Look, up in the sky. It’s Spider-Man. It’s the Hulk. No, it’s… what is it?!

by Florian Eberhorn

Fun factor: Fun

Worth to: Buy

Activision’s next attempt at devastating Manhattan is a fast-paced, brutal action title with an intriguing story, even if a certain friendly neighborhood wall-crawler was apparently used as its Prototype.

Manhattan, New York. Day 18 of the Infection. The City is in ruins. A vicious virus has overrun the island and infected the population, turning the people into bloodthirsty monsters. The End is nigh. Spider-Man vaults off a rooftop -- no, wait. See what happened there? Here you are, looking at the first few minutes of Prototype, and you suddenly get the feeling that you’ve been here before. You flash back to the beginning of another Activision game, Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, and you think to yourself “Huh?” It’s not quite the same, but almost.

Jeepers, symbiotic creeper!

Imagine our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, Peter Parker, haunted by the mysterious Venom-symbiote, an alien life form that offers him immense power for the apparent cost of his humanity. (Yes, I know. Just bear with me, here.) Imagine Peter going off the dark edge, fully succumbing to the bloodthirsty call of his unwanted house-guest, killing everyone and everything in his way, consuming their bodies to feed the Venom inside. Imagine how his conversion to the Dark Side gives him new, brutal powers to use against his enemies, making him stronger, swifter and deadlier than ever. Imagine how he forsakes his webs, preferring to run and jump and glide through the Big Apple instead, still full of grace, yet much more powerful. Imagine the city being overrun by the same symbiotes, infecting the population. Then imagine Peter falls down and bumps his head, forgetting pretty much everything.



And right there you have Alex Mercer, dark, moody hero of Prototype. To get it over with, yes, Prototype is pretty much a darker, R-rated re-imagining of Spider-Man: Web of Shadows (with a little Incredible Hulk – Ultimate Destruction mixed in for good measure), from the basic storyline and game structure to most of the gameplay to the missions and side-quests. The games even begin exactly the same way, with a short cut-scene and the introductory tutorial, where you start at the end of the story with all your powers available to learn the ropes, and then reverted to an earlier, less powerful self at the beginning of the story. It’s darker and bloodier and it’s much more sinister; there are no webs and some new powers, but the similarities are almost blatantly obvious. Then again, Spider-Man Web of Shadows was actually quite good, and arguably the best Spider-Man game ever, so a bit of bloody recycling might not be all that bad an idea. Still. Medium shame-on-you, Activision.

Anyways.

If it’s in the way, it’s collateral

So back to the story… Manhattan, New York. Day 18 of the Infection. The City is in ruins. A vicious virus has overrun the island and infected the population, turning the people into bloodthirsty monsters. The End is nigh... Far above the turmoil, Alex Mercer, a seemingly normal young man, stands on a rooftop and glances down at the destruction below. Somehow, all of this is his fault. But Alex will find the one responsible, and he will end it, one way or another. And he flings himself off the roof into the burning streets of Manhattan.

From now on, you are in control of Alex, and as you make your way through the monster-infested streets, fighting the infected populace, along nightmarish monsters that came with the virus and a very trigger-happy military, you quickly find out that Alex is not so normal after all. Alex is a mutation, the Prototype for a new human weapon -- a super-soldier. Alex is incredibly strong, strong enough to lift and throw cars, and he is able to reconfigure his genetic structure, shifting and altering his form on a molecular level. A human version of the shape-shifting evil T-1000 Terminator in T2: Judgment Day, Alex can alter his body into devastating weapons, as well as consume people and enemies, absorbing their essence to regain his strength, and even taking other peoples’ forms.



As you run, jump and glide through the streets, the game teaches you to slice, pounce, disembowel, whip and crash your way through the city, giving you a feel for your powers and the (mostly frantic) free-running-like movement. For the Prototype, no obstacle is insurmountable. You can just run through or over whatever is in your way, straight up the side of buildings, launching yourself in the air, jumping tall buildings in a single leap. From the streets to the rooftops and back again, you easily forge a path of destruction through hordes of infected people, viral monsters, soldiers, tanks and helicopters, and, if they happen to be in the way, unfortunate civilians. It is evident quite early on that Alex is rather indiscriminate when it comes to innocent bystanders, and his brutal assortment of combat powers will most certainly add to what the military so coyly dubbed “collateral damage.”

An “absorbing” story

After you had some time to familiarize yourself with Prototype’s gameplay mechanics and the control scheme, the story moves you 18 days back in time, to the day of the outbreak where the game begins in earnest. Alex is dead, apparently one of the first victims of this mysterious new virus. But as the scientists move to examine his body, Alex awakens. He flees the research facility and finds himself changed. He is stronger and faster than any human being should be, and his body is changing. It seems that instead of killing him, the virus changed him into something more. If that is a good thing, he doesn’t know it. In fact, he doesn’t remember anything. Apart from his name, everything else is a blank. The only thing he does know is that he’s going to find out. Somehow. Unfortunately, his amnesia appears to be permanent, and he can’t just walk around, sucking out other people’s memories. Or can he?

Prototype’s approach to story-telling is quite unique, both in its presentation and its perspective. In what might be a nod to the game’s inspiration (Spider-Man: WoS), Prototype’s background story is presented through the “Web of Intrigue,” an assortment of “collected” memories. Alex’s unique condition gives him the power to absorb other human beings, and if the person happens to hold relevant information to Alex’s quest for revenge, Alex gains access to these memories as well. Most of these memories are only snippets, but the more information you absorb, the more sense everything starts to make.



Like breadcrumbs in the woods, each memory leads to another person and another memory, guiding you on your road to vengeance. Unfortunately, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and as you progress through the story you will not only find that you were a guinea pig for a secret military conspiracy dating back to the 1960s, but in your struggle for answers you will also unwittingly unleash the deadly virus upon Manhattan. And while the city slowly succumbs to the spreading infestation, and the sinister military gains more and more control of Manhattan, you and the few people still willing to help try to figure out who exactly is behind all of this, and what, if anything, can be done to stop it.

A variety of ways to deal dirty deeds

Just like another Activision game I will refrain from mentioning from here on, Prototype has you free-roaming through the streets and over the rooftops of Manhattan as you fight from one mission to the next. Movement through the city is mostly done by running, jumping and gliding, and the fluid, acrobatic animations make it a pure joy to experience. After a few hours, though, your hand will hurt from keeping down the running trigger. It’s still fun, but it’s painful fun.

Besides the story missions that will move you along the narrative, there are a variety of side missions: killing sprees, military support missions, movement and target-gliding challenges, and the consumption of specific individuals. Not only do these challenges hone your skills, they also reward you with experience, pardon, Evolution Points (EP) to unlock and upgrade new moves and powers, and in some cases even “Web of Intrigue” memories. More of these will become available as you complete the longer and much more challenging story missions, and, as the game throws you a couple of curveballs, like taking away all your offensive powers, even change accordingly.

More powers and moves will be accessible as you complete missions and challenges, and what mighty powers they are. From the powerful, parcour-inspired movement, to jumping and gliding, to his different offensive and defensive powers, Alex Mercer plays and feels like one bad mofo.



On the offensive side, Alex’s powers are various and deadly -- a veritable banquet of pain offering slow, fast, weak, strong, short-ranged and long-ranged attacks. (And if I wanted to rub in the superhero-knock-off thing a little more, I could call them things like “Wolverine’s Claws,” “Hulk’s Fists,” “Spider-Man’s Venom Whip/Harpoon,” “Thor’s Might,” “Captain America’s Shield” and… “Somebody’s Blade-Arm,” but who in his right mind would stoop that low?)

All attack powers feature quite a lot of different combos, and to give your moves a little more impact you can charge each attack individually. Still, the more moves you unlock the more difficult it will get to keep them all in mind, and some powerful attacks are a little awkward to manage. But those are the thankfully few exceptions of an otherwise solid, intuitive and visceral combat system. In addition to his viral powers, Alex can also wield a variety of military weapons, use cars and parts of the environment as projectiles, and even hijack military tanks, transports and helicopters, and they do the dirty deed just as well.

Body-snatching your way to victory

By spending your earned EP, all of your powers, as well as your movement, can be upgraded with new moves, abilities, and eventually devastating -- wait for it -- Devastator special attacks that can instantly immolate all enemies in the immediate area. Once unlocked, your active power can be changed on the fly through an onscreen radial menu. To make a quick change in the heat of battle less lethal for our (anti-)hero, the action conveniently slows down while you choose your power; not long enough to linger, but long enough to make the right choice, which is a good thing, really, since the battles in Prototype are quite often more than just heated affairs, and different enemies have different weaknesses. With often more than 40 enemies on screen attacking, some battles in the later stages of the game can become quite overwhelming, which might be due in part to the often insufficient targeting mechanic and an at times very slow camera, but mostly because the game likes to keep things interesting.

Besides the afore mentioned curveballs, Prototype’s difficulty curve matches your evolution step by step, throwing more and tougher enemies at you as you grow in power. This keeps the game always challenging and prevents it from turning into a mindless brawler, as does another, very important aspect of Alex’s power: his ability to consume and absorb. In addition to regaining his health and absorbing memories, Alex’s ability gives him the power to change into the last person he consumed.



Prototype isn’t all about Shock and Awe. Even with your powers, given enough opposition you will go down rather quickly, and sometimes a mission requires a more subtle approach. Why break down the door when you can take a lone soldier’s place and walk right through, ordering an Artillery-Strike on your target of choice? And once you’ve lost your pursuers, you can change back and vanish in the crowd. Different “disguises” will give you different options, and they will hold until you do something completely inhuman or openly hostile. Sadly, it sounds better than it actually is, and apart from an outright attack, your human enemies will hardly ever see through your cover, even if you run up a forty-foot wall right in front of them.

Body-Switching might provide a certain safety against your human aggressors, but the demon-like monsters that came with the virus have no problem seeing right through your cover, and next to a variety of different armed soldiers, tanks and helicopters, you will also fight the various ferocious minions of the virus, keeping the combat engaging and diverse. There are a lot of fights to be won. The virus is spreading; every day more of the city grows infected and therefore hostile to you. Military bases will be built, viral hives will emerge. Martial law, chaos in the streets, cats and dogs living together, mass-hysteria! Manhattan is changing right before your eyes into something more akin to hell than New Jersey. And you’re the only one that can stop it.

Summary

Despite being a template game, Prototype’s brutal, intuitive and gripping action makes it a strong and quite addictive title in its own right. It’s by no means flawless, however. The targeting mechanic can be tricky to frustrating, the enemy AI often quite astonishing in its simplicity, and stealthily consuming an enemy often results in a pretty embarrassing graphical glitch. But there are always flaws in games, and Prototype is so massive and diverse in its gameplay that whatever flaws there are, are buried under the ever-so-engaging combat. Because despite all the fancy and subtle options offered by Prototype’s mostly decent version of a stealth system, the combat is where Prototype’s heart lies -- its undeniable, if bloody, attraction.