Over the past month we’ve had two open world, super powered, action adventure games come out that some seem to think are at war with each other. I’m of course talking about Sony’s inFamous and Activision’s Prototype. And I’ve just noted that on sites outside of Dtoid, there have been some big debates and even arguments about which game is better, which one sucks more than the other, etc etc etc. So I just want to take the time to look at these two.

Let me first start by saying I think both these games are great. There are a ton of similarities between the two. Both games have pretty much the same set up, two gruffy characters who are endowed with powers but don’t know how the hell it happened to them. Then they must go through out a big open world fighting everything that is thrown at them while upgrading their powers, blah blah blah. The one big difference between the game is how they play, and that is what I want to focus on. I’m not talking about the technical aspects of how they play, but the experience.

To this day I could not tell you any story point in GTA III. I never played a single story mission in that game (thus never beat it.) Why? Because I was having too much fun causing absolute havoc in Liberty City. At the time, GTA III was something new and fresh, and it was the first time we were able to truly go through a game’s world and just do whatever the hell we wanted. Half the fun of GTA III was turning on the cheats, having every gun, raising your wanted level to the max, and destroying everything in a tank. What I’m trying to get at is the fact that Prototype reminds me a lot of GTA III



I’ve somewhat gotten into the story missions of Prototype, but not a whole lot. I’ll do a mission, and then just run through New York destroying everything. There is something just so satisfying about putting your shield up and plowing through everything in your way, stopping, turning your arms into giant claws and then tearing through everything you just knocked down. One of the most common things I do to entertain myself is run around, do a running grab, and climb up a building just to consume the person I grabbed in private. Is it necessary? No, not at all, but it’s fun. Prototype gives you the sense of just being a predator and everything that moves could possibly be your prey. And it is good that the game encourages just fucking shit up. You can sneak into a military base and destroy it without consequence, because eventually it will be rebuilt for you just to destroy it again. It is just so much fun to destroy everything in this game.



inFamous on the other hand I feel like is a much more structured game. When I play this game I feel like I have to play the missions and I can’t just run around destroying stuff. Because lets be honest, all you can do to “destroy” things in inFamous is blow up cars, blow up the occasional gas station, or kill pedestrians. In order to get enjoyment out of inFamous you just have to do the missions, you progress the story that way and gain exp which is necessary to upgrade your powers. The game makes you go through the missions but doesn’t make it feel tedious because you do gain exp for powers and you’re presented with the karma moments which allow you to get to a good/bad level which unlocks more powers/variants.

I didn’t enjoy GTA IV that much because looking back it was a whole lot like inFamous, but it didn’t work. I don’t know if I’m the only one who felt this way, but I feel like GTA IV didn’t encourage the type of reckless abandonment that GTA III did. I don’t know what it was, but when I played GTA IV I didn’t feel like I was supposed to shoot pedestrians or run over them. I felt like I was supposed to do the missions instead, but the problem with those were the fact that they were tedious. I felt like a vast majority of GTA IV’s missions were either go to this place and shoot these people or go try and shoot this guy while he is driving his car. And I FUCKING HATED those driving missions. Those were so fucking frustrating and quite honestly boring. Basically what I’m getting at is I think inFamous did what GTA IV was trying to do in terms of an open world game, but better and less monotonous and boring.



A game that I feel that mixes both Prototype’s and inFamous’ gameplay styles actually predates both of them. Crackdown was a game that was just so satisfying to say the least. I didn’t feel obligated to do the story missions, I wanted to, and I wanted to progress throughout the game on my own will. But at the same time I go off path and just start blowing up stuff for the fun of it. When they release the “Keys to the City” DLC, good god the fun was upgraded to a higher extent with the fact that when I didn’t want to do anything mission related, I could build a giant tower of cars, line the bottom of the tower with oil barrels, jump to a building a mile away, shoot the tower with a rocket, see the giant explosion, and watch as debris made it all the way to where I was standing.

While I like Prototype and inFamous both in their own ways I feel like if we’re going to see more of these types of games that they could really benefit by blending the two styles of the game into something like Crackdown. I don’t feel motivated enough to advance Prototype’s story nor do I feel like I have a good opportunity just to wreck shit in inFamous. Along with the FPS, I feel like open world action games are going to continue. And with Crackdown 2 coming out, I first hope that the experience of that game stays the same and that future games model themselves after that experience. I don’t want to again be stuck with a game like GTA IV where I feel like nothing works.