perspective of whoever you consumed.

These consumption enemies can be hidden on the map, where they appear on your minimap only if you are close to them, or part of Consumption side-quests where the goal is to consume a couple of enemies within a set time limit. This whole system is pretty neat, and a cool way to leave the story involvement up to the player instead of forcing you through it. When you consume someone, you can also choose to disguise yourself as that person to allow yourself access to places without being detected.



The combat is a bit similar to other hack & slash games like Wolverine, where you just mash buttons in the direction of an enemy. Because it's an open world game, sometimes it can feel like the combat is a little loose. It's easy to miss a couple of hits and then having to reorient towards the enemy, as the combat is not really scripted to be set in small areas or maps. Luckily, there is a lock-on with the LT which is almost too useful. It works well in melee combat, but you can also use it to lock on to an enemy, jump into the air, and then auto-move to it with a flying kick. This kinda means you can just keep jump kicking anything in sight by just jumping, locking and attacking, which feels pretty cheap in the beginning. But as you play the game, you learn to play around with different styles of attack and don't really bother with the jump kicking all that much; it's not that effective throughout the game.

As you kill things and complete missions in Crackdown/GTA mission select style, you gain XP. You don't level up, but you use this XP to buy upgrades. These can vary from attack styles such as the claws, upgrades to your attack, faster movement and higher jumps, and flying. Yeah, you can basically fly around the city. Not so much fly, as glide. But it works in an almost similar way and it's just ridiculous.



When you combine all these elements, you can run around a city, kill some soldiers, raise the alert level, pick up a car, run up a building, lock onto a helicopter, backflip off the building and throw the car at the helicopter. Then you pick up a commander, run him up a skyscraper, consume him, take his form as a disguise, glide down the cityscape and drop your ass in a military base without really being detected.

This game is part Crackdown in the ridiculous powers, verticality and even some hidden orbs. It is another part Spiderman (Web of Shadows I guess?) where you can run up buildings and kind of fly/swing/glide through Manhattan. And then it is part Assassin's Creed when you graciously move through and over everything, or stealth-consume people from behind without anyone noticing. It's a fun mix of a lot of things we've come to like about different games in the open world genre, and it works remarkably well.

That's not to say this is a perfect game by any means. As you upgrade speed and jumping for instance, it can become hard to land in the right spot without being in the air for seconds. Or it can become harder to run around something and hit it without first slowing down to a walking pace. It can sometimes feel like you are almost losing control of your character when you go all out on the speed and jumps, although this is something you can just learn to deal with.



While the city is large and full of traffic and pedestrians, they do feel a bit detached from you. Maybe that has a reason, as you don't really give a fuck about who you kill (other than the achievements for it). But people generally run in all directions and once they start running, it doesn't really feel like they are necessarily running from you. It can also be hard to distinguish enemies from civilians somethings, but then again: you don't give a fuck so why would you distinguish them?

The story is not bad for a game like this. It moves from a chronological path from start to finish, with storyline sections/scenes between major missions that happen on what I guess is the last day or something. It's nice, and the story is fun enough to want to play it more and learn more about what happened.

All in all, it just feels like a fun game. It can feel great to do all the crazy movement stuff you can do, and it can feel very satisfying to hack, slash and pound your way through hordes of enemies as well. The game doesn't feel like it's a revelation or anything, or like it's the best thing ever. But it just feels like it does a hell of a lot more right than it does wrong. And with the large amount of stuff that is in this game, that is quite an achievement.

This game is just fun. I have no idea what it is that makes me feel like it's somehow short of greatness, but I don't get the time to think about it when I'm having fun. Which this game is. Fun. Go get it.

Grade: 9/10 Because grades are cool yo!

Thanks to Gamepro for their cblog-size pictures without watermarks. Because I am lazy.