Prototype is better than inFAMOUS. Or perhaps I should say (now that I’ve got your attention) that I enjoyed it a lot more than I did inFAMOUS. Whilst inFAMOUS was a great game (see our review here), it was devoid of any moments that really made me say ‘woooaahh’ like the best games all do. For example, Metal Gear Solid 4’s first level throwing the Gekko at you, or Resistance 2’s Leviathon boss battle – it’s these kind of things that you remember after you’ve finished the game and it’s these things that you recount to your friends. inFAMOUS was empty of these and, whilst it was a great game, few things really stood out in a way that would have you talking about them afterwards other than, maybe, the ending.

Prototype, however, is filled to the brim with these. They don’t only come as parts of set pieces, either; just running around and fighting things in the huge open world can lead to situations that will make you go ‘wooaah’. Just the combat is brilliantly fun and intense. But let’s move on to the review, shall we?

You play as a previously-normal guy named Alex Mercer. He wakes up in lab not quite feeling like himself, goes outside, gets cornered by a few guards who proceed to machine gun him. He doesn’t die, so jumps over a rather large wall, with a vaguely cheesy ‘What’s happening to me!?’ to accompany it. You’re then thrown into a good storyline that, whislt it doesn’t match inFAMOUS’ for ending, does keep you interested in the middle, which is a task that inFAMOUS failed to accomplish.

The controls are a little strange when you first pick up the controller, but they’re explained to you in an opening scenario and quickly become second nature, enabling you to clear whole city blocks without once touching the ground. Getting around is fast, jumping from building to building or sprinting around at street leve, all of the parkour feels great, fluid and downright exhilarating, especially whilst you’re dodging missiles.

It’s much more similar to Crackdown than it is to inFAMOUS in this respect, as inFAMOUS plays slower and you can’t jump entire buildings. X is jump, hold it and it’ll charge so you can jump further and higher, whereas R2 is sprint and, whilst in the air, dash. You’ll be using both of these a lot, sprinting will automatically jump over anything in your way, whether it’s cars, tanks or buildings – you can sprint up the side of them, though you probably already knew that. Dash propels you forward in the air, which is another essential tool for getting around the game world.

Square punches and triangle kicks, whilst circles grabs people, cars, anything else that’s grabbable, and another press will throw it. Again, hold down the punch, kick or throw button and it will charge, resulting in a more powerful hit. Most of the attacks in the game can be charged in such a way, anything from punches to flying kicks, even a lot of the powers.

Devastators are special attacks and are obtained by buying them with Evolution Points. Evolution Points, or EP, are earned by doing pretty much anything. Killing things, completing missions, completing side missions (more on those later), consuming people, all of these things will earn you some EP that you can then spend on upgrades. These range from speeding up your sprinting and increasing your jump height to unlocking whole new powers, like the Blade(a massive sword instead of an arm) or the Whipfist that you can see above. There is a huge list of powers and upgrades for you to buy and it will certainly take a long time for you to buy them all. In fact, you probably won’t have them all before you finish the storyline.

Powers are split into four categories; Disguise, Attack, Vision and Defense. For Attack, Vision and Defense, you choose one to assign to a directional button (one for each category) by use of holding L1 and using the right analogue to choose from the radial menu that comes up (which also slows time, so you can switch between powers in the middle of fights, too). That directional button will then toggle the power on and off.

Disguise works differently. Any time you consume a person (grab them and press triangle), that person becomes your disguise, allowing you to switch between looking like them and Mercer with a press of the left directional button. This is used for a stealth system which, whilst it isn’t really the deepest system you’ll ever see, works well. Whilst you’re is disguise, doing anything that doesn’t seem to fit your disguise like, for example, punching a soldier in the face, or slamming down into the ground from a drop from a skyscraper or anything else that involves your powers, will fill a disguise meter which, when full, ‘compromises’ your disguise – meaning you’re no longer in disguise. To fix this you either have to kill every soldier, APC, tank and helicopter you can see or get out of sight and switch to your other disguise.

It does work pretty well, more than well enough for a game that is so obviously geared towards over-the-top action. Speaking of which, the action is so over the top it amazed me at times. The gore, for example, is insane. You can cut people clean in half and the halves will fall to the ground, showing you their insides from a rather bloody cross section. You can punch through people’s chests. Everywhere you go, you will leave huge patches of blood behind you, it’s unavoidable.

The graphics themselves are unimpressive on the face of it – textures on the environment look flat and bland, if you blow a tank up it becomes a black shade of a tank in exactly the same way every time, as do all the other vehicles. The character models, such as Mercer, soldiers, other main characters, are all good, though a few of the pedestrian’s models look a little block at times. However, all of this disappears under the sheer amount of action that you can get on screen. Bullets everywhere, hunters (very large monster-enemies) jumping around like they’re disformed extras from the Matrix, helicopters shooting rockets, tank shells exploding – just how much is happening all at once when it all kicks off forgives any misgivings you may have with the graphics as soon as you jump and see the ground light up with three different kinds of explosives where you were just stood.

The game over all is insanely fun to play through. There is so much here to keep you busy – I myself have been playing for just under 20 hours and still haven’t finished everything I want to. After the storyline you can keep playing, finishing any side missions you’ve missed, or finish the Web of Intrigue. The side missions include things like taking the side of either the infected or the military and beating all of the other side in a ‘war’, races between checkpoints or consuming certain targets. They’re a nice distraction and there are loads of them. The Web of Intrigue is a large list of people you consume that can either be found through the storyline, side missionsor just wondering around the city and can be either soldiers or pedestrians. Consuming one of them plays a well together cutscene specific to each that all eventually reveal what happened to Mercer to get him into the situation you start the game in.

It’s a massive amount of content, and I haven’t even mentioned collectibles, like the 200 landmark tokens or the 50 hint tokens that can be found dotted about the city, or just how much fun it is to dick around  in the city. I once spent two hours straight disguised as a soldier fighting the infected, just because it was such fun, especially since you can pick up any weapon they drop when they die (assault rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers or rocket launchers) or hijack any vehicle (APCs, tanks or, if you’re willing to sacrifice your disguise, helicopters) once you’ve got the upgrade via the storyline. With so much to do, and with the action being so exhilaratingly visceral, even getting around is fast and fun, Prototype beats inFAMOUS in the sandbox-superhero-battle simply because it is so much more fun.

9/10

Filed under: Games, Main, P, Prototype