Prototype Review (PC)

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.