Those nuts over at Activision have done it again. They have dropped another golden egg in our laps and that baby is hatching into what could be one of the biggest games of 2009. I was surprised and impressed with their latest masterpiece, so much so that I was willing to buy it the day it hit stores (which was on June 9th in case you’re wondering). If you haven’t unleashed your potential as an undead, virus-plagued, morphing super beast, then you haven’t experienced Prototype.
I saw the commercial for this game while browsing online for stuff to buy on eBay. At first I couldn’t believe it. How awesome the graphics were, how sick the story was. And then I was a little POed. How had I not noticed this before? Game companies put out ads for their games months before the release date. And suddenly I was noticing it everywhere a mere week before it was to be released. It’s even covering the Myspace front page. Okay, Activision, where was my effin’ memo on this one? What matters is I’ve seen it. I bought it. Then I played it. And I was blown away.
In the beginning of the game, you get a preview of what is to become of the city of Manhattan. People have become these zombie-like creatures that are constantly vomiting blood on the sidewalk and grass, victims of the spreading virus that has overtaken the city. Cars, a few on fire, litter the streets. The “residents” of the city wander around awkwardly looking for something to attack. You play Alex Mercer, a victim of the virus that has developed super-human abilities. You are able to consume everyone around you, taking their thoughts and strength with you. As you evolve, you develop better and stranger powers that enable you to complete tougher missions. And for some reason, you kind of resemble a “Hunter” from L4D.
The game is open-world, which is one of the main things that attracts me to a game. If you want to stick to the storyline, you can. Or you can roam the city with only the most distant barriers holding you back and complete the mini-missions that are scattered throughout the city. You can roam side to side, end to end the city of Manhattan, scaling every building and destroying every person and object in sight. Think of it as Grand Theft Auto mixed with L4D with a little X-Men in there. It gets intense really quick when you realize the size of the world you have to explore and mangle.
In the beginning, you wake up in a morgue. All you know is that you don’t know how you got there and that an army of soldiers is trying their best to kill you. You have the ability to run at extraordinary speeds and leap twelve feet into the air with no problem. So after escaping the building that houses the morgue, you go out in search of those who did this to you. After consuming the body of a guard, you are able to see his memories and take his form, fooling anyone who sees you. As you consume people, your experience increases along with your health, if injured. This experience can be used to “buy” new powers and abilities, such as being able to jump from a building and glide through the air to other buildings.
You can also run up the side of any building around you, leaving cracks and holes in the concrete as you run. When you hit the ground from any height, the weight of your body leaves significant damage to the ground around you. Landing on top of a car easily causes it to explode, sometimes with a chain reaction of other cars blowing up as well. Landing on people… well, it doesn’t bode well for them. You can easily kill anyone around you with a single punch. If you hold down the SPACE BAR, you can build up momentum in your jumps. This goes the same for the punches. I found that it’s really fun to pick up pedestrians or even cars and run up the side of a building and throw them off. I also used to shoot animals with BB guns as a kid. So what?
There are two main things holding you back from achieving your goal of finding out what happened to you and who did it. The first is the company where the virus got started, known as Gentek. They have a complete army armed with Rocket Launchers, tanks and enough artillery to take down an entire country. They are always on your ass and unless you stay on the rooftops you are bound to be spotted by a soldier. In order to complete missions that require entry into Gentek’s buildings, you have to consume various generals or leaders and take on their form to get the job done. It’s very exciting to get your way into a building and then turn back to your normal form and rip everything apart.
The second thing is the virus itself. While it gives you super-human abilities, it does the same for creatures that are no longer human by any means. These guys are strong and mean, and if more than one gets on top of you and starts hammering away at your skull, you’re pretty much done for. But if you can weaken them enough to consume their biology, you can develop many new abilities and gain a buttload of experience to upgrade Alex.
Playing this game on a PC, I had little trouble taking control of Alex. It used the typical WASD controls for movement and the mouse for free look. The game is configurable to use with a USB gamepad, but I prefer the standard WASD configuration. The options for gameplay are pretty basic, consisting of Easy, Medium, and Hard settings.
Accessing your abilities is fairly straight-forward. To access abilities such as morphing your arms into swords, hammers, or large claws, you can simply hold down R while using your mouse to select the ability. These can also be bound to hotkeys for quick access. Pressing E while near any human or a weakened monster will allow you to grab it, then press the Right Mouse Button to consume him/her/it. Holding down SHIFT will enable super speed, SPACE jumps, and Tilde (~) will access the Memory Node screen, where you can connect memories together to get a fuller story and watch the ones you have access to. This is integral to the gameplay if you want to get things done faster.
Once you have the Glide ability, you can press SPACE twice and then hold it to glide through the air. This is by far the quickest way to get around the city without jacking a helicopter. And yes, you can do that later in the game. By default, pressing the number 2 will enable you to take the form of the last person you consumed. This is much faster than bringing up your Ability Wheel and selecting your power from it. At first, many of the abilities on the Wheel are locked, but you will soon fill it up as you go along.
Like I said, controls on the PC version are very easy to get used to. From what I have heard from others who have played this game on Xbox 360, however, it is much harder to maneuver Alex through the streets with any form of accuracy. Yet another reason why I prefer WASD to Gamepad any day of the week. Now that we have gone over the ease of use when it comes to controls, next we have to go over the graphics… and whether your computer can handle it or not. The requirements for this game are as follows:
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Running my hardware setup with a resolution of 1440×900 Widescreen, I was able to keep a steady frame rate of around 45 frames per second. This is probably due to the fact that even though the expansive city is creatively designed and Alex himself is very detailed, the rest of the characters in the game are mostly inactive (aside from roaming around uselessly) and featureless. They have faces, but they lack facial expression. Imagine N64 games with a little smoother features. I would bet it’s this held-back range of detail that enables them to put dozens of the pedestrians and cars in one area without any loss of frame rate.
Another thing is that objects tend to disappear as you get near them or farther away from them. I would expect this in many games where highly detailed structures and characters are abundant, but the buildings are static — save for the slight damage that is done to them when you run up the side. Most other things such as cars, street lamps, and mailboxes are not static, but this should not interfere much if they are low-poly forms. Which I would bet that they are given their low quality texture. It seems that aside from some of the more prominent character and monsters, along with Alex, the texture quality in the whole of the game is considerably low compared to many games out there today.
However, I feel that the overall gamplay is more than enough to make up for that. And the storyline is rich and original, something else you don’t see much of lately. Combine that with a world that is completely explorable and entirely open to you, and you have the makings of a game that will rival many those that are coming out this year.
To conclude, I think that the game could have used some obvious improvements. The graphics were a little too far behind on the times. Animation and A.I. Could have definitely been bumped up a few notches on the people of the city. Along with detail quality of buildings and vehicles. But what they lacked in details, they made up for in gameplay.
With a wide array of biological weaponry, along with the ability to use any weapon you pick up, you have limitless possibilities to destroy an entire city at your whim. Alex Mercer is a truly powerful and deadly character, if not a little chilling in his desire to kill the ones who made him what he is, along with ANYONE who gets in his way. I really liked this game, and was able to complete it in about 10 hours or so on Normal setting. Then you have the freedom to explore the city and do other mini-missions after you finish the main game.
I give this game two thumbs up, and I really hope they have a Part 2 planned for the future. Alex Mercer is a character too malevolent to simply kill off.
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3 Comment
There's something seriously wrong with the human race if "destroying every person and object in sight" is an attractive prospect. You are all sick!
Actually, destroying everyone and everything in sight in reality is attractive to me. This is just fantasy. But if you don't care for it, go read a review on a Pokemon game.
hai bro….will this game work on Windows 7 ?? with intel core i3 or i5?