By Alec Meer on June 16th, 2009 at 3:45 pm.
On sale now is the oft-delayed open-world anti-hero killathon by Radical Entertainment, they of the hugely enjoyable console romp The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. Prototype’s concept is similar, but it now stars a surly guy in a hoodie rather than the unjolly green giant. Promising an absurd level of mayhem and violence, can this possibly achieve the omnipotence it promises? Here’s my take on it. I even wore a hoodie while I wrote it.
“Do whatever you want” says the cackling devil on my shoulder, as I impale 40 people with bio-spikes then throw a lorry at a helicopter. “Anything“, it whispers, as I cleave a tank in half with my bare hands.
“No, you’re enjoying this too much” says the frowning angel on the other shoulder, as I’m knocked on my arse before I can reach my target again. “Do what you’re told”, it orders, as the game announces it’s turning off my superpowers for a while.
Angel? Devil? I’m not even sure which is which. Morality is non-existent in this game of mass, consequence-free killing, after all. All I know: half of Prototype wants me to have sustained, undiluted fun. The other half wants to keep that fun from me at all costs. This is a game that regularly strikes close an unprecedented degree of fantastical wish-fulfilment, but similarly seems determined to punish anyone with the temerity to play it.
It grants a slew of incredible powers, a sort of superhero greatest hits, then elects to remove most of them for an infuriating two hour stretch. It grants absurd amounts of health, and the ability to recharge it anywhere and anywhen, and then besieges you with so many knock-back attacks that you can barely hit half the stuff you’re supposed to. Prototype offers a sense of locomotion and destruction that gamers have bayed for for years (Crackdown and City of Heroes are the best touchstones here), then puts you in the shoes of a characterless, unsmiling goon based on some half-formed (prototype, even) idea of urban cool. It’s the game with two brains – and if only they’d been fused, this could have been one of gaming’s highest-ever watermarks.
We want the game that lets us do anything: it’s why GTA is so big. Against that is the problem of challenge: when there’s no serious obstacle to your crazed orgy of destruction, all that unbridled fun soon collapses into tedium. Prototype gives you the tools to pull a helicopter from the sky with a tentacle shot from your shoulder. Prototype gives you the tools to devour ten-foot monsters or to dropkick men into the horizon. Prototype gives you the tools to power-jump and glide across the length and breadth of New York in minutes. Prototype gives you the tools to assume the form of anyone you encounter. In free-roam mode, you can clock up jawdropping kill counts within moments, and become an unstoppable engine of carnage. But what then? How many tanks can you trash with a single elbow-drop from the top of a skyscraper before your interest wanes?
And so, Prototype understandably builds in purpose – a central campaign, telling the tale of the curiously unlikeable Alex Mercer and his similarly characterless comrades and enemies. There are bosses, there are daring chases and escapes, there are twists… It’s paperthin, but bar the relentlessly grim tone and Mercer’s disappasionate actor, it’s a workable enough loose structure for a game that’s only really about splatting people. He’s been infected with something dark and sinister, the military wants to kill him because of it, and meanwhile an even more ‘orrible strain of the malady is gradually spreading across the populace of New York, creating zombie-like creatures who also want to kill him.
Where this really works is in the effect of the tale upon the city – it begins as a crude Liberty City, wherein box-faced civilians bimble around doing nothing important and failing to react to anything, but as the infection spreads, turns into hell on earth. As Mercer glides across the skyline, screams echo up the concrete valleys, explosions and unearthly gas clouds flicker in the distance, while helicopters or hulking fleshbeasts will occasionally attempt to pull him to Earth. Many games – especially of late – have shown us the post-apocalypse. Prototype shows us the apocalypse itself, as it happens – this is an Armageddon simulator.
Perhaps that’s why its characters are so cold – this isn’t a game interested in hope or humanity. It’s only interested in decay and destruction. And punching a man clear through the chest then absorbing the bloody remnants of his body into yours, of course. This is a remarkably brutal game, though I didn’t realise quite how gruesome it was until I saw the screenshots – freeze-framed moments of the horror I was causing. At the time – well, I was just doing it. It’s why I’m here. I didn’t notice, didn’t even think that I was killing. I’m not sure I ever do, really – I’m either removing an obstacle or pressing a button to watch a man-shaped collection of pixels dance spectacularly.
Anyway, that’s another, well-trodden argument – the point is that Prototype takes its carnage very seriously indeed. To that end, there is very little colour and zero humour. The end of the world is hardly a happy place, but the dispassionate bleakness becomes wearying. As soon as you drop down from that birds-eye view of the end of the world, New York becomes an unwaveringly dreary city. Its cheek is entirely without tongue – which seems a terrible shame, given the open insanity of what you get up to in the game. The billboards advertising medicines in a time of bio-horror, the pedestrians failing to even blink at a man with a sword for an arm plunging towards them from the skies, that the areas of the city still free from infection seem oblivious to the fact there’s a zombie outbreak a block away, the fact Mercer is dressed like middle-class Britain’s bogeyman of the hour…
It all goes unremarked on, and even just a touch of GTA-esque satire would have made it an infinitely more characterful game. Its mechanics of movement and violence are glorious, but stylistically it’s hard to call it anything other than a failure. Additionally, jittery controls and and a cavalcade of pointless “are you sure?” pop-ups in the menus will do little to endear it to PC gamers convinced consoles are a halfwit blight upon the gaming landscape. It’s true this isn’t the most loving port, but really, on a technical level it’s all fine, and the controls eventually feel more natural.
Just as well, as there’s a lot of controls. As it wears on, your powers will escalate to godlike levels – able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, roundhouse kick a helicopter out of the skies, take down entire armies in a single move… The unbridled power is glorious, ludicrous and, much of the time, an entirely adequate substitute for the game’s absent charm. Follow the core missions, however, and it’ll do everything it can to undermine this omnipotence. In the late game, you’re knocked infuriatingly off your feet every other second, while there’s a clutch of bosses so punishing and grindy they prevented me from having a single good thing to say about the game when I first attempted this write-up yesterday.
One, a mammoth slug/anus creature who takes over Times Square, seems to have been designed by a guy thinking “oh, there’s still a chance the player might be having even a tiny bit of fun here. Let’s add an insta-kill attack. Nope, he’s still smiling. How about infinitely respawning henchmen? Hmm. Let’s throw in homing rockets. Huh. Alright, make most of Mercer’s hard-earned powers useless against the boss. And then make him repeat the fight three times. There! That’s it! There is absolutely no chance whatsoever that he’ll enjoy even a millisecond of this encounter. My work here is done.”
The angel and the devil. That a game can be so much fun and yet so jawdroppingly cruel makes little sense – I would guess it was the problems inherent in finding a compromise between omnipotence and true challenge. Prototype is one of gaming’s all-time greatest playgrounds for sure, a veritable ode to obliteration. A more individual art approach and an acceptance that most people who play it want to mash buttons and watch amazing things happen would have elevated it to one of the best experiences of the year.
As it is, I can gladly recommend it to anyone curious to see what action games are like when they do earnestly try to grant their players’ every wish. You’ll have fun. You probably won’t remember it a year hence, for better or for worse. You may walk away from it after one too many frustrated goes at one of the vertical-learning-curve bosses. But, God help you, when you make Mercer erupt into a hundred 50-foot spikes that instantly dismember anyone within range, you’ll have fun.
Oh yeah – the lack of multiplayer of any kind is absolutely criminal.
But, God help you, when you make Mercer erupt into a hundred 50-foot spikes that dismember anyone within range, you’ll have fun.
Fuck yes.
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Hrm, I’m still not entirely sure whether I want this (especially as the wife will complain about the violence, like she did with FEAR). Perhaps once it hits the magic £15 mark.
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I find there’s a million things to be annoyed about, the control system is somewhat strange in places, the targetting system seems to like targetting everything else other than what I want to hit, the graphics are dull and uninspired for most of it, the story is shit and the masses of enemies it throws at you mean I end up dying rather more than I intended.
But what happens is that I think about these after I’ve been playing. While I’m playing I’m kicking helicopters out of the sky, picking up their charred remains and then flinging them at other helicopters. I’m pushing people over in the street then when they get angry I’m spawning massive claws and ripping their intestines out. I’m jumping off the Empire State Building and causing a crater so large Michael Bay would think it’s over the top and a bit gauche.
There’s a lot to be annoyed about, but at the moment I just can’t find it in myself to care.
Although I’ll have to see since it’s just pulled a second dick move and removed most of my powers. Hmm.
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I’m not one to pick up on voice acting, hell I didn’t notice it was bad in Oblivion until other people pointed it out to me, and I’ve only played an hour or two (the monstery things in the 3rd screenshot just turned up) but your sister or whoever the ginge is seemed to have a decent actor playing her. Her lines actually sounded real and normal and the emotion fluxes were there. Then you pair her up with Alex “I Don’t Remember” Mercer (thats about all I’ve heard him say, I think they’ve tried to make it a joke but it’s about as funny as having your balls put through a pasta maker) and she sounds like the greatest actor of all time.
Is Alex Mercer supposed to be an utterly empty vessel of a human being or what? I’d rather pay for and listen to the Paris Hilton album than stand listening to Mercer grumble about how he doesn’t remember another second.
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Spot-on review. I was disagreeing with some reviews about the abundance of unblockable knockbacks (most of which you can get away from, though usually by hopping in front of a different rocket — and don’t even get me started on how long Mercer stands on top of those damn tanks to crack his knuckles before he takes them over), and then last night I had this boss fight… It was the first Supreme Hunter, and with two dozen respawning monsters battling two dozen respawning special forces with tanks, it got pretty hectic. For a while I couldn’t stay standing for more than a few seconds, desperately grabbing zombies to consume for health. After a while the fight clicked (the boss still had around 80% health) (BOSS SPOILER) and I just ran around throwing things at him and now and then kicking him in the face. He went down pretty easily once I got the rhythm, and it was VERY satisfying to put that bastard on ice.
So it’s fun, and at times tremendous fun. I didn’t even mind losing all my powers, because even then I was still far too immense to have anyone actually stand up to me. But now and then one of those unblockable attacks comes, and I just want to shout at the screen — which I don’t, because my wife is under the impression that videogames relax me.
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I think by trying to give the players their ”every wish” the whole game suffered. I played it up until the mission where you have to defend some building (about 4 hours into the game i think) aswell as doing some of the ‘challenges’ and exploring.
I just found the whole world to be so dead and disappointing. The control system was quite bad also, in my opinion. It’s quite easy to run up a building vertically when you were just trying to sprint down the pavement.
It just tries to do so many things and just ends up making a mediocre effort of them all. DEFINITELY didn’t live up to the hype for me, but then again, not many games do with the way they get hyped up over the interwebs these days.
Was there even a demo on the PC yet? So many games end up being a waste of cash because people refuse to let a demo out beforehand like they did in the good old days, 5-10+ years ago. Maybe that’s why they do it though, so that i have to buy their trash just to find out that it sucks.
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Not stumble unwittingly into spoiler town, but isn’t the player character meant to be unlikeable and characterless? Doesn’t the fact that’s almost impossible not to butcher the population of Norwich when you sneeze serve the narrative?
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I have this game on the Xbox360 (Blasphemy!).
It is very fun indeed. I think this Wot I Think is very accurate.
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Oh also, it’s rather annoying how when im strafing a monster and trying to spin the camera, it shifts my target reticle to someone stood to the side of him. Pants.
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Great review. While the epic magnatude of mercers powers is “goregasmic” the setting is so bland and all the side missions so repetitive that i doubt ill be able to play this game again. Also the constant knockback attacks get very old.
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So, I’m apparently the only person IN THE WORLD who had no problem at all with the apparently impossibly hard/un-fun boss. Aced it in about 10-15 minutes, zero deaths. Not only that, but I used a variety of moves and techniques to beat it.
Keep in mind that the first tutorial-level boss of Devil May Cry 3 has schooled me. I’m no gaming god. It’s really not that hard. How people are having so much trouble with it is just baffling to me.
As for that ‘instant kill’ attack. It isn’t. There’s about a five second HUGE tell – the boss glows orange brightly – and then it goes into SUPER-SLOWMO to let you dodge it, should you still have not gotten the clue, and are sitting right at the center of the attack. Even then, it’s not instantly fatal if you have the Adrenaline power (which you get right at the start).
I even did it without dying on Hard mode, where Hunters can tear you to shreds in seconds. Seriously, it’s not nearly as bad as you make out.
So bar, been one of my favourite games of the year, and I’m almost done with my second playthrough.
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Spent some hours with it. It really is fun but its getting frustrating. 10 tanks, 3 helicopters and 4 infected hunters unload everything they get onto you – jeeeze.
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Well, I’m further sold on it.
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It wasn’t that hard, Dominic. The greater problem was it was miserable and long-winded as all hell. it’s also an entirely different discipline to what you’ve been doing thus far. Which may well be fine for someone raised on more technical brawlers like DMC, but it’s jarring compared to the general level of anything-goes smackitude in Prototype.
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“I find there’s a million things to be annoyed about, the control system is somewhat strange in places, the targeting system seems to like targeting everything else other than what I want to hit, the graphics are dull and uninspired for most of it, the story is shit”
Yep this
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What I’ve found (this is a bit spoilerish so don’t read it if you like banging your head) is that the best strategy against almost every boss (including the worm) is to enable the armor power, sprint and jump constantly and just use the special whipfist attack.
There isn’t much in the game that can’t be killed this way, although it is fairly tedious.
Since you can normally run and jump away from most of the enemies and the whipfist has almost unlimited range, it reduces the difficulty greatly.
Granted, I still had to pick up and eat a few zombies on the way to stay alive.
Although, all that being said, I’m now a little stuck myself.. after the worm boss, you get thrown into a mission which I am finding very difficult. I won’t say too much else for fear of spoilers but I’m not sure I will end up finishing the game at this rate.
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I thought everyone whinging about the bosses were whiney little sods until I got to the Times Square boss. It’s ridiculously boring. Defeated all the others first time, didn’t even hate the escort missions (and I LOATHE escort missions,) but that boss is horrible.
It’s annoying, because I’m itching to write an article on one of the things Alex touched on, but I need to finish the damn thing first.
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Yeah, the Times Square boss was just a bore, but I loved everything about this game. After I was granted some of the movement abilities, I think I just ran around the city for a few hours straight trying to master the controls – it was a blast – it sort of fit with the story, too. New powers, taking time to hop from rooftop to rooftop to master before you went about your goals. The game is just FUN.
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Very much looking forward to playing this. It’s been heartily recommended to me by a few people now.
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(I haven’t actually finished the game yet, but still)
I feel it’s the biggest failing of the game that it doesn’t utilise the city enough. Especially in the way that the free roam city is separate from the missions, when I start a mission I expect it to just begin, but it resets changes I made, and sets everything up specifically for that mission, it’s not a persistent city. Imagine the Times Square battle was a massive, mutated, blobby thing, as big as a building, which used the whole city as the battle field. Creeping through the streets to track you down, giant tentacles piercing through entire buildings to try and reach you, a battle that seems like it could end with the entire city being destroyed. Instead (and all boss battles do this so far) it restricts you to some tiny area of the city and instantly kills you when you leave it. It builds up so much good faith as you play, then removes it all in an instant, over and over again.
I also found the lack of humanity off-putting. I was always conscious of killing civilians, and I never wanted to do it. I was surprised the game just didn’t care. In fact it tells me how many I killed, as though it’s an achievement and I always feel like they didn’t have to die. Everybody Alex meets seems equally unconcerned with how many people you kill on their behalf. Not the most endearing bunch.
Alex, you saved me! …You killed HOW many innocent people to do that? What the hell is wrong with you?”
Overall though, the game is surprising amounts of fun. A truly guilty pleasure. And if you want to try the challenges, there’s a lot to keep you busy for a while.
The instructions for pulling off moves were often pretty unclear to me. But one tip for those using keyboard and mouse is that when it tells you to double tap a direction, it means you can use the ‘sprint button + direction’ instead. I found that far easier for air dashes and such like.
If you struggle at any point, jump around and use the whip.
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From all the trailers I was really anticipating this game, all the explodey wide-open action looked like it would be really fun, and people raved about the Hulk game being similarly fun.
But the actual game play is sort of a let down. With the exception of the over the top boss annoyances, there really is no other challenge, I found it’s either extremely easy or idiotically hard, with no middle ground pacing. Perhaps it’s just living up to it’s name… nice to look at, but it’s just not complete.
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This is maybe the first game I have finished this year, and the past year maybe. Its short, if you rush the historys missions, and play in easy. But is very rewarding.
The history may not make much sense, you get lost on the twist evil/noevil/monster.
You are half-beowulf, half-grendel. I love this game.
And you can play it in a non-violent way. On the first hours of the game (post the intro) you can walk on the city much like a tourist, much like a civilian on GTAIV.
Prototype has made me want to play GTAIV to compare both cities :-)
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I feel like I’m inside Michael Bay’s mind when playing this. Love it.
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The final third of Hulk:UD did feature some painfully stupid missions/encounters that threatened to destroy all the goodwill the game had generated. Luckily the frustrations there were on the tolerable side, when compared to the rest of the game, but it does sound like (from here and QT3) the devs may have made more such mistakes this time around.
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“Is Alex Mercer supposed to be an utterly empty vessel of a human being or what? I’d rather pay for and listen to the Paris Hilton album than stand listening to Mercer grumble about how he doesn’t remember another second.”
@Freudian Trip: Considering what Alex turns out to be (and I won’t spoil that here) I don’t find it surprising he’s essentially an empty shell of a man. In a way, the actor portraying the man did a remarkably good job showing what Alex essentially is.
A ruthless heartless bastard, which given the mentioned spoiler is no surprise.
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My only problem with the game is the skyline of the city outside the island. Is horrible, feel draw by a 4 years old.
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I think if Radical wisely takes all these criticisms to heart, Prototype 2 can potentially be one of he better games in he forseeable future.
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I hope a demo drops so I can try this out. On another note, we get an anagram out of the protagonists’ name. Alec Meer, RX.
Glad to see the right man took the pill for this review.I’m grateful we got our just medicine from the reviewer. I’m sorry. That was ‘orrible. 2 strikes and I’m out.report
Y3k-Bug says:
I think if Radical wisely takes all these criticisms to heart, Prototype 2 can potentially be one of he better games in he forseeable future.
No, new ip please
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How much fun is the travelling about in this game? Spider-Man 2 and (to a lesser extent, but a more relevant comparison) Hulk: UD lasted longer than they might otherwise have for me because just travelling around was good fun.
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I want multiplayer of this in an open world, and all the abilities unlocked. Think of the carnage we could cause together. Join me, you know it makes sense.
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Strange comment:
The game has some inability to manage small thing. The smaller thing you can take is probably a weapon. The character is soo powerfull, he can’t drive a car. All he do is TAKE the whole car to launch it. In a way, this is a disability. He has to walk to work, he can’t drive to work. (humm… or jump and glide).
He has also a problem of attitude walking in masses.. much like the boy from assasin creed, pushing people around. But here is attitude is soo fatal, he can kill people for not reason, not even tryiing to. Killing is soooo casual in this game. Is like the “Wot it think” say: The game don’t care about kllings.
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I liked Prototype, but yeah, that boss encounter with Elizabeth Greene was just a wee bit frustrating. For anyone who hasn’t played it yet, the boss fight with Greene is most comparable to the boss fight at the end of Tomb Raider: Legend … in other words, it’s frustrating, and nearly impossible.
Still, with the exception of that fight, the game is pretty great.
My recommendation to all: set it on Easy and enjoy … trust me, beating it on Medium or Hard is not going to give you a sense of satisfaction … it’s not that kind of game.
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Greg’s just subbed his review over at Reso. Another rather glowing one. Definitely need to play this.
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Christ, that’s disappointing. I really wanted no-holds-barred gameplay. No-holds-barred is hard to do, though, I suppose. It’s much easier to let the inner artist creep in and make it *meaningful*. Or maybe I’m just talking about myself. :-)
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I’ve noticed the parallels between this and inFAMOUS, which also just came out. The main differences seem to be that you can be Good in inFAMOUS, and it’s also a PS3 exclusive, but anyway: “oh, there’s still a chance the player might be having even a tiny bit of fun here”; there are invisible, toaster-sized flying robots that are programmed to avoid your reticle like those green cunts in Geometry Wars. Oh, and they shoot fire grenades at you that throw you on your ass. So, just observing another parallel…
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@Weylund: It comes pretty darn close to “no-holds-barred gameplay.” Probably the closest that you’re going to get in the foreseeable future. On Easy, it’s pretty much a free-for-all, destroy-as-much-as-you-can -fest.
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My mention of DMC3 wasn’t that I’m good at that kind of game. It’s that the very first boss in it repeatedly flattened me, and yet I didn’t die once to any of the bosses in Prototype on Normal difficulty, and only went down a couple of times (first and last bosses) on Hard.
And they hardly make most of your skills useless. Just your up-close brawling ones. You still have a hojillion powers and skills, and you have to use all of them. Oh, and keep moving. Never, ever stop moving. Sprint constantly and nothing can reliably hit you. Take damage? Keep running, grab a soldier on the go, dive behind some cover and eat him, then get back up to speed.
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The protagonist is voiced by Barry Pepper, the blond sniper from Saving Private Ryan. And the main character of Battlefield Earth…
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@PaulMorel: Hmm. Thank you. $50 for pretty close, though? I’m not sure. Maybe with a price drop. I was ready to buy now if the thing played like it looked like it would. Getting knocked on my ass for hours and then having my powers taken away sounds frustrating.
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There is a lot of useless stuff in it – why would I ever feel the need to use an innocent bystander als a surfboard ? Why use the claws if there is a massive blade available ? Why is the “boss” in the middle of the game huge, impressive, and hard to kill, but the final boss is not ? And… GOD DAMN GREEN STUN ORBS.
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Really if you’re standing still long enough to be hit you’re doing it wrong.
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Does that ever actually happen? Developers take the ‘right’ criticisms to heart, and make a sequel that is everything the game the first should have been, and it is thus, awesome?
HL1 was awesome, and HL2 was awesome. The general feeling I get is that developers either continue to make the same mistakes, or just don’t make them in the first place. Or they make shit sequels to decent games.
Maybe I’m just feeling particularly faithless.
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I was responding to:
Y3k-Bug says:
I think if Radical wisely takes all these criticisms to heart, Prototype 2 can potentially be one of he better games in he forseeable future.
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Quite tempted by this. I imagine that this could end up being an impulse buy on Steam, if it weren’t for the ludicrous price. If they half it (currently £34.99) I might take the plunge.
The slight frustration of boss battles aside* the game seems to get most things right. Playing as an all powerful killing machine seems to be such an obvious setting for a game and yet so many seem to get it wrong. Particular true with PC games.
* something that usually doesn’t bother me, except for the one in PoP:Two Thrones against the two guys, one with an axe the other with a sword. That took forever to complete and was made even more infuriating by not being able to skip the cutscene that precedes it.
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My favorite weapon is the claws. Maybe slighty less damage than the blades, but it has a ranged attack that is area of effect, I target my enemy, and spawn that attack till is dead. Is like the “tree of spikes”, but directional.
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Really, the claim that “you’re knocked infuriatingly off your feet every other second” is the mark of someone who hasn’t figured out the movement system. Even right at the end of the game, you’re fast enough to evade and outrun EVERYTHING.
A tip: Hop lightly then air-dash just as you’re about to land. This gets you from 0-100mph in one move, and if you use the Shield power, then you flip cars out of the way, rather than losing momentum hopping over them.
Yes, this is a game about having godlike powers of destruction. The primary enemy, however, are the US military, who have more firepower than god. The moment you learn to outmaneuver and outrun them, you’re golden.
Or you get knocked flat on your arse again and again and complain. One or the other.
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Oh yeah – my main gripe about the game is that the enemy forces don’t scale up as much as in Hulk: UD. In Hulk, huge boss-class enemies like the Hulkbuster Destroyers get redeployed as regular enemy types, whearas in Prototype, the biggest enemies (Leader Hunters and Thermobaric Tanks) only appear in a couple of story missions.
I’d love to have seen the conflict escalate to the point where both of those enemy types appear regularly.
What I’m saying is that I wanted bigger, nastier, angrier enemies trying to kill me and each other.
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“the mark of someone who hasn’t figured out the movement system”
Alternatively, that a great number of people are complaining about the knockbacks in the later stages suggests the system hasn’t been implemented/taught/balanced well. Whether or not superelite gentlemen such as yourself have apparently done better with it, that doesn’t negate the concerns of others.
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Playing this on 360 and having a blast. I basically have only progressed in the story missions enough to unlock a handful of abilities and now I just go randomly rampaging. The story missions probably suck, I haven’t really done enough of them to know. The textures definitely are not great. But I don’t care because it’s such a laugh chucking cars around and eviscerating people and having them scream and flee. I laughed out loud the first time I was walking along and instead just pushing a pedestrian out of the way, Alex clotheslines/slaps them out of the way. That’s how much of a dick he is. Which is hilarious.
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Hoernchen:
Because it’s fun! :D
But seriously, surfing a zombie before flip-kicking him into a tank stunned me the first time it happened by accident. I would not want to be near those devs when they have cutlery, but their psychosis made a fun game.
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“the boss fight with Greene is most comparable to the boss fight at the end of Tomb Raider: Legend … in other words, it’s frustrating, and nearly impossible.”
That boss can be killed in less than a minute and is nowhere close to “nearly impossible” (frustrating is certainly a good summation of it though). It doesn’t sound like the Greene fight at all in that from what I’ve heard even people who found the Greene fight easy took 10-15 minutes on it, so at the least it sounds pretty grindy (I haven’t got that far yet).
This is one of the few sandbox games I’ve played where just moving around feels enjoyable. It makes me realise how much I like the increase in superpower-based sandboxes lately; it’s always felt kind of limiting to me to be stuck on the ground as a puny human for 90% of the game in something where you’re supposed to be able to “go anywhere”.
Considering I see multiple mentions of it implied as some sort of negative I was actually really surprised when the “lose your powers” section didn’t annoy me at all; pretty much all the missions in that section are based around disguise or vehicles (and also helped work as a tutorial for that aspect of the game), which means you avoid combat in most of it anyway. The few bits of combat I did get in also gave me perpective on how far I had come since the start; the first Hunter near the start of the game (that you fight without powers) kicked my ass the first attempt or two, yet I got ambushed by a few of them in that part and took them out powerless without even breaking a sweat.
I also like that your character is portrayed as asshole (if not an outright villain); it removes the usual narrative dissonance in most sandbox games, which is even more important in this considering it’s hard to even walk down a street without accidentally killing about fifty people. It’s something I liked in Saint’s Row 2 as well.
The only thing that’s really led to some frustration so far is how much context sensitivity there is; its led to some major annoyance in more chaotic situations where each button does about five things depending on where you’re standing or how quick you press them; in the trickier ones the amount of times I’ve accidentally did the wrong move because I pressed a button a few frames late or grabbed a car instead of a person I wanted to eat is pretty big, although I guess that’s partially due to it being built around a console controller where there are far less overall functions. The knockbacks can be annoying sometimes, but for the most part its just been a sign I’m doing something wrong.
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I think that this may be the closest to a third person Japanese style bullet hell game ever.
Also thank god there’s no multiplayer. Imagine if they’d had to make the hero balanced. No screen filling attacks, no ability to leap clean across the city on a whim, no ability to single handedly flatten whole streets and worst of all no ruddy edit button. That isn’t the game I wanted from the Hulk guys.
But I do agree that the story is too serious for the uber death and shenanigans the game consists off. The story of Hulk Ultimate Destruction is often overlooked but added a lot of character to the game as did the more comic booky moves like bowling boulders. Red Faction has the same problem of taking itself too seriously in the light of its own mechanics.
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Again, I repeat, I am not a gaming god. I consider surviving Ninja Gaiden on NORMAL difficulty (with two more with about 60 deaths under my belt to be my highest achievement.
Prototype is nowhere near that level of difficulty. Not even close. If you find yourself dying repeatedly, woe be unto you if you ever try playing a genuinely hard game.
Don’t blame the game if you’re dying repeatedly. Try a different approach, and experiment with your powers.
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Err.. Yeah, edit feature, come back! The above post should read “I consider surviving Ninja Gaiden on NORMAL difficulty (with more with about 60 deaths under my belt) to be my highest achievement.”
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Oh yeah, the camera (and by extension, vehicle) control also feels kind of odd; like its purposely limited to be like console movement and has this weird laggy feeling to it, although some of that may be because of the framerate (which isn’t exactly great on my system).
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Dominic – once again, there’s a big difference between difficulty and frustration. The you-are-rubbish-at-games argument is not without its strawlike component, and is the reason the elite vibe is still being conveyed. The problem is the regularity with which Proto interrupts my fun, not that I’m failing at it.
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Frankly I agree with Dominic, the boss fights were not really all that. Also (spoilers I guess) did you guys steal vehicles to kill Greene, particularly for her vuln phases? Tanks work hilariously well, gunship rockets moderately well but don’t last long while she’s up. Other than that, yeah, just sprint and hammertoss cars. Took just a bit over 5 minutes, was repetitive but not difficult on medium.
That said, I did this on the 360. I’ve read about the control scheme on PC and that does sound like a classic console port failure. Highly recommend using a controller if you can.
Oh and when using guns, don’t bother targeting unless it’s a missile launcher. He’ll auto-oneshot people in the direction you’re facing. Hilariously powerful, like everything else you can do.
Overall enjoyed this game a lot, will probably play through it again in a couple weeks on hard. Like Alec says, the plot and related stuff isn’t great but I just didn’t care about it that much. Except for the ‘memories’ videos which were really well done, I thought.
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This review mirrors my thoughts so perfectly, that it almost feels like I wrote it myself. Also, I agree with Alec – the game isn’t HARD, but the boss fights just aren’t fun. In fact, that’s exactly my problem. I wasn’t dying fighting the bosses, but I also wasn’t having any fun. Fighting the same boss three times in a row with absolutely no variation at all is a grind. Dealing with enemies that knock you down more than they hurt you is tedious. Doing this all when you’re so powerful that you can’t possibly die is especially unfun.
I really did love Prototype, but I was completely sick of it by the time I was done.
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I agree with the review. Having finished inFamous I launched straight into Prototype and whilst I’m enjoying it there are moments that are supremely frustrating. inFamous is the better game here for my money.
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Also making Alex actually move around with the basic PC controls, quickly that is, is infuriating. Sprint is fucking rage making.
Boss fights were … meh. I wasn’t enraged by the Times Square fight, but it was annoying, particularly the insta-death move. The fact that the other bosses were pretty much impossible if I didn’t just throw things at them (or, atleast, that was massively easier than proper combat) was a little annoying.
What else … er … oh yeah, Blade is OP as hell, I don’t really get why you’d use anything but that and the throwing one once you have it and you’ve upgraded them both. The section before it is so dire, I agree with Alec. Also, was it just me or did the game have a much too high opinion of the amount you would be comboing? Pretty much every fight I just spammed left click until things fell over…
The pure destruction of the game nearly makes up for it, it’s so hilariously destructive. I actually laughed with malicious joy in my first hour.
PS – Alec Meer – Alex Mercer
If it wasn’t for that damnable x.
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Plugin a 360 controller. This game has QTEs and no manual aiming, its made for a controller.
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“Oh yeah – the lack of multiplayer of any kind is absolutely criminal.”
Why can’t we get away from this sentiment? Why is it not okay for a singleplayer game to do just that, and do that well? Quit taunting developers into wasting resources on half-assed multiplayer implementations. I can see it now… “Prototype 2: Unimproved Singleplayer, Crap Multiplayer!”
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Spent most of my time in the game as an attractive, leggy blond, simply because Mercer is such a cock. Still walked and sounded like a bloke though, which probably confused any potential suitors.
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@Freudian Trip
“Is Alex Mercer supposed to be an utterly empty vessel of a human being or what?”
Yes, as the game will show a bit later on.
I didn’t find the story as bad as everyone seems to be saying, just average like most games really. I’ve seen a lot worse. I did love the web of intrigue though.
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As fun as this game could have been the mere fact that I have to shut down XP and boot into Windows 7 just to play it properly without annoying cutscene sound garbling and then still sufer from muted sound in game just removes any real desire to want to continue playing.
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Haven’t got to the annoy-o-boss fights yet but there seems to be a strange dichotomy in the mission design – some of the more vanilla mission types are done superbly (I’m particularly thinking of the tank-escort, the lost-powers and the chase missions which were all really enjoyable) – and then some really fiddly boss fights – particularly the mission where you first meet the hunters in the warehouse… but I suppose that does train you to sprint and bounce, a lot.
It’s marvellous fun though. And the production quality of the cutscenes – well, the Web video snippets is marvellous even though the quality of the dialogue and writting is abysmal (really, saying “fuck” a lot does not make one edgey).
Also, also, the plot’s just F.E.A.R. relay, innit?
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MMan:
Maybe if you know how to do it, it’s easy. I went into it blind. I finally beat it by just repeatedly hijacking tanks … maybe I’m slow or something, but trying to kill her using powers on medium was basically impossible for me. All her attacks are knockback, and most of them are auto-targeting.
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For the first missions I have played the game like a normal person, say… roleplaying a tourist in new york. The good part in my love the “normal” areas, and hate the brutality, chaos and carnage of the infected areas. Is also somewhat like sad wen you are like trying to capture (abduct?) a contact, and he die for other random stuff.
Talking about random… the USA army shotting at random people for no reason. I was simply talking a normal street wen suddenly 3 USA tanks started to fire to anything.
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You stay the hell away from her and shoot her with the intense pain ultimate and tanks, that’s how I did it. Helicoptors work too.
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“Maybe if you know how to do it, it’s easy. I went into it blind. I finally beat it by just repeatedly hijacking tanks … maybe I’m slow or something, but trying to kill her using powers on medium was basically impossible for me. All her attacks are knockback, and most of them are auto-targeting.”
I was talking about the Legend fight, not Greene (which, as I said, I haven’t reached yet).
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I beat Greene by jumping from rooftop to rooftop, and hitting her with a fully charged whipfist in midair each time (You can kill pretty much anything this way). She could never hit me because of the movement and the buildings in the way. Then I switched to blade power and armour when she was down, and stab stab stab. Doesn’t take too long. You can also play peekaboo, just pop out of an alley, or from around a corner, whipfist, diveroll back. But you’re going to get knocked about a lot by everything else that way.
Also, I said before about using “sprint(shift for me) + direction” instead of double tapping a direction. Make that “direction + sprint”. So, say you’re in midair, keep the direction down, and tap sprint to airdash in that direction.
A lot of the powers don’t seem that interesting to me, so I have 6 million points to spend, atm. And I seem to be approaching the end.
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Manliest way to hurt Greene: Switch to Muscle Mass (ideally with the 1mil point power-boost upgrade), run up the side of the nearest skyscraper to her until you’re at least halfway up, kick off it until you’re right over her, and do a charged stomp attack. Takes off about 1/4 of her shields total, and looks AWESOME AS HELL.
This also gives you some really intense camera angles if you’re locked on the whole time, as all the debris and shots flying your way will smack into the building right behind you.
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My ridiculous, strangely effective tactic for Greene was climbing the tallest skyscraper, shifting to armour + hammerfist and then elbow-dropping her from the absolute maximum height. It was slow and drops were regularly broken up by the green orbs, but it’s was stupidly satisfying. Sure, tanks would have been more efficient, but where’s the fun in that?
Edit: Curse you, Dominic White.
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RE Greene: Dive down alleys to nom infected/hunters for health. Spam the tentacle devastator until the army show up. Jack helicopters, spam AT missiles until the ‘chopper falls apart. Rinse, repeat.
RE Parasite: Urgh. I can’t imagine this sequence being anything other than hell on any difficulty besides Easy/Casual. On Easy/Casual w/ New Game+ it’s bearable, if only because dropkick spam owns Hunters. No really, try it, a fully charged dropkick from on-high is really effective.
Part of the fun of free-roam for me is just running around NY like a crazy bastard hunting down those suicidal Web of Intrigue targets who I constantly find in Red Zones, though I once hit the jackpot and ran into three right as I left the morgue one time!
After a while you’ll get the knack of freerunning and parkouring over the rooftops, just keep at it. Timing, charged jumps, double dash and glide are key. Kudos to he who can run in a spiral up the very top of the Empire State Building to get the Landmark Reward there. I just ran straight up it.
PS: Musclemass and Whipfist have the best consumes ever. Particularly Whipfist. Tentaclicious!
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I have a feeling that possibly all the people saying ‘this game is really hard’ are playing it on PC while all the people scratching their heads and saying ‘it was pretty easy’ (myself included) played it on 360.
I can’t imagine doing half of these fights with a mouse and keyboard.
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One thing i really like about this game in a non-gameplay related way is how perfectly it runs on my PC. I don’t have a state of the art graphic card or anything, and yet i haven’t spotted a single slow-down, even in the most explosive heavy parts of the game.
Huge kudos on that. It’s so rare these days.
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I hear a lot about the freedom one has, but does one have the freedom in this game to be restrained? To not kill without remorse? I don’t sure I can enjoy a game where I have to be quite so evil as what I’m hearing. (Mind you I’m not saying the game should be different, I’m sure lots of people feel playing a goodie-goodie is done to death, I’m just trying to ascertain if this is a game I’d enjoy.) Essentially, can I at least TRY not to kill innocents and have a chance at succeeding? That’s big with me.
Also, one person mentioned QTEs. Are they prevalent? I loathe QTEs. A few QTEs I can tolerate (never like though), but if it’s core to the gameplay, it’ll ruin a game for me.
Thanks for the info.
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i’ll grab it when it’s sold for a fiver :)
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@Simon:
The control scheme on PC is surprising pleasant. Being a PC gamer only, I love the fact that you can bind all the different powers to a different key, which make power shifting on the fly so much easier.
I do wish that you could strafe in the game and shoot people that way. But that only really matters when I am on a mission that requires you to be a soldier and use conventional weapons.
I do wish the mouse support is better though. I wish I didn’t have to bind Mouse 4 and Mouse 5 to keys (this becomes a issue when I have to do the stupid QTE mini-game to deactivate detectors, since I bind them to keys like . , ‘ and they are hard to distinguish :(.)
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@Guhndahb:
There are no true ‘QTE’s that I’ve encountered, sometimes you have to eat an enemy at a certain time or whatever, but I’d not personally call it a QTE.
You are also never forced to kill civilians, although honestly, you’d have a hard time not hitting them when they’re all over the place. You can, at least, never kill one intentionally.
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@Guhndahb:
I haven’t completed it (stopped at the much-mentioned Greene fight), but I haven’t needed to kill any civilians yet. That said I have killed plenty, and most without really meaning to (lots of explosions, and hitting people as running or driving a tank.) You do need to kill a lot of military people, the vast majority of whom are just doing their jobs.
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@Guhndahb
I actually make a point to not kill or consume pedestrians. But unfortunately when you are in a vehicle and pressed for time it is almost impossible to not have collateral damages :( .
As for QTE, as far as I know the only QTE is the one involving deactivating the “virus detector.” It is only annoying because it forces me to remember which keys I binded to my 9 mouse buttons (I love the G9 :) ).
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QTEs:
There’s a kind of QTE when you hi-jack a vehicle. But it’s very relaxed, to the point I’m not even sure you can ‘fail’ it.
Later in the game you encouter QTEs when fighting a beefed up version of soldiers – if they grab you, you have a fraction of a second to PRESS X NOW and counter-attack. Except the button you need to press is different each time, and really is a fraction of a second. No need to let yourself be grappled by them in the first place of course. QTEs are not prevelant.
As with much of Prototype, the QTEs are either very easy or old-skool-action-game hard.
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…Dudes.
Groundspike devastator next to Greene, chews her shields straight to hell. Follow it up with murder vehicle of choice when she becomes vulnerable, although I generally used the Critical Pain attack (Or as I call it, the Kamehameha). Grab the health orbs she spews when she retreats, then fall back to dodge the Red Wave. Repeat X3.
I object to the classification of any boss in this game as the worst boss ever. Nothing even comes close to some of gaming’s worst. (Nihilanth cough.)
I actually remember being impressed about how well the controls translated to mouse and keyboard considering, and I’m surprised that my feelings aren’t echoed by others. The lock on system was effective, the power wheel was easily usable. I never felt like I was being screwed over by the controls. More often I felt like I was being screwed over by those damn missile launcher jerks. But anyway, I loved the game, despite it’s flaws, and I didn’t have the problems that many seem to have had. Mostly it was those damn homing rockets.
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@Simon – I’m on PC.
@Guhndahb – There are lots of quicktime events. But some are just clicking the same button repeatedly, some can be avoided altogether. The ones you /have/ to do are generally very forgiving. As somebody who also doesn’t like QTEs, I didn’t find them too intrusive. Although I always avoid melee combat with a certain enemy because they force you into QTE combat, ugh.
It’s difficult not to kill civilians. But you’ll have some success limiting the casualties if you’re determined enough.
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I am slow.
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I hated the protagonist at first, but one of the first web of intrigue tidbits you acquire is this gem:
“Subject exhibits a classic flat-affect personality. A psychopathic disregard for others, narcissistic worldview punctuated by self-obsessive disorders.”
. . .which, if you know a little psychology, is a spot-on psychoanalysis of the main character, right down to the monotone voice acting and frequent “What I am” ruminations. Suddenly everything about the guy and the story makes perfect sense.
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This is the first game I’ve played in a while that’s just plain fun. GTA has a great campaign but it’s free roaming looses it’s charm after a bit. Whipping your arm around and tearing everyone around you in half never loses it’s charm though. The only disapointing things are the particle effects and the acting. I don’t mind the graphics since so much on the screen can happen without lag (unless it glitches, which it does a lot), but the blood particles look ridiculous. And I fully agree with all of you, the acting was terribly bland.
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Also I forgot to add, this game has wonderful gamepad support. Automatically detected my Logitech Dual Shock and changed the control icons perfectly.
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Yeah, I suppose I did forget about the virus-detector-sabotage. It’s pretty easy though. Pounding a button repeatedly isn’t really a QTE to me but I accept that there probably isn’t a specific dictionary definition :)
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No idea why everyone’s moaning about Greene. As long as you never stop moving (which, given the frantic pace of the rest of the game, should be a given by then) she should never be able to lay a tentacle on you. Failing that, Musclemass and start charged throwing anything within reach at her. Jumping to the tops of buildings and throwing stuff at her keeps the fight at a slowwer pace, but also keeps her from ruining your shit. Then, when the army show up, jack a tank and ruin her healthbar. The first part is hard going, but the second the tanks show up, there’ no real excuse for not finishing her quickly.
My one real issue with the game? Go to the official forums (might only be on the US side, I’m not sure). Check the tech support forum. Read up on lots of people having problems with the sound, graphics and controls. Read that one thread asking if there’s a patch or any official help on the way. Discover that Activision have given an allegedly bullshit reason as to why they’re not bothering to support the game on the PC. Discover the major cause is a 44k file. Wonder what the hell Activision are playing at.
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The dreary atmosphere is very important to the game – any GTA style “humour” (juvenile as all hell) would have ruined it. The Web of Intrigue alone has more atmosphere than many other games.
Besides, there is humour – the Military has some hilarious reaction lines. They captured the “I’m gonna die anyway”-Sarcasm of real world military extremely well.
“Not stumble unwittingly into spoiler town, but isn’t the player character meant to be unlikeable and characterless?”
This ^
Spoilers:
Alex Mercer was a massive asshole – the whole point is that even the Virus is more compassionate and acts less egotistically than the actual Alex Mercer did.
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This write up is spot on to my experience. The other night I spent about 2 hours running around the city just destroying everyone and everything in my path. Then i tried a mission, one fairly far on where you have to protect a military vehicle from being overrun by hunters, I tried til I was boiling over with rage, gave up and spent another 2 hours murdering civilians, infected, and military without pause or consideration.
The most positive thing about the game is that you can unleash the rage it will undoubtedly fill you with without quitting out. I really must give it credit for that.
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Yea, the military has a good lines. Most related with losing you… witty comments like “another day in the glorious army” and stuff.
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I don’t normally feel strongly about a game enough to post too much about it. But this is the first “console port” that I genuinely have fun playing (Actually ME was great too, but I resented the fact that PC gamers were only an afterthought…)
Anyway, onto the game.
I honestly didn’t even think of the other “QTEs” in the game, until you guys mentioned it. Really though, for things like hijacking a vehicle, the QTE sequences are so forgiving that I don’t even feel like they are there.
But the best part about those QTEs is that, for the most part, you can skip them:
- Want to hijack a tank? Disguise yourself first, and as long as you have not been detected, you can just slip right in the tank w/o any repeated button pushing.
- Hate the virus detector? Destroy it!
Oh also, I think it is worth mention that there really isn’t much DRM on it. As soon as it showed up on Impulse I grabbed it and installed on both of my PCs with no problem. Is there even an activation check?
BTW, I am surprised that no one has mentioned how “fun” the whip can be. Cutting everything around you into halves just never gets old :P. Try it, when you raise an alarm inside a base. Wait by the garage door entrance that a line of soldiers will appear at and let the whip, whip… ;)
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@Simon, Salt, leth, Taillefer: Thanks so much for the excellent information. That’s just what I wanted to know. Sounds like the QTEs might be in-line with, say, the latest Prince of Persia, in which I was able to tolerate them. And I can handle the collateral damage aspect, so since I can at least try to avoid innocents, it’ll placate my warped gamer ethics. :) Thanks again.
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Nah, I don’t think you have a “warped gamer ethics.” I cannot play a evil character in any game period. And that is why I actually dislike GTA series of games immensely, even though I know that they are supposed to be the “next best thing since sliced bread.” :P
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Sorry for the double post again, (I wish there is an edit button) but does anyone know if there is some sort of hidden unlockable secret that you can unlock by actually somehow manage to not kill any civilians?
I have this nagging feeling that tells me that I should restart the game and try my hardest to not kill any civilians and by doing so, some sort of new bonus will be unlocked (to help me kill pixels in game more effectively of course :P )
thanks!
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Taillefer says:
…
I also found the lack of humanity off-putting. I was always conscious of killing civilians, and I never wanted to do it. I was surprised the game just didn’t care. In fact it tells me how many I killed, as though it’s an achievement and I always feel like they didn’t have to die.
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The achievement for civilians killed is actually to complete the game without killing any of them. Which, for the record, is bloody hard.
There is an achievement for 500 “Speedbumps” (running someone over) in one tank though…
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note to self… there is a quote tag for a reason… and who nicked the edit..?
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Think of Alex Mercer as more like a miniature Godzilla. Morally neutral, but so ridiculously powerful that destruction follows in his wake. Even if you’re trying carefully not to hurt people, you will. But at the same time, you’re going to be saving the city – it’s just not going to be pretty.
There are some actually rather good plot reasons for this morally-detached destruction though. There’s actually some fairly nice elements to the plot that most people ignore/gloss over.
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“click the right button of the mouse a few times” is not a QTE.
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I think it’s bloody awesome. Call me a terrible person but i LIKE seeing new york covered in decay, panic, death and ruthlessness. I think the mood is amazing. I even like the throwaway plot, because it’s just so damn bleak.
I was a giant fan of Radical’s Ultimate Destruction game, and this is like that on steroids. I think it’s absolutely killer entertainment.
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@Noerart
Aha. I always forget there are actual “Achievements” in many games. I’m only on PC and I’ve never really paid much attention to them. Completing the game without killing any civilians would certainly be hard, yes. I was actually going to attempt it next play through before I knew it was an official thing, heh.
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Perhaps it is worth adressing that i too find the story missions all kinds of bollocks. I just run around and fuck around. It’s amazing.
Also, it runs well on my computer, which is absurd. It runs better than Sims 3.
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The ‘nice guy’ achievement is actually for consuming less than 10 civillians. I’m fairly sure it’s impossible to not kill anybody, as they’re apparently suicidal. Hilariously so.
Apparently when the zombie mutant apocalypse comes, New York cabbies will become the second-greatest threat to life on earth, as they will not stop at ANYTHING to get their fare where they want to be. Even when Times Square is a cordoned off safezone, packed with black-ops military troops, and surrounded by mutant monsters, those cabbies will still try to get people to the Hard Rock Cafe.
It’s side-splittingly funny to watch those guys sometimes. I once saw a single cab power-slide through two civililans, three zombies and a soldier with a missile launcher.
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Gah i’m drunk, sorry about the multiposts. But Alex is a total dick. And that’s why i morph into an old lady for most of my destructive escapades. He is a total villain. I think it’s cool that a game allows you to be not an anti-hero, but a complete bastard villain altogether. He terrifies his own sister at one point. There is nothing good about him.
One anecdote. In the middle of a fight, i just grab whoever is in front of me and take them somewhere relatively quiet to devour them. Most of the time they just yell incessantly and in the cacophony of explosions and monster roars that’s easily ignored. Once, however, i grabbed some old woman and as i’m stopping to eat her alive, she whimpers “you’re hurting me”. And i instantly wished for a way to simply put her down. Hulk: UD was vicious, but it let you at least let people go if you wanted to. In Prototype, the one way you can let go of anyone is at 300mph into the horizon.
I wonder if that’s sort of a point of the game. I had been murdering thousands. And here’s this one woman making me feel incredibly bad for doing it without caring.
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This game did just kind of just sneak out there (I thought it was a while off yet tbh). Would you say its a must have purchase, or an of the moment can wait till its in the 2 for £25 section?
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Who knew the RPS community was so jam-packed with scruples? Am I the only one here to launch an old woman from the top of a skyscraper just to see if I could race her back down?
I’m thoroughly enjoying fulfilling my sinister King Kong fantasies. Grabbing a civilian whilst dodging a thousand bullets and taking them somewhere quiet to snack on is deeply satisfying.
Also, dropping several hundred feet with the sole intention of crushing some poor sod in their car is a lovely way to pass the time.
I have to say that Prototype has given me more joy in the first couple of hours than GTA 4 did for the entire duration. It’s a refreshing change from the overwrought stylings of that increasingly annoying series. The morally corupt sandbox actioner lives again!
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Challenge for the group: launch a civilian – or even better, a cop – off a High Place, then base jump after them and catch before they hit the ground.
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I’d like to say from someone who’s done most of the game but not finnished it yet that so far i disagree with a lot of what alex said.
However i can totally see that if i came up against any boss battles that were like the ones i’ve already done but were longer, i’d quickly grow to dislike the game.
The super hunter or whatever it was called particularly grates because the whole game up until that point has been about exploring the tactical opertunities of your vast array of moves and the super hunter turns round and says “if you use any except the one i’m thinking of, that you may or may not of unlocked, i’m going to smack you down for even thinking the rules of the game learned thus far apply to ME!!!!!”
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ohh btw i meant to add that i find the story telling technique a refreshing stab at non linear story telling and in that respect is one of the best examples of it there is, despite being a bit vauge and boring.
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Hmm. I just used devastators a lot. Run into the alleys, juice up, run up a building, devastate from the sky. Definitely got grindey, but I dunno. I just really like the combat and how much variety there is to it. It’s possible to spam the same moves over and over, and render the game dull to yourself. If this is happening to you, I suggest trying things you haven’t yet. Took me ages to even realize there was an X,X,Y/X,Y,X style combo system, where each attack can be individually charged. There’s lots of wonderful little subtleties. Chain grappling is pretty fun (grab a human, get in the air, press Y, tap left trigger if you like, for some impromptu bullet time, press B to grab the guy you just pile-drove, and then you do it all over again). Unfortunately, I don’t think you can pile drive->grab->throw. The pile driver into a grab forces the chain piledriver on you. Maybe there was an exploit to that? Otherwise, seems a minor inconsistency.
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I love the Web of Intrigue cutscenes. Unfortunately, the main story cutscenes have been little more than peculiarly truncated mission briefings thus far.
And for what it’s worth, Hulk: UD was full of really annoying missile knockdown attacks too. It provoked considerable swearing from me on a couple of missions. And it was still a glorious, glorious game. One which lacked lovely things like eating people. So I’m confident Prototype will pan out in the long run.
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Yeah, no. Go play Red Faction: Guerilla. You have to wait til August if you insist on playing it on the PC, but come on, we all know you’ve got an XBox 360 or PS3 that you keep behind a secret wall. It’s OK, we forgive you. Most of anything interesting these days is coming out on the consoles anyway.
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Prototype isn’t so much of a game…
[i]It’s therapy.[/i]
For those days when you lose all faith in mankind, and the last bit of optimism for the good in people has been wrung out, and you despair at the cruel complexities of the World… there’s always Alex Mercer, waiting with a bastard’s grin and a merry willingness and readiness to fling some fancy-dressed yuppie off the top of a skyscraper.
[i]Look at that Earthcancer fly![/i]
And yes, I’m just honest about it. More games like this, please.
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Oh, whoops, wrong kinds of tags, damn!
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I’ve really enjoyed the time I’ve put into Prototype. There are certainly some frustrating bits, especially with mouse+keyboard, but the side missions and enjoyable variety in combat keep it from being really annoying. The Greene battle was supremely easy for me with the aerial spikes, just consume a hunter, jump nearby, and the little tentacles are half gone with one Devastator. If I found the combat getting a bit samey, I’d just switch to a new set of powers and it’s instantly fun again, like Crysis taken to an insane extreme. A sequel, with new powers and a more non-linear main story, would be awesome. But more than anything, the sheer madness and over-the-top action of the game are a refreshing change.
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Currently playing this on the 360 and I have to admit that there are some seriously frustrating aspects to it. The boss fights all essential seem to be the same, run around and throw random detritus at which ever uber-nasty you’re up against.
The writing and direction of the main cut-scenes are awful. a prime example being an early one which is meant to convey your sisters disgust at the fact you’ve killed more people that a particularly motivated Harold Shipman, but it just comes across as intense sexual tension between the siblings. Admittedly this would have been a much more interesting and surreal take the relationship than the ridiculous amount of unqualified loyalty Dana and Alex show for each other, particularly puzzling concidering one is a certified sociopath.
Another annoyance is the fact that the “Web of Intrigue” and Consume event devourees often turn up in heavily infected parts of the city; so by the time you make you way to them they have usually been eviscerated by a passing Hunter. This is extremely annoying and leads to may a rage quit.
However, the single most frustrating thing about the game is the fact that the player seems to have very little effect on the environment, it’s like the game doesn’t even care that your there. Alex is meant to be this cluster-fuck incarnate, the kind of guy that makes Norse Gods feel slightly inadequate, yet all the damage you do Manhattan is reset minutes later. Hives and Military bases spring back into existence after you destroy them, streets repopulate, buildings go undamaged and Infected, Marines and Blackwatch troops always appear no matter how many you’ve previously killed. After creating the biggest mess imaginable it’s a tad galling to have it quickly and quietly cleared up before your eyes when all you want is some attention.
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This being said; the game does feature the world best Leather Jacket, ever.
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Hmm, I’m a long time RPS reader, but a very infrequent commenter, so I think I’d better start with a couple of caveats.
1. No, I haven’t played this game.
2. No, I’m not here to troll. (I wouldn’t have typed in real information in the info boxes if that was the case, would I?)
OK. Deep breath.
I watched the trailer of this game, and I find parts of it pretty sickening.
I grew up playing Doom, Duke3D, Half Life, GTA3, etc… so it’s not like I only play Solitaire. I just wonder if it’s necessary (as seen in the trailer) to be able to “skateboard” another human being along the ground with realistic grisly results?
I love the “open world” ability to do interesting things, but personally I don’t feel the need to kill/maim/eviscerate with such an incredible degree of realism & glee.
I can see that (in this comment thread) I’m in the minority. I know my thoughts on Prototype will not dissuade “the fans” – and likewise… their enthusiasm is not going to change my feelings. I just wanted to say my bit.
Thanks RPS – for the chance to have a decent discussion about aspects of our favourite hobby.
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Well.. not much to comment as I haven’t played this.. but Ninja Gaiden stands out singularly in my mind as a hard game as it is the only one that is soooo damned hard, yet soooo damned good. You don’t ever feel ripped off and honestly are completely satisfied that you are using skill to win, and also being beaten by legit moves/tactics.
If prototype is anything like that I will love it.
I dunno what it is but Ninja Gaiden nailed it totally, 2 got close, but nothing else has really come close, except for DMC 3 maybe but with that godawful music and emo story I can’t force myself to play through it.
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IMHO, Prototype is nothing like Ninja Gaiden. The complexity/difficulty of the combat doesn’t compare. If you’re looking for a NG/DMC/etc type game, this isn’t it.
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Red Faction: Guerrilla is a brilliant game. The new GeoMod engine is something that should be copied widely. But you are not a superpowered walking death machine in it. You are a regular guy with some homebrew explosives and a railgun or two. And you can die -so- fast it’s not even funny. Especially when the EDF is spawning 8 turret cars per second on you. So as full of splodey goodness as it is, I don’t feel that it reaches the insane playground of delights that Prototype is at its best. I also have to mark it down for not being able to eat people.
I may yet change my mind when I am further in both games, but it’s not seeming likely.
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@Gabe McGrath
i think if you played it you’d see that, at least to my mind, this game is much less graphic that GTA ever was, because the approach is so fantasy as alex said the people are little more than health packs, you don’t see them as human and grinding them on the floor is just another way of getting a kill while avoiding the hellish knockback.
@Thiefsie
The key difference is that when prototype works like ninja gaiden it’s easy, too easy maybe, and to make it hard they remove all the tactics and force you to endure a war of attrition against an enemy that will only accept 1 attack that does more damage than a slither and to do this you have to get your health bar up to full by eating other monsters while he pleasantly smacks you down every time you try, and the game doesn’t tell you what you’re not allowed to do until after you’ve taken damage for trying it, despite being taught for several hours the benifits of a whole range of moves you could use.
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Fair enough. That sounds like you are expected by trial and error to figure things out… which is of course maddening most of the time. I’ll still check this out when i get some $$$. The carnage sounds like fun regardless… though I think I’ll be plugging in my x360 controller to play this on PC.
Does anyone know whether Infamous compare favourably or not to Prototype??
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Aaaw, does the lady you’re pulling a Darth Vader on in the 3rd screenshot have cartoonish stars circling around her head? This is so cutesy; I thought the game was supposed to be sombre and grim.
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Even the mindless killing of pedestriants and throwing with cars and roof ventilators becomes boring after a few hours. Sure, you can hunt down all the landmarks, challenges and game tips there are in he game for exp so you can get more powers, but after that there’s just the missions you write about – which indeed come out as not only frustrating but also kind of trivial.
But then again, handing a general whoop-ass to innocents is oh so rewarding after a long day at work!
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No, actually. That’s a quest marker hilariously out of place.
I’ve only played a few hours of this game, but I’ve savoured every moment. The mayhem is just so satisfying. Occasionally I’ll decide I’m sick of evading authorities and start throwing cars at civillians. It does nothing; I know I don’t even get an xp boost. But it’s so fun and satisfying that I’ll do it anyway. I’ve not had so much fun mucking about like this for a very long time. It’s also very much a console beast, so the fact that it’s even on PC makes me infinitely grateful.
I’ll add that I’ve yet to encounter a bossfight so I might like it significantly less enthusiastic about it later. And I’m quite happy to forgive the control scheme, and think I’ve adapted to some of its idiosyncrasies (air-dashing was troublesome for a time). So far it’s everything I expected it to be.
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Wow. Not buying a game because the wife will complain about the violence? Remind me NEVER to get married.
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I should say that i love the game cause i don’t think that comes across lol, and a gamepad is a must, i’m not going to say a 360 controller cause i’m not a monopolist but it is what i use.
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Looks entertaining, but it also looks like it’s going to get a worse sequel.
It always works this way. The men in suits look at the game and think “Hmm, just think how many projection-positive-plus units this SKU would move off-shelf to our core demographic if it didn’t have all these stupid, expensive, innovative features scaring off Joe Sixpack!” and promptly send out an order for more of the stuff they like.
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I thoroughly enjoyed the game. The controls (mouse+keyboard) were precise and fluid enough, gliding and running up buildings never got old and combat was varied and properly over the top. Hell, I even liked the bosses. I died a couple of times, sure, but never rage-quitted because of them. They kept me on my toes – parkouring around crazy fast while constantly looking for a way to effectively hurt them was FUN. Even the Greene tentacle blob – skillfully avoiding the green stun orbs IN THE AIR and successfully coming down with a tremendous drop attack? Satisfying.
And I *like* the bleakness of it all. GTA-style fratboy humour would ruin it. I *like* the characterlessness of Alex – it fits him (it?) nicely in this particular situation.
It’s not to say the game’s without its flaws, but its good parts greatly overshadow them. And its AWESOME parts repeatedly elbow drop ‘em from a skyscraper. Nuff said.
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Tei said:
“You are half-beowulf, half-grendel.”
That… that is awesome. Now I want to play a game called beoGRENDEL.
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I have to agree with the truncated mission briefings. There were quite a few moments during a mission briefing where Alex would say something along the lines of ‘[insert name here], he is the key! We must find him!”. I’d never heard this person refered to in the previous mission. It just came out of nowhere – and it wasn’t signalled by a Web of Intrigue target, no flashback memory, nothing. All the briefings seem to come out of the blue with no foreshadowing.
Yet, the gameplay is great. You’re given an ourtrageous toolset – yes, there are abilities and moves more powerful than others, but I think you need to approach the game playfully and really mix-up your moves and skills to get the most out of it. It really is more of a playground than a lot of other games. You have to experiment or I can imagine it would get a bit dull. And the mission design / design choices seem to be against this idea of ‘play’ in some fundamental areas. And those complaining about the Elizabeth Greene boss fight, yes, it’s possible to take her down, but it’s pain-staking and irritating. It’s not that difficult; it’s just bad design to have a boss fight than can last over 20 minutes. But to also have the boss use the same attacks the entire time rather than have different phases, such as morphing into another mode, or something along those lines, is even worse. Where’s the satisfaction?
It’s a very schizophrenic game and consequently my feelings towards it are as equally contrary.
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i see it as assassins creed meets devil may cry.
thin open world with polished streamlined getting around and very little thinly veiled mechanics with devil may cry combat and ludicrous story.
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im surprised nobody mentioned the game’s tendency of having you run through half the city every freaking mission, yeah its a LOT of fun on the beginning and you can spice it a little by pulling the shield or the armor out or just jumping building to building or jacking a heli but after a few hours it got really really boring, was it that necessary not to make you start the “new day” right next to the “mission giver” ?
another thing nobody mentioned, lack of enemy variety, the military could at least TRY some new weapons every now and then after you killed thousands of them, it takes them half the game just to get detectors and heavy tanks out
but i have to say i really loved the caos you can witness and create in the game, i feel that if they had spent a little more time with the AI and adding a little more variety this would have been in my top5 of all time
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@Dominic White: ah right, sorry. My memory != good – sometimes.
(pretty late reply, but what the heck…)
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Sounds like what I feel is the pointlessness of it when I see my son playing a game completely through in god/cheat mode.
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“im surprised nobody mentioned the game’s tendency of having you run through half the city every freaking mission, yeah its a LOT of fun on the beginning and you can spice it a little by pulling the shield or the armor out or just jumping building to building or jacking a heli but after a few hours it got really really boring, was it that necessary not to make you start the “new day” right next to the “mission giver” ?”
You can literally cross the entire city in a few minutes, and that’s without a helicopter; most sandbox games make travelling between points far slower than that.
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making you waste 5 minutes instead of 10 doesnt make it fun
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I enjoyed it much more when I found Agnes.
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He… I have played with Agnes too!… how amazing. Yea, is a face you can’t forget.
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Srry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supergran
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Complaining about the work done on porting Prototype to the PC? Really?
Holy fuck people, Prototype loads, runs and works SO much better than all those PC titles you praise so much.
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I feel like the core gameplay and the rest of the game were developed by entirely different dev teams. The actual base game is solid and consistently fun, but the rest gets worse as you go on – the main missions thus far are fun but sometimes have bits of frustration in there, and the side missions, almost all the same, are almost all exercises in utter frustration (and this is prior to unlocking platinum challenges).
Some of that is by design but other parts are due to the port being unaltered in terms of goals. One side missions, Aerial Assault, is a good example. In it, you need to shoot down as many helis as possible. On the 360, you hit next target button, shoot, and repeat. On the PC, you have to look at a target, hit tab, hope it picks the right target, fire if it does and repeat. The controls don’t work the same and it makes challenges like this much harder rather than making them easier.
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Some thoughts after playing the game further…
Earlier today I had a random urge after reading the comments the last time, and I’m a nosey parker so I dragged out my Xbox for Windows pad and plugged it in.
The horror… The horror…
The gamepad controls are an abomination, an attrocity, abhorrent, abnormally abstract and alien, have abandone accuracy, would require an altered-state of awareness, and are just plain bloody awful.
I find myself saddened by this too because it came as a real shock to me, as having played it with the keyboard & mouse thus far, I’d enjoyed a game which was the exact opposite of what a gamepad provided: I had accuracy, I had no targeting or throwing issues, I had no problems with running angles or specific jumping, and I’d found parts of the game easy that others had complained about.
It got to the point where I was wondering if all of those complaining about controls were playing a different game, as I was having a marvellous time.
What occurs to me is how many PC gamers would’ve spotted what they’d have thought of as a ‘console port’ and would’ve reached for a pad before even bothering to give the keyboard & mouse controls a fair go (big mistake), and it has to be said that I feel sorry for those poor bastards who bought this for the consoles and have no choice but to play it with that nasty pad implementation.
When people talk about control issues, I see where they’re coming from now, and it’s honestly stunning as where I kept fumbling with the pad, even just to put on a bloody disguise whilstin the middle of a glide, I found intuitive and natural with the controls I was using before. I mean, really, one would have to be ambidextrous to reach for the D-pad whilst gliding or running. What bloody stupid controls!
To PC gamers: I ask you to trust me this once, if you never do on anything again. Try the keyboard & mouse controls and turn targeting toggle on. You’ll never have another problem with playing the game.
If this tells me anything though, it’s that despite the visuals regarding quick-selecting powers and such, this was obviously designed to be a PC game, played with PC controls, and when I tried that experiment today, it became painfully obvious. This is a PC game that was ported to consoles. Don’t believe it? Just try what I asked.
The other thing I’ve noticed is how well crafted the city is, there’s a lot of variety and I’ve had exploring it. Some of the buildings are beautiful and architectural wonders, earlier on I actually ran around every block in the game just to take it all in. And I’ve done a lot of running around before too, I’ve got a good amount of the landmark orbs already.
I’m going to call bluffs here, in my opinion, anyone who thinks this game looks dull must fall into one of four categories.
1.) They have their settings so low that things look like shit, this applies to every game.
2.) They’re bitter about the controls and/or how it ran on their computer, but they don’t want to seem too obvious with hating it, so they’ll pick other stock and generic complaints just to “Tell it as it is, mang!”, and stick it to the game.
3.) They aren’t easily inspired and probablly don’t have an artistic shred within the fibre of their being.
4.) They saw it running on a friend’s console which is more powerful than their computer (look at the info Steam collected) and they got machine envy, and bitterly wish to live in a World where consoles that can outmanoeuvre their PCs simply didn’t exist.
Yes, I’m calling people out on that because Prototype looks stunning, and the sheer variety of types of building and architectural wonders puts most city-based games to shame and happily rivals the likes of GTA IV.
Plus, there’s still no experience quite as gratifying as picking up some rich and well-off looking yuppie, heading to the top of a building, and then with a careful throw literally skipping their bodies over a set of even rooftops.
Who needs real World violence when they have that to unwind with?
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“On the PC, you have to look at a target, hit tab, hope it picks the right target, fire if it does and repeat.”
You can just hold tab and the game auto-targets (I’m guessing that works on the console version too).
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@Mman:
Outside of that side mission tab will pick something even directly behind me but inside of it, I could not get it to behave the same way. The problem might be that if there are that many valid targets and you’re moving the mouse around already, it starts to pick one and then thinks you want to choose another one, making it difficult to use. From what I’ve read, for the consoles you just hit the button, fire and repeat but in my experience the manual target switching for the PC screws that up and makes it much harder than it needs to be.
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Too late to edit, sorry. How it works for me is that I hit tab and it finds a target. I fire, hit tab again and it goes out of targeting mode altogether. So instead of giving me a new target it usually forces you to use an awkward tab-fire-tab-tab combo which wastes time and ammo. At least GTA IV, for all it’s lack of optimization, allowed manually targeting. Prototype doesn’t and the system it does have clearly doesn’t work as intended when it’s needed most. That’s been my experience anyway.
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OHHH Man I’m excited to play this! But first I must finish Assassins Creed, Prince of Persia, and Stalker: Clear Sky. I buy waaaaay too many games and don’t play them at all. This needs to stop!
Excited for Prototype tho! Sounds like it turned out good afterall, I was getting a little worried about it during the last 6 months.
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@Hex Medroom
I just retried that mission you’re referencing by holding tab and came within a couple of shots (I had a couple of bad streches of not hitting anything) of gold on my first. I does sound like the console version is a lot easier but it’s still very doable on PC (I can see the platinum being a bit impractical though). There’s three things to keep in mind: 1. Always hold tab so the lock can be shifted smoothly 2. Only shoot off one shot at each helicopter; take the shot and sweep the targetting on to the next one 3. Keep a close eye on the rader so you’re always facing the general direction of a helicopter.
JKJoker: “making you waste 5 minutes instead of 10 doesnt make it fun”
The wording of your complaint makes it sound more like you don’t like sandbox games in general, which is fine (I wasn’t particularily keen on them until recently), but it still seems odd to be slamming a game for something it does much better than the majority of its competitors. For that matter, navigation has become no less enjoyable for me.
Side-note: Posting this comment has shown me the game alt-tabs well, which is always a plus for me.
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@Wulf: I admit, I had no intention of trying keyboard/mouse. Everything I had heard told me that (a) this is a console port through and through and (b) gamepad is much better. Sight unseen, I do believe (a) is the truth, and in my experience console ports play better with gamepad. So even though I’m very pro-PC-controls, I am very glad I own a XBox 360 controller for my PC for those games.
(b) however was a shock. Several people said they tried key/mouse first and found the controller superior.
Because of those two combined, I wasn’t even going to try key/mouse. But I’ll give it a shot now before trying the controller. Thanks for the suggestion, Wulf.
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@Geoffrey: Totally agree re: multiplayer.
At least RPS doesn’t apply a big number tag to their reviews, but they’re in the minority for that.
It’s time that games reviews accepted that a lot of games are going to be SP-only, a few are going to be MP-only, and the majority of the rest are going to have wildly different SP and MP experiences and should probably get independent reviews (and scores) for each.
The current behaviour of “everything must be settled with a single score” just leads to weird things like docking points for lacking MP. Even worse, it leads to the more feeble-minded studios tacking on crap MP (or crap SP with bots) to try to please the reviewers rather than the players.
As Geoffrey noted, I’d much rather a game honestly declare itself SP-only, than to promise MP but not deliver anything worthwhile.
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I very much enjoyed the game, though I doubt I’ll ever play through it more than twice. Good, but shallow.
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I’ve played it both on PC and on console (360) – I certainly don’t find the mouse/keyboard controls -bad-, but things like targeting and switching powers felt far more natural with the controller. I’ve certainly switched disguises while gliding and can’t recall having any trouble with it at all, and I am in no way ambidextrous.
As for it looking kind of shabby – I turned the settings up as high as they would go and it’s just kind of drab. Look at GTA IV or Saints Row 2 for a sharp contrast. It’s not gamebreaking to me or anything, but I wish it looked nicer.
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the reviewer forgot to unlock adrenaline rush, no wonder he had so much trouble on the “slug-boss”…
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Yes, whenever someone mentions an “instant kill attack” in a prototype story/review, you know they didn’t check their upgrades. It’s literally impossible to be instakilled.
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@DK
No it isn’t impossible to be insta-killed. Far from it.
Each time I have played through the game I have bought every upgrade as soon as its available and make good use of them. There are however situations you can be squished.
Most obvious is (MINOR SPOILER!!!) when fighting Greene, the huge slug thing in Times Square. After you “kill” her the first time and she re-emerges from the ground if you are ANYWHERE near here the huge rippling explosion thingie she sets of will utterly destroy you, armour or no, and given that control gets taken away from you for an ” in game cut scene” type affair this is not wholly unlikely.
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Having played it a lot more I’m warming to the gleeful morality free destruction of it all when compared to the driven home with a sledgehammer morality of inFamous. Both good games, similar settings aiming for different things. Enjoy them both I say now for what they are! *Jump, glide, zoom, glide, kick, slice, dice, slice, dice, hijack tank, laugh manically*
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@Howard
As long as you have adrenaline rush whenever you would die from an attack the screen turns grey and you get about 10 extra seconds to escape. That’s more than enough time to get away and find somewhere to heal.
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All I know is that I’m never going to grow tired of getting a strike team after me, killing one helicopter with an air conditioning unit, and killing the other helicopter with the first one.
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I’m very surprised that the sheer awesomeness of the SHIELD power hasn’t been mentioned much. Simply deploy the shield and charge down a crowded footpath like a rhino… THWACKTHWACKTHWACK CRUNCH! That and things like body surfing and the splendidly gory street sweeper 360 whip make for some fun times killing things.
I’ve just got the blade and armor power and the game is starting to get a little grindy with the same kind of objectives and challenges and stuff over and over. The only thing now that’s really making me play it is the promise of more ridiculous carnage moves and upgrades to unlock as soon as I get enough points.
Also: why the hell do the foward and reverse controls in a tank magically switch around when you aim the turret to the back?? I want my tank to control like one please.
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@Wulf:
“Try the keyboard & mouse controls and turn targeting toggle on.”
This sounded like it might be the solution to my main frustration with the game, but no matter what I do the game will not allow me to enable that setting. I’ve searched several times on the steam forums, official forums, etc. and nobody has mentioned how to do this. Did anyone else have this issue?
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[I am incredibly unpleasant]
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Actually, “your mum”, the game’s supposed to be enjoyable. We’re paying for entertainment, not annoyance. If the only way a developer can manage “challenge” is via “frustration”, then they need to employ smarter designers.
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The knockbacks really aren’t that bad. Yeah you’re going to get owned late game if you’re not using the defensive powers (ala shield/armor).
Overall I think the game balance is nearly spot on (normal diff). You’re certainly never overpowered. Challenging but never frustrating.
As for the Greene boss fight, devestator attacks take her apart in 1-2 hits…..
I also think the voice acting was perfectly fine. The story, although slightly predictable, was actually pretty good. I’m sure I’m the minority but I for one, look forward to Prototype 2 which will undoubtedly be made.
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I really hate the use of the word toon to describe an ingame character..
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I didn’t watch the trailer before playing, and during my play around with the controls/moves at the start of the game, this is the one move that stood out from the rest, for it’s utter brutality. I was pretty shocked and awed. I think my reaction was “whoa”. I can’t say I feel strongly about it one way or the other though. It’s got shock value, that’s about it.
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Also, the controls are shit with kb-mouse. Port better pls devs.
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HOLD the targeting key down. Hold->time slows down->Point at target->Let go. It’s in the tutorial hints.
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I thougth the game was one of the best i ever played. I would have agreed that some of the missions are very hard to complete but at one point i realized that the Armor, Vehicle and Weapon skills are actually pretty important. I always just increased my virus skills like the claws etc. but that way i could hardly complete half the side missions and i had a lot of troubles completing some of the main missions. then i started infiltrating all the bases cranking all my weapon and vehicle skills up to max. after that i could hijack vehicles in no time and could really use them as effective weapons (without the skills it was really hard to hijack a tank because a lot of times i would get shot off and same with the helicopters because by the time u opened up the cockpit the heli would be pretty damaged). With the high vehicle skills you can hijack within seconds and with the high weapon skills you can easily complete all of the side missions!. Great game but i wish i would have had an early hint that these skills are actually very important!
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Whilst not entirely fitting with the pc theme of RPS, I own this on the PS3 and I have to say I really enjoyed it.
I think it somehow fails at its sandbox description though, there’s not a whole lot to do other than the main story (though I am still hunting for those damned web of intrigue targets three more to go!) sure there’s the side quests but they’re not exactly masses of content in there. Maybe I’m just spoiled with other sandbox games like morrowind etc (though yes they are of a different breed being RPGs and all).
Alex Mercer is pretty much an empty vessel though like some others say but I thought his sister was pretty good overall and besides I really enjoy the web of intrigue cut scenes, It’s something that I haven’t seen before (maybe it has been done before I don’t really know) but getting broken pieces of story and piecing them all together really satisfies something in me.
Overall It’s probably my most enjoyed game this year and I eagerly away the inevitable Prototype 2 announcement.
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Lots of somewhat pointless sandbox elements, set to a beyond cliche’d plot, with unremittingly unlikeable characters engaging in the usual “post-modern” melodramatic non-acting that’s become the norm for a lot of today’s cinema and games.
So pretty pathetic then? Well, it’s a little addictive, I’ll admit, but the control system is somewhat wayward and doesn’t understand the meaning of the word “precision”. Fights are usually little more than button-mashing with a reasonable targeting system in the middle of confusing mayhem.
6/10 from me. But a very close 7. It’s just a little on the wrong side of unlikeable for me. Will see it through to completion and sell promptly. Parkour aint half fun though.
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1. Anyone who doesn’t love the dark humour in Prototype is just dead inside, in my opinion. Whipfisting is funny on so many levels, I still giggle over the name.
2. Are we really complaining about gore? Did any of us turn into grannies? Something to consider; humans are predators, it’s healthy for us to have an outlet for hunting, and I love Prototype for being a pretty damned nice and clear definition of predatorial behaviour. Thanks to that, it’s therapeutic. It’s not real, no matter how real it looks. That person you rode on like a skateboard has no family, no kids, no little dog, and most importantly isn’t real at all, and is no different than a pawn on a chessboard.
3. The keyboard & mouse controls are amazing, I tend to smile often at how much thought went into them. Like scrolling the mousewheel for altitude with a helicopter… that’s stunning in its elegance and simplicity, if only GTA had thought of that, any GTA. But yes, Prototype has wonderful keyboard & mouse control… and earlier I beat that times square boss very easily and quickly by throwing a lot, consuming a lot of infected, and doing a hell of a lot of critical-mass strike attack thingies (wait for the military to give you cover and it’s easy). I think that anyone who has trouble with them might just be a bit crap at games, or at least, games which aren’t typically mainstream PC-ish.
I love Protoype, I want more. Gods, I hope Radical does Prototype II.
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The “humour” has been done before, and it’s wrapped in a delightful shell of self-hatred emo melodramaticism that’s truly abhorrent.
I ‘aint complaining about the gore Wulf, but despite your little orgasm over the ‘copter controls (a silver lining at best), this game commits a cardinal sin / dick move (thanks Yahtzee): enemies can leave you stunned as you get pummelled and you’ve no way out of it. And it happens with those tank-types all too often.
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Nice game, enjoying it so far, but it’s really quite arcadey. Not in a negative sense per say, but it did severely reminded me of The Hulk when it comes to actual gameplay.
Apart from that it’s a killer game compared to the still quite weak Hulk games. The premise is awesome.
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There is a way out of every attack, save the throw. Use RT to dash/roll.
The homing missles can get a little annoying, but again, you can unlock a break-fall move to snap you out, of the fall, and then dash to different wall, rather than sticking to one, expecting not to get hit.
It’s punishing, but I’m really pleased with the fact that there are a lot of ways around the game, and you may even get punished by some missions (later on, anyway) for sticking to what you know.
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As far as the story goes, I actually started out thinking “blah, this character makes no sense”, but as things are revealed, and you lose a sense of self in the character, it starts to reveal this super-meta-ego, and its relationship to just one of its consciousnesses. Without giving anything away, there’s a real tragedy to the character which only starts to make sense toward the end.
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This thread has died – blogs suck for a reason – but for what it’s worth I’d like to echo the Eurogamer review sentiments: the Times Square boss is the definition of unreasonable. Impossible to get near without losing massive amounts of heath, and the wayward targetting and control system makes it difficult just to hit the damn thing.
Unless you were luck enough to get a tank or a ‘copter, which I wasn’t. And there aren’t any about. Time to sell this game, methinks.
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I playing a GTA IV MP session with friends (after “few” hours PT). Damn.. the GTA gameplay feel like a damn boring childbirthday.. *lol*
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“This thread has died – blogs suck for a reason – but for what it’s worth I’d like to echo the Eurogamer review sentiments: the Times Square boss is the definition of unreasonable. Impossible to get near without losing massive amounts of heath, and the wayward targetting and control system makes it difficult just to hit the damn thing.”
Use the bullet-dive or hammerfist elbow drop from a building nearby, cannonball+musclemass also seems to work based on a video I saw (although that might need you to get close too much).
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“No it isn’t impossible to be insta-killed. Far from it.”
Not it literally is impossible. The Adrenaline rush gives you several seconds of invulnerability after getting hit with an attack that would kill you – irregardless of how much damage that attack would have done.
So yeah, it is literally impossible to be instakilled.
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Too late Mman, I sold the game (good riddance). Thankyou for the suggestion though.
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I started this game almost immediately after finishing infamous, and by comparison, I could hardly spend 30 minutes with it before putting it away.
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The single worst part about Prototype was the Elizabeth Green boss fight. I spent an hour and a half wearing her down with the Critical Pain Devastator, which I must have used a hundred times and still only got her to about 60% health.
Then, I gave up, got in a tank, shot her 15 times and she died. It was the biggest “fuck you” to my hard-earned powers I’ve seen in ages. There was no reason why a tank should be more powerful than the best single-target Devastator. Also, the endless stream of Hunters was stupid.
No boss-fight should take 2 hours to complete. I should note that I didn’t die a single time during that time, I just couldn’t put out enough damage. Vehicles died in seconds and though I could dispatch Hunters in 30-odd seconds, wave after wave kept coming…
I did complete it, mind, but the game structure was flawed at best.
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2 h Bossfight? Remember me on a Final Fantasy Ubr Epic Endboss.. *g*
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