Between the fast paced arcade action and the plethora of abilities to rain down destruction that would make The Hulk proud, Prototype had its charming moments. Saddled with uneven difficulty spikes and some infuriating boss battles, I still managed to have some fun with Alex Mercer. Now, with new protagonist James Heller in the pilot seat, we end up with a more grounded, yet sadly monotonous romp through New York City in Prototype 2.
Let’s get right to it. The story’s twists and turns are easy to see coming and at times seem to drag out longer than they are welcomed. Even with the starky colored cut scenes that is reminiscent of The Saboteur, I wanted to do nothing more than get back into the action. You can easily ignore the story for the most part and just focus on pure destruction like in the previous title… once you get most of your powers and abilities that is. It’s still a pain to acquire powers as you progress through the story yet I understand why it has to be done. At least you are not teased with being fully powered up at the very beginning only to have it stripped away afterwards (I’m looking at you Prototype 1).
I wasn’t too keen on the open world setting and having the 3 sections of the city separated to stretch the story out more felt a little too reminiscent of GTA. You cannot enter these new areas until the story is ready to take you there. Even then, you can’t just use your super jumps, gliding or speed to get to the next area. You have to hijack a pilot and commandeer a specific helicopter to travel to it. What’s the point of having all of these wonderful powers if I can’t traverse a destroyed bridge to get to the new area? All I could come up with is that Radical Entertainment are using this delay to load the maps of the area.
Getting upgrades are a matter of doing repetitive side missions that I found strangely fun. Getting all of the upgrades just meant that I would be able to cause more destruction when roaming the streets or rooftops of NYC. For instance, getting the Bulletproof mutation upgrade and dropping into the middle of a bunch of soldiers never gets old. I wish there was a laugh command for Heller as I sit there with bullets ricocheting off of him.
I was a little happy to see that Prototype 2 felt slower in terms of the speed of which Heller moves around. The thing that I hated the most in Prototype was how wildly out of control Alex Mercer felt. He would go all over the place and that would impede boss fights to the point of controller tossing anger. You still get the occasional mistake of Heller picking up a barrel instead of stealth absorbing the base commander like you wanted to. Still, I would shrug that little blunder off and just use it as an excuse to do a mass cleansing of the base personnel.
Ultimately, the ending left me feeling like Radical didn’t have the time to do something on a more grander scale. I can’t further explain this without ruining the game’s ending but I can say that the confinement of the ending had me wishing for a more grandiose setting. At least giving the players the option of a New Game+ and some challenges from RADNET would keep them invested in the game a little longer. RADNET has some decent challenges and events with unlocks to developer diaries, in-game outtakes and new skins to use in-game.
Prototype 2 is easily accessible to anyone who is new to the series with an inclusion of a brief recap video of Prototype in the main menus. Even so, don’t worry about the story so much. Just do what I did, run to the top of the highest building you can find, jump off and see how many people you can wipe out when you hit the ground. Or if you want to keep it simple, jump kick a military helicopter. In this series, the action is definitely the focus over the rail thin plot.