The "What are you playing?" topic.

[Monk]

I've had a few days with Prototype and I've come to a conclusion. It was one I already knew, a lesson hard learned after i played ETW but is re-afirmed here: big name game reviewers are terrible and give no accurate indication as to whether something is good or not. You can watch and read reviews all day, but there's no substitute for picking up the game yourself and just giving it a try.

Prototype is a game that tries quite hard to be something epic. Right away you're set on Long Island as a mysterious infection is slowly tearing its way through the city. You play as the protagonist, who's been infected with a special strain of the virus and is seriously at the guy who did this to him, whoever that might be. It's not the most original story, but hey it works. In truth, the cliche of "I'm awake and someone is gonna die" could have been forgiven if the delivery was anywhere close to decent. The cutscenes that should explain things.. don't. All they are is glorified "Go here, do this." and the only true plot development comes through flashbacks, or the fancy "Web of Intrigue".

To put it simply, no one around you knows what happened to you, but there's people in the city who do. So you have to hunt them down and "consume" them, which gives you their memories and a piece of the plot. I have to say this sort of story-telling is actually really cool, and I give them props for thinking outside of the box (even if it didn't work completely).



The story is bland, but that's not why you're gonna want to buy this game. This game has some of the BEST combat i've ever played. Okay maybe not the best but it certainly has the best system I've gotten my hands on so far this year. The lock on system reminds me of Assassin's Creed, but where Assassin's Creed coddled you by having 1 enemy attack at a time, Prototype forces you to master evasion. Fighting 3 infected super-beasts? Yeah well you better keep an eye on them since ONE can drain half your life.

The combat is fast paced but it never feels like it's out of control since everytime you swap targets, you initiate a temporary slow down in time. This can get annoying at times, but when you're trying to dodge and roll around it really comes in handy to keep a handle on the situation. The combat is also terribly unforgiving.. I mentioned that sometimes a single Special Infected character can drain half your life in their combos. At first I thought this was a SERIOUS flaw, but a few missions into the game I unlocked a dodge-roll. You master this? Combat never feels more than you can handle. Especially when you can "consume" people for health.

That's the thing about Prototype. It does something that raises an eyebrow, but it knows when to pull back for the sake of your sanity. While I have died to some cheap moments that made me sigh, It's never been to the point that i wanted to stop playing. Each time I died i saddled up for another go. (which is exactly the opposite of how I feel in games like, say, gears of war where a death is painful)

The upgrade system is massive, providing a huge array of moves and the controls are tight and responsive. Something you'll be thankful for when you've got dozens of moves at your dysposal toward the middle of the game. It's just simple button mashing at first, but before you know it you're using literally every button on the controller in a fight and.. the strange thing is it's not that hard to master.

The last thing i'll talk about, and i know i'm leaving a few things out but i just wanna give a first impressions here, are the side-missions. My god are they fun. Ignoring the fact that you've got a huge open world and, by the 40% completion mark can potentially have all your powers unlocked for some really satisfying mayhem, the side-missions offer up some ridiculously fun gameplay. There's the War missions where you ally with one side of the conflict (military or infected depending on the mission), and play one side off against the other. The free-running challenges, the gliding challenges, the kill challenges (use a certain weapon/power/vehicle ect) you'd think they'd get old, but I've found myself staying up into the wee hours trying to get better scores on the missions just because they are so satisfying and give such good rewards. My favorite are the War missions where you have to maintain a military disguise and use whatever weapon you're spawned with. The game effectively becomes something entirely different, instead of playing a super-hero game you're playing a shooter, and it actually pulls it off!





Despite my love for this game, a lot of people don't like it. I understand that, the game does so many things wrong.. but it does so many right that it's really hard to get mad imo. It's a lot of fun, and I would recommend it to any of my friends. To quote penny-arcade... you can karate kick helicopters in mid air. What else would you want?

It sorta reminds me of Bioshock. I could talk all day about how much I love that game, but all you need to know is there's a power that shoots bees from your hands. Bees. From your hands.