After (sort of getting close to) beating it, here's what I have to say:
GraphicsThe graphics are very good. Nice, not too much bloom, right amount of distort, etc.
Pros: Average. Not too hard on the eye, but during the Supreme Hunter fight the red can get to you and can be hard to see things without thermal vision.
Con: Again, supreme hunter and the redness etc. If you switch over from an infected zone to a militarized zone you'll notice an extreme difference (or vice versa). An infected zone has ravens flying everywhere and squawking, and the sky is a deep red while the streets are full of 99% infected humans and 0.1% normal humans who will get killed by them. The 0.9% left is microorganisms that aren't important. A militarized zone is just average normal everyday New York, unless there are Bloodtox blowers spewing ugly red clouds.
GameplayDifficulty, controls, etc.Holy stuff am I playing the world's hardest game here or what? It seems like every time I have to do a mission it involves getting repeatedly homing missile'd by helicopters/tanks or getting bitch slapped repeatedly across streets by hunters. Not to mention the bosses are holy stuff impossible, namely ALL OF THEM. You either get stunned by that one guy's stunstick every time you try to do something, get smacked across the hive room by the Supreme hunter or get gangbanged by upchucked stones and 5 hunters, 2 of them being hunter LEADERS. I probably reloaded at least 15 times in a boss fight just because I got bitch slapped to 5th avenue or blown off the island by rockets. I try running away from them to gain health when possible thanks to my regeneration upgrades. Hey look I've been running around the room for at least 20 minutes now, where's my regenerated health? It just goes to half-way and thats it. Thanks alot. Might as well just go find another landmark location to compensate for that.
Pros: Absolutely nothing, unless you want rage and frustration.
Cons: Everything.
Okay, the controls aren't bad. I'll hand you that. At times it's very fluid and great. Other times you want to pause and look back in the manual because you forgot how to do that supercool move you just got the upgrade for (Oh no wait, woops you just ran out of health and no longer in Critical Mass. Go consume more.), and other times you want to go "What the forget where are you going I said airdash FORWARD not backwards you stupid forget".
Pros: (Sort of) "fluid" controls. Easy once you get in the hang of it. Kind of like Crysis' nano suit circular panel thing, but with twice the amount of options.
Cons: Constantly forgetting moves unless you remember them in your head and the wrong button/key can mean your life. Also sometimes you want to do a cool devastator move (My favorite is that one where you shoot those tendril stuffs out of the palm of your hand like a Kamehameha move in mid air), but you press the right buttons and it didn't go. You try again- Oh no you just got shot by a rocket and you're no longer in critical mass. Boo hoo.
I'm confused here. It's both killing you repeatedly and being stupid at the same time. I run behind a building, NO ONE IS THERE, and I transform into Alex Mercer. Somehow someone saw me, but it was a civilian. Whatever. I run straight into a jam-packed street and do a huge ass stomp on the ground. Everyone runs into panic. I dash away and come back later. Here's the mark on the ground, why is everyone still here like nothing happened? Ah well, time to have fun. Stealth consume a military character, and call another soldier out for being "ZEUS", the most handicapped codename for an enemy I have yet to see. They don't care, they'll just blow the stuff out of that guy no question. The real "zeus" would run or do something other than go "What the forget I'm one of you guys stop!".
Pros: Meh. It's AI.
Cons: It's stupid and yet repeatedly kills you at the same time. It's like being dissed by a kid with a learning disability or beat in tic tac toe by a chicken.
Simpsons reference.agfddfgadsfs WTF WAS RADICAL THINKING. We've got like three variations of the same hunter here, all who will repeatedly bitch slap you and drain your health in <5 seconds, each with just more health/resistance to every attack you throw at them. The BLACKWATCH soldiers are okay, you can easily deal with them. IF THEY DON'T HAVE ROCKET LAUNCHERS. One rocket and bam you're on the ground. Get up and try to jump. Oh stuff a homing missile. Bam, you're back on the ground again. Get up and try to run away so you can transform behind a building and stealth consume your way up again. Bam, another missile. Adrenaline surge! Ruuuuuuun! Ah, your dead. Too bad.
The thing here is the rocket launchers and hunters. The normal hunters you can eventually just deal with but the groups of leader hunters (when you fight Greene SPOILER LOL) and the rocketeers/helis/tanks just piss you off to hell. I feel like Superman waking up from an eternal sleep or something but realizing I'm infertile or my snake is broken or some other horrific thing to happen to a man. I'm a loving shape shifting muscle massed armor shredding infantry ripping speed machine and yet I can't even take on a single base without being shot with a missile while I'm loving airdashing left and right across rooftops. It's like being a pyro and yet dying only by being backstabbed, and ONLY being backstabbed.
Pros: Nothing. They'll piss you off and make you want to actually murder someone. Make sure you don't do that or something else horrific like punt your kitten off a balcony. Don't even get me started on the loving Supersoldiers.
Cons: RAGE AND EVERYTHING I SAID.
StoryI don't feel like writing much especially since I skipped some of the Web of Intrigue movies because I didn't want to stop my action and watch a movie. Some of it made sense and some of it didn't. In other words, half talked about something and you could draw something out of it, and the other half talked about something oblivious about Elizabeth Greene and her tests and you didn't care nor did it have anything to do with your missions.
Pros: Slightly interesting. Radical could've done better by just making it more cliffhanger or something.
Cons: Boring. Seems sort of like a typical military conspiracy thing. Some of the movies are more about Greene and frankly you just don't care about her because she's just one boss and all she does is walk around and infect.
Events and Evolution PointsEvents are just little side missions. I'll be honest the events are not really interesting to me as I'd rather just get on with the story and I made tons of EP (Originally before I learned it's real name I thought it was E-Peen) with landmark locations and consuming people/web of intrigue targets/stealth consuming soldiers to upgrade military skills in their bases.
Pros: Meh. I'm not mad here but there's really nothing here.
Cons: Again there's really nothing at all here. Just usual upgrading and bonus mission stuff.
Final wordsLike Age of Mythology and its expansion, [PROTOTYPE] was a game that was an incredible idea but poorly executed (As in, the idea itself is cool but the game was not cool.). More cons than pros, and it's easy to get around 3 million evolution points by running around and consuming and gaining the 20 landmark locations in central park, the ones in Times Square and the ones on etc. Manhattan buildings. I got around 80 so far and that's my total sum. My brother has done every single side mission and is barely halfway done the game because so.
Overall rating: 6.5/10.
Again, great idea but poorly made. Needs a lot of improvement (Sequel anyone?). Hopefully they don't make something like this again. I don't want to piss my pants in excitement and then get disappointed. Like I said earlier to the Superman thing, it's like having a really big snake but not being able to get erections (and to those of you saying "do it flat lol", feel free to stick a wet spaghetti noodle into a keyhole and try it).
tl;dr: It's loving difficult to the point of actual murder, the AI is handicapped, the enemies will smack you off the island and kill you (repeatedly), the controls are meh, story is sorta boring and events will get you sidetracked from the story.
If you find this in blockbuster or your friend has it, just loan it and be done with it then give it back to them. It's honestly not really worth the $50/$60, really more like $20-$30. Sure you'll have some fun consuming people in awesome ways, doing parkour and causing commotion in the military, but ask yourself, will you do it forever?
