Prototype

8.1

Format Xbox 360

Developer Radical Entertainment

Publisher Activision

Genre Action

26 Comments

It was somewhere in between bowling an old lady from the top of the Empire State Building and halving thirty people at once with a whip of an infected tendril that it finally clicked: Prototype isn't aiming for subtle. Carnage on a grand scale. Enough blood to earn a truck load of platinum donor cards. Civilian deaths in their thousands (onscreen pop-ups take great glee in delivering the toll). It opens with you performing elbow drops on tanks in Times Square - and this is a quieter moment. Once more with feeling: subtle it ain't.

Neither does it subtly hide its roots. A 'superpower sandbox' game, it follows in the footsteps first laid by Spider-Man 2, further enlarged by Hulk: Ultimate Destruction (also Radical's work) and more recently bounded from by Crackdown. While the GTAs and Saints Rows of this world dabble with the destructive abilities of a single human, this game casts you as God. And where those previous examples too often fall down is in casting you as a hero god, shackled by good guy status. But here you'll see bad Peter Parker kerb-stomp a cop's head into a jammy puddle.

	Prototype Official trailer 4:42  Missions trailer Prototype Official trailer 4:42  Missions trailer Age Restricted Content Please enter your date of birth below in order to verify your age before watching this video     Verify Age You must be at least 18 years of age. Play Again? Missed something? Just watch it again.. Watch More Videos Browse related videos and see what's new & popular Share This Video Email this video, or embed it into your own web page Prototype Official trailer 4:42  Missions trailer Prototype Official trailer 4:42  Missions trailer                                                                                                             DEBUG - State:  Status: skip to curtain Now playing More videos Share this   Now playing More videos Share this   Email this video to your friends Enter your friends' email addresses below, one per line. This functionality is currently disabled. Embed this video into your own page Copy & paste the HTML code below into your own web page or blog. <iframe src="http://web.archive.org/web/20090612204924if_/http://www.computerandvideogames.com/video_embed.php?id=2598" width="418" height="378" border="0" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> Prototype Official trailer 4:42  Missions trailer Now playing More videos Share this

Watch tons of other game videos in HD over on our video channel!

With great power doesn't come great responsibility, but the great desire to use said great power on causing great discomfort to great pedestrians. Uncle Ben's original point was more succinct, but Prototype's is way more fun. Technically, our hero (genero-scowler Alex Mercer) is trying to balance his attention between the army out to neutralise him and the infected hoard eating up New York, but this doesn't mean you have to be kind to the New Yorkers stuck in the middle of it all. They're nothing more than health packs and guinea pigs to test out new powers on.

And what brilliantly vicious powers they are. A kind of pic-'n'-mix of comic book lore, Radical take Spider-Man's agility, but replace Parker's weedy biff-pow-paff fisticuffs with Hulk's brute strength and Wolverine's razor sharp claws. There's a great deal of comedy in using Mercer's diseased biceps to lob people the width of Manhattan Island or splat them against walls (we don't want to know where Radical get the spot-on sound effects from), but the blood-drenched stars of the show are undoubtedly Alex's shape-shifting claws and tendrils.

Bodies are split at the waist, severed diagonally and cleaved perfectly in two - leaving both parts to slurp away from one another in comedy fashion. Claws mince. Giant bony fists pulverise heads into mush. Groundspikes jut from the tarmac to impale folk in an upward fountain of jiggling corpses. Whipfists turn Alex into Indiana Jones, albeit an Indiana Jones who can dismember ten at a time with a sweeping crack. And their arrivals are perfectly paced, so you're always motivated to earn XP to unlock that next bit of unpleasantness. Mindless murder? You can't go wrong.

Luckily, Prototype does mindful murder, too. Alex's forms are geared towards a variety of situations, and morphing between them is the key to not just efficient combat, but beautiful combat. (Well, as beautiful as a taxi through a helicopter can get, anyway.) For example, hammerfists can be used to clear away small fry before you unsheathe your sword arm to go one-on-one with a tank. For a more creative flourish, you could use your whip arm to yank an air vent from a rooftop before sprouting burly musclearms to lob it with added oomph. All while freefalling. From the Chrysler Building.

Considering that Spider-Man's camera could freak out if you even threw a punch, this is no small feat. Thanks mainly to a lock-on that always picks out the biggest threat (no small thing when you consider it has to often pick between two enemy sides at any one time) you're not just able to pull off these moves but watch them play out in all their glory. There's a deliberate smidge of slowdown just as you lock-on in order to give you time to ensure that you have the foe you want in your sights, but this effect also acts as the game taking a quick intake of breath before you do something undeniably awesome. It's a nice trick.

On the flipside to the bloody havoc is the game's stealthy alter ego. Using a horribly gooey body-absorbing technique, Alex converts biological foes into health and can steal other human forms. Got the army on your tail? Freedom is as easy as breaking the line of sight and morphing into an old lady. Not got an army on your tail? Do it anyway. There's nothing odder than an 80-year-old biddy hotfooting it up the Rockefeller Plaza. The real focus, however, is duplicating military personnel for strategic purposes. Alas, this isn't as well implemented as one might hope.

In a grunt's body you can walk undetected in their bases. That's handy. You can order down artillery strikes. Good for crowd control. Eat a commander and you enter private quarters to absorb the cream of the army crop, boosting weapon efficiency to boot. What a great idea! Er, but that's kind of it. You enter the same bases, using the same technique over and over again. Far too easy to succeed, it becomes more of a habit than a task. Once you unlock the 'stealth consume' move you can eat a hanger of thirty men without batting an eyelid. Isn't tension the idea of stealth?

By no means a colossal misfire - it's funny to see a hanger dotted with thirty dropped rifles - just not quite the creative free-for-all enabled by Alex's combat skills. The real problem is that, a few strict stealth missions aside, it's really no skin off Alex's nose to go in all guns blazing. Hop the fence, gobble up the commander, enter the base and activate a devastator attack to kill everyone in an instant. Trust us, if Sam Fisher could grow a twenty foot tentacle he'd soon jack in that shadow nonsense. Bombastic nastiness is so effortless in Prototype. Why reject it?

Radical took a big gamble making Alex a doddle to command. You hold the trigger and you run up skyscrapers. Draw out your riot shield and people, cars and trees will ricochet away like skittles as you sprint between them. Don't like a helicopter? Flick an air vent at them and they're gone for good. Did an entire street of people look at you the wrong way? Activate a devastator attack - ground bursting spikes in a twenty metre radius, for example - and they're all insta-mince. Practically every controller button is a death button; what could Radical do to stop you?

It's here Prototype most radically parts company with earlier superhero sandbox games. As Hulk grew stronger, so did enemy health bars. As Spidey gets faster, so to do the forces of evil. How obvious. How dull. Prototype is just as guilty of cracking out the old mega-enemies (under the guise of the ever-evolving infection), but it recognises it has to do more. Using the rapidly spreading virus as justification, Radical push the scale of action to a city-wide level, where even Alex's most colourful abilities will struggle to get your attention.

First, they give you a god, then they give you a god-sized problem. Hundreds of zombies scrabble amongst smoking car wrecks. Building-high hydras sprout from the streets. The assault rifle fire that tickled Alex before is replaced with grenades that destroy the meat in his hands that he intends to consume. Tanks light up the streets with barrages that push Alex to the rooftops, where awaiting helicopters are ready to bully him back down. For once, when the cut-scene villains boast about "closing in on him" you actually feel it.

You can expect similar scenes from some of the earlier missions, but once the game reaches the two-thirds mark the action of the missions spills out into every waking minute of game time. Smoke billows. Beasts burst from water towers. Looking down from the roofs you watch tanks gun street after street of infected to shreds. It's as impressive a riot set-piece as we've seen, but also one that strips some of the fun from messing around in-between missions. Enjoy those recrimination-free early days because they don't come back.

And while enemy numbers and chaotic happenings are a technical marvel, it is at the expense of a compelling environment. Although never succumbing to the glitches of the recent Hulk and Spider-Man titles (although Alex's gliding ability can reveal some ugly truths about the draw distance), the free-roaming city could have been lifted directly: it's New York at its blocky worst. We understand that geometrical simplicity is required to pull off Alex's parkour moves (the odd overhang he does hit can befuddle him), but do we really need to be here?

Hulk and Spider-Man were tethered to the Big Apple by the licence; Prototype is entirely in the hands of Radical. They could have set it in Norwich if they wanted to. Instead we get the same endless plains of glass-fronted skyscrapers, red brick universities and dock-side warehouses (although at least they kept away from the equally ubiquitous Las Vegas). There's a reason the game opens in Times Square: it's the only 100 square metres that has any colour. Factor in the disease slowly spreading through the city, entangling buildings in red vines, and the longer you play, the more hellishly vague the place becomes.

Similarly, if you've explored this city before you may get déjà-vu during some of the missions. Chase this chap for so many blocks. Destroy these machines on those rooftops. Defend this place for three minutes. In making a game about overblown superpowers, Radical cannot play with the minutia of city life that enables GTA's mission variety - but do super powered beings always need to retread the same ground? Stealth missions hint at a grander vision, but they still feel like, well, prototypes, for a finished project.

Don't get us wrong, this is by no means a deal breaker; we just wish Prototype's structure as a whole had the energy and vigour of its protagonist. People poke fun at Spider-Man's balloon rescuing missions, but what else is Parker to do? Saving balloons is part of Spider-Man's MO. Alex is free from the tiresome chores of the well intentioned - irresistibly free - so you can't help but see any pandering to these conventions as a slight betrayal. Don't worry though; spend half a minute lopping a few hundred heads off and all is right as rain again.

Berating Prototype for not having loftier ideals is sort of missing the point. It sits quite happily in a genre of imperfect games, and on a throne above most of them as well. Leaping from roof to roof, pirouetting as you go to throw satellite dishes at the police below, before delivering a flying kick to a helicopter - one can't help but be reminded why this genre exists in the first place. Like this month's Red Faction, it is an experience proud of its inherently silly gamey-ness; doing for human limbs what Guerrilla does for architecture. Short on frustration, big on satisfaction.

It won't challenge GTA IV. It's too blasé and obvious for that. Y'know, like GTA used to be. As we said earlier, there's not an ounce of subtlety in its whole virus-riddled body. Think about this as you cling onto the Empire State Building. Continue to hold onto the idea as you launch away and glide over to Times Square. Keep pondering the subject as you hurl to the ground like a missile, shattering benches, bones and Black Ops as you land. Go over the idea one last time as you crawl into a ball before launching out one hundred tendrils that explode every car, man and helicopter they touch.

Then walk away calmly and do it all over again as the old lady you're about to eat. You know what? Subtle ain't all it's cracked up to be.

Buy Prototype - Play / Amazon

Matthew Castle