Prototype (2009)

I love this group. Back when Prototype released, a friend picked it up from a torrent site and would post about the game on Facebook every now and then. Still, I never ended up getting a copy for myself until late in twenty-twelve. Amazon had a deal for both Prototype and its sequel for $7.49. Still, even after buying it, it took me almost five years before I ever got around to installing the thing. Now, thanks to you fellow assassins and the cameraderie of beating games together, I can cross it off my list! Number eleven of The 26 games I’m trying to beat this year, which I’ve been meaning to play for years, is done!

Prototype throws you into the action immediately. As soon as you’re in control, there’s already people panicking in the streets, explosions going off all over the place, tanks rolling through the city of New York, and general mayhem all around with you in the center of it all wielding godlike abilities. After that kind of intro/tutorial, I was expecting it to take a sudden turn into calmness where I’d have zero powers and would have to go walking through the city like any other idiot. But it didn’t. Well, it did take some powers away, but I could still smash the crap out of everything around me, run up the sides of buildings, fly through the air, and generally continue wreaking havoc. Keeping the fun going was an unexpectedly awesome design choice there. Even Half-Life takes away all your weapons at a few key points.

And that’s really the strength of the game – letting you play some crazy chaos-bringing bio-genetic lunatic soaring around Manhattan smashing things up with the giant fists, blades, or tendrils of your messy bio-deforming mass. That, and the occasional pseudo stealthy romp where you suck the life out of someone from behind while everyone else carefully pretends not to see it happening. Definitely, the basic gameplay is the good part of Prototype. The bad part? The story. It’s crap. Conspiracy, military, genetics, experiments, blah blah blah, I don’t even care anymore, just let me keep throwing helicopters at people.

The game really drove my hands crazy at first, playing with a controller, with nearly every button mapped to something frequently useful. I wish the helicopters and tanks controlled a little better, but after getting used to having a variety of powers, I could move myself through the world fairly fluidly. And the re-creation of the whole of Manhattan Island isn’t bad either. It’s not super-detailed, but all the major landmarks seem to be there, and it works great as a backdrop to the gameplay.

I felt that the gameplay was also surprisingly well balanced. It can get frustrating at times, but once you learn what you were doing wrong, the objectives are usually achievable after another attempt or two… or three. One challenge in particular definitely required me to have a power fully upgraded though. There’s a good variety of secondary “Events” completely separate from the story – my favorite type involved base jumping into the center of a target. My least favorite would be the timed checkpoint runs, except that some of the ones where you have to kill a large number of things are really tough. There’s one where you’re flying a helicopter where I’m still not sure what I’m doing wrong. Most Events were relatively simple to just barely get “Gold” on though. And there’s two different collectible items: Hints, and Landmarks – I just grabbed whatever I saw and didn’t care too much about getting 100% there. I’ve kinda hated that type of collectible ever since GTA Vice City and the first Assassin’s Creed. And apparently, whatever you do just allows more upgrades – no matter which events you do or don’t play, the ending of the game will be the same.

After finishing it, I think my earliest impression of this game still fits – Prototype is basically a good mix of Just Cause, The Darkness II, and Saints Row 3 (but you can only drive tanks and helicopters). If that sounds fun, maybe give it a shot.

• Prototype
  #11 of 26 (2017)

  30 hours playtime

  no achievements

The stats: Time played: 23 hours 15 minutes (in-game clock) over the course of two real-life weeks, “Web of Intrigue” videos seen: 79/131, Landmark collectibles: 95/200, Hint collectibles: 19/50, Upgrade (“Evolution”) points: 16,832,276, Deaths: 55, Vehicles destroyed: 3,445, Things absorbed into my own putrid flesh (“Consumed”): 988, Movement Events: 9/10 Gold, one unstarted, Glide Events: 10/10 Gold, Kill Events: 20 Gold, 1 Bronze, 1 no medal, and 2 unstarted, War Events: 8/9 Gold, one unstarted, Consume Events: 8/10 Easy Military, 3/3 Easy Infected, and skipped all the rest. I think I’m missing only two Combat upgrades and a two or three upgrades where I have to consume someone to get it. But I can do all of that in Free Roam now, post-beating-the-game. Or there’s a New Game+.