I think I was one of very few people that bought Crackdown to actually play the game and not just use it as a key into the Halo 3 online beta. I was (and still am) a huge fan of Crackdown and was drawn to Prototype because of what I perceived to be similarities. This then may not be the most objective review out there but really, which ones are?
The premise of Prototype is that, as Alex Mercer, you are somehow infected with a virus that allows you significant enhancements in the form of physical powers. The game immediately gives you a taste of what you’re capable of offering up a couple of minutes of gameplay in the beginning with the full suite of powers at your disposal before doing a whole flashback bit, stripping you of your powers and beginning the core gameplay for real. I’ve seen this before in other games, perhaps to better effect than it was used here.
As Alex Mercer, you’re then tasked with finding out just what the heck happened to you and all around you. You roam the city and choose missions must like you do in a GTA game. These missions progress the game along at a pace of your choosing. There are also event challenges throughout the city (such as get from point a to point b as quickly as possible and kill x number of bad guys within a time limit) and lots of collectibles too (think Crackdown’s orbs).
As you progress through the game and earn XP, you gain access to new abilities which may allow for increased sprinting speed, greater jumping ability or powered up attacks. The XP sort of acts as cash. Each new ability costs a certain amount of XP and can be added at seemingly any point in the game provided you have enough XP. To me this is really the meat of the game and the most compelling reason to play it but I think I preferred the more organic way of enhancing abilities that we saw in Crackdown. There are some pretty sweet power ups though.
Your locomotion in the game is pretty awesome. Instead of scaling buildings (which you can do if you want), you can actually make Mercer literally run up the sides of buildings using the sprint button giving a very “parkour to the nth degree” feel to the game. This does take away some of the exploration element that I so enjoyed in Crackdown. I had a riot trying to find ways to scale the taller buildings in Crackdown where there was a certain degree of uncertainty as to whether or not it could be done at first. Not so much in Prototype. I haven’t met a structure I couldn’t scale with ease. Sprint along a street and the game will automatically hurdle fences or cars making for a very seamless experience while navigating the city. Rather than being hindered by a myriad of collisions, Mercer will push and shove his way through a crowd with the player not having to worry about extra controls. That little touch makes navigating through the environments very fluid.
Prototype also allows the player to consume NPC’s that you have defeated. Certain NPC’s offer up clues to the story that are told through flashbacks into that person’s mind. A neat idea but the whole jumping back and forward in time through flashbacks can be a bit confusing at times. You can also assume the appearance of those you’ve consumed adding a stealthy, strategic layer to the gameplay. This was unexpected on my part and something I enjoyed more and more as I played and learned how to use it effectively. Combat is pretty fast paced with a lot of things going on all at once. At first it can be intimidating and a bit confusing. Once you come to grips with the controls and combat, things really pick up for the better. The game does a good job of making you feel like one bad ass mofo.
Graphically things are pretty decent. There’s a nice draw distance (something that is important in a sandbox game like this one) and a nice attention to smaller details such as a very satisfying amount of gore, body parts flying around and lots and lots of stuff on screen with no apparent effect on the game’s frame rate.
In today’s day and age the lack of any sort of online mode (cooperative or adversarial) seems out of place. I can overlook no coop but would have liked to have seen some sort of online play. Perhaps even being able to do the challenge events head to head with a friend would have been fun. Either way, the lack of online play didn’t hurt my overall game play experience too much.
Despite all these neat game play elements, they don’t somehow come together to form a truly compelling package that would put Prototype amongst the elite games today. That said, I’ve enjoyed my time with it and would definitely recommend at least trying this one out for anyone that enjoyed Crackdown.