PROTOTYPE For The Xbox360

cstanton — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:55:00 GMT

If you're a big fan of high intensity action and open-world games, which I'm fairly confident everyone can appreciate, then you need to at the very least rent "Prototype." I haven't been able to play all the way through the story mode, but I got to mess around with it at a friend's house for a little while and it was amazing. The character, Alex Mercer, starts out like a regular human and throughout the course of the game he gains abilities that he uses to wreak havoc on the infected and the military.

Throughout the course of the game Alex turns into a hybrid of Nightmare from the Soul Calibur series, Leon Belmont from the Castlevania series, Wolverine from Marvel, and that chick from Mirror's Edge sort of. I say Mirror's Edge because of the awesome free-running abilities that he has. He can run up buildings, jump from car to car, and pretty much any other badass tricks you can think of. His pure destruction weapon abilities include a six foot blade that rips through bodies, a long whip that can pop off heads, and Wolverine claws (there's really no other way to describe them). One of the coolest of his not so violent abilities is that he can shapeshift and steal people's clothing to gain entry to places that would be tough to blast through with raw firepower. He can also "shapeshift his biomass" to his fists, to liquidate pretty much anything, and forearms, to get some extra strength for tossing trucks and cars and whatnot.

The game has great replay value as well since it lets you keep all of the upgrades that you have earned when you go back for a second run. The way the attribute system is much like an RPG's, leveling up each attribute point by point, gives it a real dynamic feel and gives you something to strive for while running through the game. My friend who owned the game said that it took about 10 hours of gameplay to finish it, but he didn't even get close to half of the collectible items in the game the first time through.

While playing, you will realize that the engine is very versatile. Not limiting you to your "biomass" as your only forms of attack, the game allows for you to use certain vehicles and use any weapons dropped by any one of the NPCs. This includes tanks, helicopters, rocket launchers, assault rifles, all the way down to pistols. Also, I actually almost forgot, you don't just kill people.. you can FINISH THEM! The game has several finishing moves of equal gory goodness to those of the old school Mortal Kombats. I punched through somebody's chest and it made me feel good. (not my gameplay screenshot below)

While the graphics on the 360 were not "out of this world," the game was still graphically impressive and gave you some real satisfaction and a reasonably realistic view of what NY would look like if it was crumbling down.

Overall, I give it a 9. I don't get paid to be a critic, but I would consider myself to have a moderate knowledge base and point of comparison.

The Loris Bite : ps3, xbox

PROTOTYPE For The Xbox360