Prototype 2

Use godlike powers… The blurb on the back of the box, they are right.

If you haven’t had the fortunate time to know the Prototype series then this game may seem odd to you. An open world superhero game based upon eating people, killing people, murdering people, absorbing people and basically any other acronym on the death of a person/monster due to you. True then that people would expect this game to not exactly hit the emotional highs of other games as your surfboard your way across the streets of new york on a zombie’s corpse. Oh how wrong you are, come and listen to my tale of woe and lots of murder.

The story of the sequel goes as follows, you are James Heller, a former marine in the US army who’s wife and daughter were both mysteriously killed by a rampaging virus known as the ‘Mercer Virus’ which has the effect of either killing people or turning them into rampaging zombielike monsters. The virus itself is named after the protagonist of the first game, Alex Mercer, who in my eyes is the greatest super-character in both gaming and comic book history. Essentially being a god, he has ultimate limb and body regeneration, super speed, strength capable of lifting cars up the sides of buildings, the ability to absorb biomass and consume it, the ability to consume people and gain their form and memories and finally the ability to create creatures and monsters out of biomass. Truly a guy you do not want to screw with. Well it turns out James Heller has a personal vendetta against Alex and wants to hunt him down, a quest that is unfortunately turned upside down when Alex captures him and turns him into something like himself, giving him all the same powers he had. The plan he says is to work with James in order to defeat the sinister biotech and military organisation known as Blackwatch. You, as James, must get to the bottom of what exactly Blackwatch is doing and also discover exactly what Alex has planned for New York. The story, while seemingly unoriginal, is actually quite complex when you take into account you can eat the brains of people off the street, discovering more about the past events and learning more about your own future. This feature alone makes the Prototype series very original and means you can get as involved into the story as you want to be. A feature I sorely wish more games implemented.

Say hello to James Heller (and yes, that’s an arm blade)

In terms of how the game looks, it’s a mix of pretty good and not so great. New York is fully modeled and realised, being very expansive, however most of it looks quite similar with no discernible locations. The islands are split up into 3 parts, The Green Zone, Yellow Zone and Red Zone. Green being pure and without the virus, yellow being slightly infected and red being fully infected. This causes huge spires of biomass to appear in the landscape, monsters made of flesh to walk the streets and blackwatch soldiers making patrols around the areas. This diversity allows you to see a full progression and this is where the visual style really comes into play, making some areas seem like a distant planet rather than New York. The voice acting is fair, with James and Alex really getting the special treatment however most of the side characters are rather forgettable. This is the main downfall of prototype 2 really due to the fact that the story really is centred around the so called ‘Web of Intrigue’ with the memory consumption mechanic and following James’ own story, outside of that there is not much of interest.

The gameplay however is when things really come alive. Being an open world kill-athon (that’s… totally a word) you literally do have the powers of a god. You can parkour around the city, pick up cars and throw them on innocent bystanders or even be stealthy by consuming a soldier and using his form to walk around with his squad. If you really wanted to you could walk around the city as a soldier, using your gun to take out the infected and return to base. Variety really is the spice of life here, and it provides the utter enjoyment you will get out of this game. You can transform your arms into a variety of biomass infused weapons including hammers, whips and even blades. You can pick and choose how you want to approach combat scenarios and even try other options such as hijacking tanks and helicopters, using conventional weaponry like machine guns and rocket launchers, or maybe just pick up a guy and throw him so hard into his friend that he explodes. This provides the sheer enjoyment of killing in the most spectacular of ways. Each of the story missions flow well and each of the side missions provide an incentive in the form of mutations, basically small upgrades for your character. It allows your progression throughout the game to feel more rewarding and worthwhile as you worked hard to get to where you are. This game has one of the best styles of character progression throughout gaming and is perhaps one of the main incentives to playing through multiple times.

And say hello to Alex Mercer, Hoodie wearing badass.

With all these positives however Prototype 2 does have some negatives. As mentioned while the story is slightly improved from the first one by having a more coherent tone, in the end I just didn’t like Heller as much as Mercer. Heller in my opinion was just a cursing, hating soldier boy while as even in the first game Alex had some interesting character development to him, the dead wife and daughter thing really doesn’t add much depth the Heller. Along with this the game can eventually become slightly repetitive, though the different ways to approach situations will hopefully help appease that. Finally after completing the main story mission there are small challenge events that can be played to help get high scores and unlock various things in the free roaming sections (such as a playable Alex Mercer skin! my favourite!) however these challenges become annoying after a while and just end up in the way, making the endgame become rather boring unless you just go around and kill things, which to some people is all you really need.

In the end however Prototype 2 is a worthy successor to Prototype. While I preferred Alex Mercer to James Heller that little fact can be easily changed by swapping a player skin, making this the prototype game to buy. With so many graphical, gameplay and setting changes you can be sure that this game is a worthy sequel, and if you can find it at a good price a good buy. Now I’m off to eat some more people and elbow drop onto tanks, ciao!