It takes a lot to standout in this day and age of cookie-cutter video games, with sequels and last-gen remakes infecting every aspect of our daily entertainment intake. There are two very popular categories or genres for next-gen video games to fall into right now, first-person shooters and open-world titles. Whatever the draw is to these two genres it has developers and publisher flocking to push out as many games as possible, whether or not they are the least bit innovative. Last week we had the chance to check out an upcoming “open world” action game from developer Radical Entertainment and publisher Ativision titled Prototype. During the event the “Grand Theft Auto” comparisons were flowing and when looking at the game from a general point of view it’s easy to see why. Once we sat down and put our hands to the controller Prototype instantaneously differentiated itself from all those other open-world video games, and by the end of our playtime we were thoroughly impressed with what it had to offer.
The anticipation for Prototype’s June 2009 release was pushed to a whole new level after spending an hour or two in the massive, large-scaled New York setting. Most would call the game a “superhero adventure” but to us the main character, Alex, is the best example of an “anti-hero” that we can think of. Last time we checked slicing people in half and consuming their insides wasn’t part of a DC or Marvel comic book. Honestly we are tired of playing as a masked hero who always saves the princess or a rotten gangster looking to make a quick buck, it’s time for a change. Even though Prototype definitely falls into the more mature end of the scale it’s this intense violence that set’s the game apart from anything else out there. Don’t think for a second that you will be shooting up taverns and tossing gangsters off bridges (although there are guns that can be picked up and discarded) as in the GTA franchise, the violence in this game is all about brutally dismembering the opposition in every way imaginable.
At the time of this writing we know very little about the story aspects of Prototype, even at the hands-on event everything was kept from us under a cloud of secrecy. What we do know is that Alex begins his journey as a somewhat normal human being, developing new inhuman powers over the course of the game. We saw a small snippet of action that was set more than halfway through the plot and Alex was full of amazing moves and abilities. He became one of the coolest and badass video game characters yet to grace a high-definition television, kicking virtual ass with an amazing amount of brutality. A good way of explaining the core of Prototype would be the word overload; every aspect of what was going on in the game is intensified to a level we have not seen in a game to date. Only by harnessing the true power of a next-gen system could the developers place such a high amount of characters on-screen or action-oriented controllable experiences as are found in Prototype.
The dark and gritty open-world location in the game starts off as a serene recreation of today’s New York City, but as the game progresses buildings crumble and the overall look of the city begins to take on a more tattered/run-down and infected overlay, basically coming alive. This location transformation also helps push the game to a grittier level, something that the developers were obviously going for. There are generally two main enemy types in Prototype, the army and the infected. As Alex, gamers will take on a multitude of different physical forms to defeat the various bad guys; everything from a massive blade to ultra-strong fists. An entirely different and unique feature (from the hack-and-slash action gameplay) of the game is the fact that said anti-hero can ingest (by literally tearing them apart) the personality of any NPC (non-player character), using it to take on their physical look and mental properties. From what we saw Prototype looks to be one of those games that has countless possibilities and will keep gamers in its grasp for a long time.
Click here to see brand new screenshots for the game Prototype, given to us at the hands-on event.
We went into this hands-on event with no expectations, hearing and seeing little of Prototype before we first picked up the controller. It’s always enjoyable to see developers who truly believe in the game that they are making and in this case that’s obviously the way it is. Trying to set itself apart from other open-world games and become one of the few unique action games in a cluttered video game market is the true test of this game. From what we have seen, and played, everything is included in Prototype to do just that. Whether or not the game will be able to bring us in, and keep gamers entranced in the horrifically dark setting is something we will only know after getting our hands on the final version next month. We have to think that with the gameplay we got to try, as long as the story is strong, it will do just that and more. There are a lot of other open-world games out there on the market right now, our advice is to forget everything you have seen up to this point and give Prototype a chance; it really will blow you away.
