by: Dameon White

July 04, 2009

I never would have thought I would say it, but there is such a thing as too many powers. Prototype does an excellent job at making you feel indestructible, but there are way too many powers to upgrade and unlock in this game. When you have more powers available than you can assign to logical button combinations, you begin to cross the threshold of accessibility and that’s one area that Prototype lacks shine. For example, there are combinations in the game would require you to press and hold X and B. What? Do you know how hard it is to take two fingers and press those two buttons at the same time? Typically, you’ll find that you have to remove your hand from how you’d normally hold the controller or you could try to fit your entire thumb to go across the pad, but that’s also uncomfortable and more often than not you’ll just press Y and A while doing so. That’s just awful design right there and Radical Entertainment should have known at the very instant that they had to create that combination because they ran out of other combinations that it was time to trim down the abilities a little. Even worse is that some of the abilities with the most awkward button combination are also the most powerful.

Holding LB will bring up the abilities wheel and slow down time to allow you to select a different power. Using the right thumbstick to scroll through the wheel is the big issue here because it’s all but accurate unless you’re trying to select something and the top bottom, left or right. Selecting anything that’s not directly straight up/down or left/right will usually require a bit of fine thumbstick work and it just gets annoying.

Prototype tries to overcome this by allowing you to assign one power to each of the four sides of the D-pad, but instead of being able to assign whatever power you want, powers are broken down into four types (offensive, defensive, ranged and disguise) and you can only put that type of power on the corresponding D-Pad arrow. This means you’re sort of forced to using the awkward wheel no matter what. There’s even use of the RB when you’re using military disguises that let you use specific abilities that military personnel would have, such as being able to call in air support to bomb something.

As you can see, there are quite a lot of abilities in this game and it’s only trying to use them all that takes away from the fluidity the rest of the game has. Not to mention, not all of the powers are necessary to beat the game. You can get through with about 4 of the over a dozen abilities. However, to its credit, using certain abilities over others does make certain fights a lot easier.

Unlocking all of the abilities will also take no less than either two playthroughs or one playthrough where you also completed a large amount of the side missions, events and gathered a lot of the games collectible orbs scattered across Manhattan. Events, as aforementioned are heavily varied, but that doesn’t mean they are entirely unique, as most are pretty repetitive, but the action in the game usually makes them enjoyable enough to where you don’t get tired doing them. As you unlock and upgrade your abilities by completing these they also become more fun as you find even more insane ways to take out wads of infected.

Taking place in Manhattan, the city feels incredibly large in overall scope. Graphically, Prototype isn’t the most stellar game we’ve seen, but it’s far from being ugly, with smooth textures on buildings and not once did the game slow down despite all the craziness going on during incredibly apocalyptic battles. If there was any part of the graphics engine I would gripe about it’s primarily with orb pop-in. The game has a large number of collectible orbs scattered across the city and these also give you a pretty big boost to your Evolve Points for upgrading your powers. However, they can be pretty hard to spot despite being in close proximity. When gliding above the city (as you will find is the best way to travel in the game) you can’t really see them unless you’re close to them. I’ve even stood right next to one and didn’t see it until I turned the camera around a bit.

Alex Mercer is one pissed off dude, as it’s not only apparent in the sheer violence he unleashes, but also in his voice acting. Prototype’s story is incredibly convoluted and chances are you will almost just stop paying attention to it for the most part. The Web of Intrigue doesn’t help much since the order you collect these items is completely random and often times you don’t know who’s talking about what or why what they are saying is even important. Still, Alex’s voice acting is especially pleasing and I’d like to give kudos to his voice actor. During cutscenes Alex shows quite a bit of detached emotion and when chasing people down during game battles the chatter he yells out adds to the battle. Everyone else’s voice acting was passable, but definitely not to the level of Alex’s. Still, the story is far from being the most engrossing, but has a decent twist at the end that clears up the smoke and mirrors pretty well.

Prototype is far from being perfect, but what it does best – action – it arguably does better than any other game it sits next to. Sure, at times the difficulty ramps up way too high, the control scheme is a bit messy depending on the abilities you’re trying to use and the story is convoluted, but there’s no denying that Prototype is one hell of a sandbox action blast. You’ve never felt unstoppable unless you’ve played as Alex Mercer.

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Prototype is far from being perfect, but what it does best, action, it arguably does better than any other game it sits next to. Sure, at times the difficulty ramps up way too high, the control scheme is a bit messy depending on the abilities you’re trying to use and the story is convoluted, but there’s no denying that Prototype is one hell of a sandbox action blast. You’ve never felt unstoppable unless you’ve played as Alex Mercer.

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