Video Game Review: ‘Prototype’ Plays Like a Superhero Greatest Hit

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CHICAGO – Activision’s action game “Prototype” blends elements of several previous superhero icons into one massive superpowered experience that has a few visceral thrills and concepts that make it worth a look but some gameplay and storytelling issues that hold it back from true greatness.

Video Game Rating: 3.5/5.0

In “Protoype,” you are Alex Mercer. What that means is unclear at the beginning. Like the superior “Infamous,” you are clearly not normal and probably the key to a massive conspiracy. You wake in a morgue with unusual, growing superpowers, just as the city of New York is collapsing into total, mutated chaos. The island of Manhattan has been quarantined and it’s up to you to get to the bottom of the mystery of your powers and the fate of the Big Apple.

Prototype
Photo credit: Activision

Quickly, you discover that you have the power to absorb the physical properties and even a few memories of everyone you encounter. Want to sneak into a military base? Absorb a soldier and sneak in with the rest of the troop. Need some information about your past? Absorb a doctor who is a part of your mysterious origin and expand the “Web of Intrigue,” a series of mini-movies that fill in the puzzle pieces of your history. And when you absorb a giant, mutated creature? Look out.

Prototype Photo credit: Activision

It may sound like Alex Mercer is the hero of “Protoype”. There is no hero. This is a game of massive, city-wide destruction. It is a “Hard M,” a game where the player is encouraged to destroy and kill as much as possible. Experience points, which can be traded in for upgrades and new special powers, are earned with every destructive or deadly act.

And each mission gives the player a tally of financial loss from their acts (usually in 10 figures) and how many people were killed (usually in the hundreds). It’s hilarious to go on a mission to save one life and kill 600 along the way.

I’m not one to complain about video game violence, but it seems an odd fit for “Prototype”. I loved the slicing and dicing in “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” because it felt appropriate to the character, but the odd lack of a moral center in “Prototype” was a mistake. It makes the experience feel a bit empty when you’re running (literally) through your thousandth soldier.

As the game moves along through story missions and the occasional side mission, Alex earns new powers. The variety of powers that Alex can earn or absorb keep “Prototype” from getting stale. When you master a new move like the whiplash arm that allows you to literally grab a helicopter from the sky, there’s an undeniable “ooh, that’s cool” visceral power.

Prototype Photo credit: Activision

It’s the use of those powers that gets dull. The missions in “Prototype” get repetitive quickly just isn’t that interesting. And the world, which looks cool at first, starts to feel the same. I like that the city goes downhill into mutated Hell as the game advances, but it’s hard to tell one NYC block or one NYC building from another. It feels a lot like the “Spider-Man: Web of Shadows” world - big but not that well-defined.

And the environments are disappointingly static. When you run up a building or jump on a car, there’s a sound of glass breaking, but with so many games nowadays with buildings that actually crumble to the ground and environments that feel like they change, the lack of actual city devastation that you can cause in “Prototype” is disappointing. You can grab a helicopter from the sky but you can’t take down a 3-story apartment building?

“Prototype” is all about excess. Instead of a few enemies, you have to run through a thousand. And that mentality plays into the entire game. There are dozens of side missions and most of them are just dull and only minor variations on one another.

Prototype Photo credit: Activision

Naturally, in a game built on excess, the stealth component of the game is the most frustrating. Walk around the wrong corner or bump into the wrong guy and, before you know it, a strike team is descending on you via helicopter and bombarding you with missiles. You can run and shape-shift to escape, but it happens far too often and makes the whole game feel like it’s pitched at the same level - chaos.

The incredible variety of special powers, ones that are constantly evolving or upgrading, keep “Prototype” from getting too stale and there’s a collectible structure (finding the members of the “Web of Intrigue” that you need to absorb through out the entire city and other various collectibles) that helps the title stay fresh. The missions that require you to use those powers should have been more interesting and the overall story doesn’t resonate like other superhero origins, but if you’re looking for nothing but straight-up destruction, “Prototype” might deliver the superhero goods.

Before you go pick up a copy for yourself, check out the preview for “Prototype”:

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com