Prototype

We’ve just consumed a terrified screaming woman, our tentacles ripping through her stricken body as we absorb her whimpering remains. Having replenished our health, we turn our attention to the horrified quad of soldiers frantically firing at us, morphing an arm into a huge organic blade. Plunging into them, we send arms, legs and torsos spiralling to the pavement in a spray of blood, before leaping away and running up the sheer side of a building, blood covered, remorseless and unstoppable. We don’t know who we are or what’s been done to us, but we’re coming, and our enemies had better run.

If nothing else, you sometimes feel extremely powerful playing Prototype, Radical Entertainment’s violent open-world game. The tale of Alex Mercer, a man who wakes up in a morgue with little memory of who he is but possessing great bio-organic powers, is less a case of ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ and more a case of ‘with great power do whatever the hell you like’. The whole sandbox New York City, which you quickly discover is infected by a horrific mutating viral outbreak, is your playground as you leap blocks, run up buildings, pick up cars and even use the weapons and vehicles of your enemies. As you quest to discover who diddled with your DNA, you’ll cut a bloody destructive swathe through the city. Given how powerful you are we were quite surprised at the stealth elements of the game, with Alex able to morph into anyone he absorbs and hide, but it’s totally necessary; later in the game you get everything including the kitchen sink thrown at you, pushing your abilities beyond their limit.

Our introduction to the game is Alex at his fully powered height, and it’s a cacophonous, blood-filled riot. We barely had any idea what we were doing, lashing out at the troops and hordes of monsters with claws, subterranean tentacles and fists. In true game tradition, you lose them all after that intro, regaining them in a flashback story by earning EP (evolution points). You’ll play through 31 quite varied missions, ranging from sheer brawl-fests to infiltration. The trouble with Prototype is that by the time you build yourself back up to your initial god-like level, repetitive grind and an ever increasing number of enemies have sucked much of the initial joy out of proceedings.

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