The lowdown: Addictive gameplay, combined with a vast open world, make for a good sandbox experience. All the flaws can be overlooked by the sheer pleasure you will get from roaming NYC with the power to destroy anything in your path.

PRODUCT OVERVIEW:

If you’re familiar with the Spider-Man villain, Carnage, and always wondered what it would be like to cause mayhem with his powers, then you get all that and more in Alex Mercer. Waking up in a morgue with no memory, Alex must piece together his past while surviving hordes of soldiers and mutated monsters along the way. Perfect all of his moves and abilities to become the ultimate weapon.

Just like the city it is set in, there are plenty of objectives for you to accomplish.  There are 31 storyline advancing missions and a slew of side missions with some big boss battles mixed in.  A number of the boss battles can become quite lame as the best tactics appear to be running around in circles throwing objects, devastator attacks, or using your whiparms to attack from a distance.  Also, while roaming around the city, there are selected zones in which either a military base or hive is present, which can be destroyed to prevent or slowdown the spread of their control. After each mission, you earn EP (Evolve Points), which go toward upgrading Alex’s abilities. It’s fairly easy to gain EP for doing different things like destroying military personnel or equipment. You can also gain bonus EP from finding the various glowing orbs scattered throughout the city.

The storyline for Prototype was fairly mediocre. There was enough to keep me intrigued in the back story, but overall was not that strong. Cutscene acting was terrible with no real emotion being portrayed, particularly the interactions between Alex and his sister Dana. The ‘web of intrigue’ videos that are supposed to add pieces to the story were mostly pointless, and had lots of quick flashing images that could nearly induce a seizure.

Mastering movement is one of the most enjoyable and vital aspects to playing this game. You are capable of going pretty much anywhere with your ability to run up walls and glide through the air. Combining moves, such as the air dash with the glide ability, will help you cover more ground and at a quicker pace. However, small, precision jumps and moves can become a pain when you want to jump onto a narrow ledge or space.

You have the option of combining a multitude of abilities at a time. They are broken into three categories: weapon, defense and sensory powers. When you want to slice and dice you can morph your arms into large claws or one of them into a powerful blade, bring the pain with huge hammerfists, or go for range with tentacle like whips. For defense, you will have the choice of going for an armor that will wrap around your entire body or a large, one-armed shield. Your sensory powers are basic with the option to choose between thermal or infected vision. Devastator abilities are also available when you are in critical mass, with the cost of losing a limited amount of life. These special moves consist of large spikes that come from the ground to impale nearby enemies, tendrils that shoot from your body and hit everything within a limited 360 radius, and a focused biomass that will shoot right through a target. Your arsenal is not limited to just your own powers though. At any time, you can pick up weapons lying on the ground or take them from armed soldiers. These range from assault rifles to grenade launchers. There is also the option of hijacking a tank or a helicopter to wreak havoc on the city. But let’s be honest, if you wanted to do any of that, you’d pick up GTA IV or some other game. Prototype is about using Alex Mercer and his collection of chaos wreaking abilities.

While combat was addictive, there aren’t many enemy types; just a lot of each of them. Fighting the hunters gets tiring very quickly. All too often will you get caught in one of the forced hunter attack animations that will juggle you over and over again. The “strike teams”, which are supposed to be an advanced unit with the primary objective of taking Alex Mercer down, is usually pretty easy to dispatch of or avoid. They usually come in the form of a trio of attack helicopters that will rain down rockets and machine gun fire from up above. A thrown car or generator easily dispatches of these attack helicopters or a quick exit and disguise morph will throw them off your trail. However, they can become quite a nuisance if you’re already engaged with a large number of enemy targets. With so many targets in a single area, at times, it can become annoying to lock onto specific targets. However, the area attack moves such as the ground smash or devastators, remedies some of these minor annoyances.

The AI leaves a lot to be desired. I have landed and crushed cars near soldiers, while in disguise, to have them not pay any attention to me when it’s obvious my actions scream inhuman. While a great idea, the disguise system was implemented very poorly in this game. Also, the “stealth disguise”, can be done in sight of enemy soldiers and have them be completely oblivious, when it’s pretty obvious that a human being has just been consumed in front of them. The civilian AI is particularly dumb. They don’t really run that quickly from you and instead panic and tend to huddle into groups.

Being a NYC native, I can safely say that they have made an accurate representation of the island. Sadly, the graphics are incredibly weak for a game of this magnitude. When the camera gets up close and personal, you will truly see the graphical limitations. It’s too bad, as there are some great animations and sets that would look astounding, if only some more work was put into the visuals.

Even with all the gripes I have with this game, I must admit that Alex Mercer is just too damn fun to play with. Another year in development to polish the game off would’ve made a considerable difference though. However, there is enough to do in the game with plenty of assets at your disposal to make it quite enjoyable.

Pros

• Large, open sandbox
• Addictive game play
• One of the most badass game characters ever conceived

Cons

• Very poor AI
• Repetitive elements
• Weak graphics by next-gen console standards

Single Player Rating: 7/10
Multiplayer Rating: N/A