Rating: A+
It’s taken me a while to get this review up, and as a result my details on it are a bit sketchy. Right now I'm so far behind on all the games I own and haven't played that I’ve been pushing through them all just to say that I’ve gotten through them once for the story. I received Prototype 2 for my birthday last year, and was excited for it because of its main character James Heller, who is the first black protagonist I’ve ever played as in a video game. I know there have been a few protagonists of color in the past, however for some reason James Heller’s character was one I immediately wanted to check out when I first saw his concept art. I like that he is a family man, and a trained soldier-- not a street tough like CJ from the Grand Theft Auto series. In recent years more characters of color have emerged in video games, which is definitely a welcome change from what’s been there in the past. In my opinion it’s not a huge deal, it’s just nice to see more diversity popping up in my other favorite hobby.
Prototype 2—Story
Prototype 2 follows the story of James Heller, a soldier returning from a tour in Iraq who learns his wife and daughter are presumed dead due to a virus outbreak in New York City, referred to as NYZ in the game. James returns to service to help fight against Mercer, the antihero from the first game to help try and stop the spread of the virus. James becomes infected with the virus at the hands of Mercer and passes out. He wakes up in a test lab and, determined to get revenge against Mercer discovers his new powers and breaks out. He meets up with Mercer again and is told that Gentek and Blackwatch are responsible for unleashing the virus on the city, and thus they are responsible for the deaths of his wife and daughter. James finds Father Guerra, and asks him for help in tracking down leads to help him figure out if he should trust Mercer.
James’ powers allow him to assume the identity of those he absorbs. This allows him to hack into Blackwatch terminals and sabotage their plans. As he fights and absorbs members of Gentek and Blackwatch, he gets into a fight with a doctor Koenig. This doctor is no ordinary guy as it turns out he is an evolved member or Mercer’s group of special infected agents. Mercer has planted infected people into Blackwatch and Gentek to assume control of NYZ and then attempt to wipe out humanity and take over the world (muhahahaha).
James is royally pissed about this, and as a side note I have to say that this man lays down more foul language than I have EVER heard come from a single person in my entire life. His mouth alone could have earned the game its “M” rating. It’s understandable, he’s really angry…REALLY angry…like Kratos angry, so you could understand why he would lay out blue clouds when he talks. So anyway, Heller goes after more Blackwatch terminals and finds out about a doctor Galloway. Before he can kill her, she tells him Mercer’s true plans of world infection and that she can help him kill Mercer if he teams up with her.
Mercer doesn’t like the double-cross, and he finds and kills Father Guerra. When James finds the body, he answers Guerra’s ringing cell phone and learns from Dana Mercer (yup, his sister) that his daughter Maya is still alive. James seeks to find her and almost gets to her, but is sold out by Galloway, who intercepts his daughter and turns her and Dana over to Mercer. Mercer absorbs Galloway and he explains to an enraged James that he intends to use his daughter to infect the entire world. They have an epic battle, and James finally kills and absorbs Mercer. He finds his daughter and Dana by using Mercer’s memories and frees them from their temporary holding cell. James uses his fully evolved powers to cleanse all of NYZ of most of the virus, and he, Dana, and Maya are finally free to rebuild their lives. Cue end credits.
Gameplay
Prototype 2 uses an upgrade system that allows James to upgrade his powers to insane levels. The controls are mapped in a way that lets you use two of his super powers at a time. You can choose which two you want to map to the square and triangle buttons, and you can also switch on the fly between the four or five total powers. This is convenient, because it is necessary to use all of his powers for the end fight, and as you run through the game, there are enemies that are more susceptible to certain powers. I do wish that the power wheel worked more like in the Ratchet and Clank games where you hit triangle and the action stops so you can easily toggle between all of the available powers. It’s not bad, but I did get hit a lot of times unnecessarily because I was fiddling around trying to get the goofy thing to load the right power. I got used to it by the end of the game though. Running and jumping are mapped to their own buttons, and there is also a button for changing your appearance from James, to whomever you’ve absorbed, to James with his powers. Change your appearance when people are watching and they will either scream and run away, or start to shoot at you. If you change into James with his powers and guards see you, an alert will go up, and you’ll either have to fight or run away.
When the game starts out, James is a soldier, and can use any type of firearm and has decent hand to hand combat skills. Once he is infected by Mercer, he gains the ability to run really fast, jump really high, glide through the air, extend crazy claws from both hands, and absorb enemies for health. This is extremely convenient for those moments when everyone is trying to shoot, bash, or eat you and heath is getting low.
As the game progresses, James can pick up cars and other really heavy objects and throw them great distances. He also gains the ability to pound the ground with concussive force, extend tentacles from his body to grab and infect other enemies, slice things with a massive arm blade, pierce and whip things with a long arm stinger and repel and reflect incoming attacks with arm shields. All these things are “bio” weapons, meaning that they emerge from his body on command (it’s kind of gross). The virus is sort of like if you took Rogue and Mystique’s powers from the X-Men and mixed them together, except that James can create metallic blades from his body, so I guess you should throw some Clay Face from Batman in there too. (I know I’m mixing Marvel and DC comics’ characters to talk about a videogame… What? I’m a huge nerd!). James can also upgrade each of these powers to execute mid-level attacks against enemies that also can affect surrounding enemies. As if that’s not enough, James also has “devastator” attacks. As the name states, these are limited use, devastating (screen clearing) attacks for each power he has that James can initiate if the enemies get too close. After all that you can still chose to just pick up a gun or punch people with regular old fists as well. It does seem kind of silly to do that when you can just tear them apart with your bare hands--plus that’s more fun. That being said, the powers available to James can be overpowering. I never felt too much in danger, even when surrounded by enemies and there was a crazy amount of action happening. The controls are easy enough to use that I felt inclined to start an alert just so I could destroy everything on screen. It was great fun. By the end of the game James is almost un-killable, but I managed to die quite a few times. Taking that into consideration, I liked that you can’t die by falling off a building or getting hit by cars, and that when you do die, you re-spawn relatively close to where you left off. One annoying thing to note about the mayhem, if you are in an area where there are lots of things to pick up and throw or use, it can get very confusing because James can pick up these items instead of grabbing an enemy. There was one instance where I was in the middle of a fight with a juggernaut, and while I kept trying to throw exploding barrels at him, James would pick up a gun and I’d have to drop it and try again. This was pretty annoying when the thing was also throwing big pieces of concrete or trying to charge and knock me down. The whole gun thing is a nice option, but I much preferred to just mow down enemies using James’ powers rather than picking up a gun.
The game is set up with a mission-based structure. You can plow through the game finishing main missions to complete the story, or you can complete side missions to upgrade James’ abilities, or you can wander around aimlessly causing all sorts of mischief. I chose to do a combination of all three. I also purchased the excessive force pack for more fun things to do once I finished the story.
I really enjoyed having all these abilities at my disposal. I loved when I was able to tear a missile launcher from a tank and then use it to shoot down a helicopter. There was so much James could do that like I stated earlier, I sometimes looked for an excuse to start a fight. What is also remarkable is that there are also other types of gameplay involved and it’s all pretty well interspersed throughout the game. There are missions where you can drive or hunt tanks, fly helicopters, and be stealthy and take out specific characters, along with the standard boss fights and fetch quests. The variety was great enough that I would play late into the night, telling myself, “just one more mission, and then I’ll go to bed.”
Graphics and Sound
Prototype 2 has decent graphics and a realistic physics engine. It was really amazing how much was capable of happening on screen at once. I remember one particular mission where there were helicopters firing, tanks rolling, infected creatures running around and military men shooting at me while I’m unleashing huge attacks and holding my own during all this madness. If I started to take too much damage the screen would go from color to black and white to indicate that I needed to get away or find some health before I was killed. This always seemed to work well; however, so much can be going on that the color indicator can be too late and James will die before you can get him out of all the madness.
During the game, the ambient noises were nicely done. You could hear snatches of conversations from the civilians and military personnel that, if you wanted, you could follow to eavesdrop. There are LOTS of these conversations that you can stop to take in. They are all fully recorded and quite interesting. Some of them can be pretty funny if you don’t mind a lot of cursing. If you bumped into anyone while walking you could very well get some nasty words for not watching your step. One guy cursed at me and I threw him across the street. People yelled at me for doing something so mean, and I turned on my powers and had fun watching them run away screaming “Whoa, what ARE you? I’m getting out of here Whaaaa!” People’s reactions to James are also entertaining, but not always realistic. I appreciated this in some instances because it saved my tail when trying to escape an alert with low health. It’s jarring however, to land on a roof on foot with a loud thud right in front of a group of people after jumping down from 20 stories higher only to have them jump a little and then continue on about their business like that kind of thing is normal.
This game focuses on some very violent actions, and the sound effects complement them perfectly. Explosions have great punch and feel powerful thanks in part to the dual shock rumble. Blades slice and cut into creatures with a satisfying ring of metal, whips and tentacles splatter realistically against whatever they hit, whether organic or not, and when things get crushed, there is an appropriate spray of sparks and smoke…or blood. Since the game has a lot of body transformations going on, there are a lot of fleshy sound effects as well. When James levels up, his body sort of erupts in these red tendril things that travel over him and then reconfigure back into his original shape. When this happens there is a juicy sounding fleshy noise, and my skin crawled a bit every time. Actually most of the infected creatures are really yucky looking beasts, you’ll hear quite a lot of sickening noises as unnaturally deformed creatures burst from everywhere to try and get at James.
Conclusion
This game has a TON of variety and content. As of this writing I still haven’t completed all the side missions or fully upgraded my James to his max levels. The graphics and sounds are appropriate and add a lot to the overall experience. The voice acting is solid and the writing, while it’s not the deepest story around, is solid enough to get me to be invested in James’ character. He did curse a LOT, but I didn’t feel like it was gratuitous as much as it was really part of his character, and that takes some skill on the writer’s and voice actor’s part. The character designs for the creatures were also well done. The monsters and infected people displayed enough variety that you could see they were not just clones of each other and they all had some really freaky looking stuff going on with their bodies after being infected. I have a ton of games to play through and I plan to return to this one after I can get through at least one play through of many of the other games I have waiting for my attention. Overall I had a blast with this game, and I can’t recommend it enough.
