Prototype

The video game industry’s obsession with “open world” games is getting a bit old now, Grand Theft Auto did a good thing with GTA3 but it seems ever since every other big release seems to want to clone its mechanics around it. Sure a lot of these seemingly open world games may only have the big sprawling city in common with the game but after all the Spider-Mans, Assassin’s Creeds, Saint’s Rows, and other countless open world games of late, you can’t help but wish the next innovation would just hurry up.

Which brings me to Prototype, another in the long line of games which gives you a big city and sets you off to climb sky scrapers, torment civilians and do stuff that would be remembered as one of the worst disasters in the history of man if it really happened. Right off the bat the biggest annoyance with Prototype comes from this reluctance to move from the codes and conventions set in place with these type of games.

Once again you’re in New York. Once again the city will be filled with side quests that rank in as pretty much pointless. And once again you’ll be playing one of the biggest releases of the summer. However, with that, Prototype isn’t a bad game, in fact it’s far from it. In Prototype you play as Alex Mercer, a man who wakes up one day to find out his body has super human powers but can’t quite remember why.

The story line that pushes you through this 15 hour adventure feels almost ripped off from various X-Men back stories but it works and as it develops it becomes one of the better stories in a video game of recent memory. As you do progress through this story Alex will become more and more powerful and thus opens up the game a lot more.

The game features an extremely robust upgrading system, this system is not only very well implemented but can radically alter the game depending on which options you choose to follow up. While most games that offer a lot of upgrades to your character end up becoming redundant by the end, as you usually end up with everything, thus making the order in which you get them the only real point to the system. In Prototype what you choose from the start will be what you learn to traverse the world with.