Prototype

From its old school design to its gameplay struggles, Prototype resembles a superhero who leapt off a building only to realize he doesn’t possess the power to fly. I hate to say it, but picture a frustrating Spider-Man game, and you have a good idea of what this experience has to offer.

There's plenty to do, with the core story missions and plenty of optional side activities making Prototype a game that you won't clock in a few sessions, and the upgrades and abilities are plentiful, but it just doesn't quite come together well enough to create a really great game.

Although it has everything you'd want from an intense, action-fuelled open-world title, the overall feeling with Prototype is that it tries a little too hard.

Keep in mind that Prototype is foremost a hack-&-slash-game and not, as some might expect, a free-roamer. Making it a game with not a lot of variation, even though you can unleash a lot of different attacks. The action is fast and chaotic, but may get frustrating because of the overload of enemies and high difficulty setting. Only a must-buy if you're looking violent action and a fast paced hack-&-slash game.

Thanks to excessive fog and pop up, we struggled locating collectibles. As for the upgrade system, there's so much to level up/moves to acquire that we quickly became overwhelmed and abandoned it. In addition, missions eventually grow repetitive, the story failed to hold our interests and cheap computer opponents killed us more times than we care to admit.

Unfortunately they’ve been over ambitious and so in taking in as much as they can, they’ve lost out on what really matters - detail, interesting missions and polish. You feel like you’ve seen everything within the first 4 hours and so finishing the games begins to feel like a chore.

The shape shifting abilities of the games protagonist are fun to experiment with but the story campaign has an all too familiar feel to it.

I am sure there are people out there that think [Prototype] is one of the best games of the year, but to me it just is not polished enough to deserve that much praise.

On a theoretical level it achieves a significant design accomplishment in pulling everything together into a cohesive package. As the person holding the controller, though, it stumbles too often on its inability to turn its potential into a consistently fun game.

I just can't get over how cheap a lot of the game feels. Whether it's the dated looks, its frustratingly difficult latter portion, or its awkward storytelling, Prototype often feels like a budget title that unfortunately doesn't have a budget price.

Despite all of its time in development, Prototype feels hollow and uninspired. There are a number of great concepts here, such as the shapeshifting and being able to run vertically, but everything else falls apart when you realize how boring many of the missions are, how boring the world is, how boring the game looks, and...well, how boring the game is, overall.