Prototype

Prototype is a game of riotous, gore-splattering ultraviolence. That's all it wants to be, and in many respects it does a solid, and often spectacular job.

Prototype is something of a mixed bag. It's not quite the empowering experience we hoped it would be, but there is something satisfying about leaping off the Empire State Building and slicing a man in half as you land with a giant mutant arm-blade.

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.

That joy can turn to frustration later on in the game when your powers lose some of their excitement from the relentless amount of obstacles thrown your way, but there’s enough variety in the missions beforehand to keep you interested till the very end. It’s just a shame there wasn’t a bigger focus on the direction of the game and the graphics engine, otherwise this could have been a real gem.

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.

Despite all the neat game play elements offered in Prototype they just don’t manage to come together to form a truly compelling package that would put it amongst the elite games of today.

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.

Prototype's huge setting and impressive characters-on-screen tally is testament to Radical's engine but it's incredible how hackneyed many of its missions and boss fights are. [Aug 2009, p.124]

Prototype could have been amazing, and in some ways it is, but it just doesn’t come together in the way we’d hoped. It’s scattered, confusing, and finicky, and lacks a depth of detail to go with its ambitious reach. Yes it is fun for a while, but lacks the sort of replay value we’d hoped for, and that’s a shame.

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.

Prototype’s gameplay is non-stop super-powered amoral fun, but is held back by nearly every other aspect of the game.

Although Prototype sports several great ideas and a main character that wows, imagination, inspiration, and a strong guiding hand were lacking in every other aspect of the 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.

Prototype is a dumb, irritating but gratuitous toy. It appeals to the 14-year-old within all of us, but we really deserve something more mature to play at this point.

It can become horribly repetitive as you progress through the game. As cool as that idea is they didn’t bother to take the concept any further leaving you doing the same thing over and over again.

In 2009 it is not possible to publish a game such this, especially with the hype built around the new Activision production. We could give you 100 reasons to not buy it.

When the camera isn’t doing funky things during melee combat, when you sneak into a base disguised as a soldier, when you’re soaring from building to building for the pure joy of it, or when you’re hitchhiking on a passing helicopter just because you can, Prototype momentarily feels fresh and fun.