Manhattan has always been the center of all forms of disaster in the media. From the Die Hard movies to the web shooting Spider-man comics, this concrete jungle of historic landmarks, such as Time Square, serves as a backdrop for Activision’s latest game “Prototype.” What makes “Prototype”’s disaster scenario stick out from the rest of the flock is its sheer magnitude – you’ll see buildings destroyed and burned, piles of bodies littering the streets, crushed taxi cabs occupying the sidewalks, and the military performing questionable acts to maintain order. While this sounds like a delightful concept for a sandbox action game, is it worth it?

The game’s plot begins with its protagonist, Alex Mercer, waking up in a morgue. He doesn’t know what happened, or how he got there, and runs off to find out his identity. Almost immediately after his escape, he realizes that he is now beyond human, as he makes Olympic breaking jumps with ease, runs extremely fast, can pick up cars, and can run up walls. But, the military is after him and there are reports of a viral threat in New York, so he goes around consuming people to gather their memories as he tries to make sense of what is going on, and that’s where the game’s first problem appears.

While it sounds pretty stupid to criticize the writing in a video game, since it’s usually on the same level of comic books and manga, it’s generally not expected to be great, and “Prototype” tries so desperately hard for you to take it seriously. You will be constantly bombarded with cut scenes, consumed memories, and Alex’s brief monologues, making it very hard to ignore the plot, but there are just so many cliches and plot hole that one can’t help but criticize it. For example, the virus is nothing more than something that turns people into zombies and mutants. There is a person in the game who you think is an ally but they’re actually the antagonist. Finally, the conveniently placed amnesia is basically just a cheap way to create a “mysterious” background. And that’s just within the three first missions, although there are plenty of more cliches and plot holes to encounter during the duration of the game like why are people walking outside when 80% of the population are infected?!

Fortunately, the game itself and the controls seems to have more work put into then the plot, although not by much. Like many other sandbox style, superpower games, you gain experience (or EP) as you perform missions and kill your enemies. You then spend the EP to gain new power-ups, although certain power-ups can only be gained during certain plot points; some of these are passive, while others have to be activated by either selecting it in the “power wheel” menu or with a certain combination of buttons.

As you progress through the game, you’ll feel that Alex Mercer might become a little too overpowered, but in comic book fashion, the antagonists raise the stakes by adding new enemies and hazards to overcome. However, despite these attempts to increase the difficulty by adding new obstacles, the game does tend to actually get easier, and you’ll find some of your powers posses enough kick to one-shot opponents with ease. A perfect example of this is the bladed arm where you leap in the air and hold the strong attack button; you’ll lock onto your target and if you hit him just right, you’ll kill it with just one blow, whether you’re firing at a tank or a mutant.

However, the targeting system has problems of its own. You might find it difficult to target the right opponents since the locking system tends to be your enemy during the chaotic battles. In the beginning you’ll think this is one of the best systems available, since it does everything with ease especially when there are only a few targets. But later on, when apartment buildings are on fire, mutants are destroying cars with tanks, and birds fly overhead feeding on the dead, the controls aren’t your friend as you’ll have trouble locking onto specific targets while being constantly attacked off-screen. To make matters worse, the designers thought it would be a good idea to have the enemy attacks not able to be interrupted, so if you play aggressively, or jump in at the wrong moment, you can lose a good chunk of your life, sometimes as much as half, and you won’t be able to evade because the enemy animation cannot be canceled.

Aside from the combat and storyline, is there anything else to do in “Prototype”? Unfortunately, there is nothing near the scope of other sandbox games like “inFamous” and “Grand Theft Auto.” All of your side missions are basically mini-games where you get to abuse your powers. Some examples include a race to collect orbs, killing a certain number of enemies with a selected power, or consuming a chain of people in a short period of time. These can be easily forgettable and ignored, especially since they offer very little EP as rewards.

The only really praiseworthy part of “Prototype” are the graphics – while other games say they allow you to play a superhuman being in an urban environment, none of them could come close to how this game presents itself. Your character is a living weapon, and this game demonstrates that over and over by by allowing you hijack helicopters while in the air, plow through hordes of zombies with your claws, and throw a human being at the speed of light towards an occupied mutant. This game is visually stunning, and it includes many small details that reinforce the anarchistic scenario in New York, and no game currently matches this experience.

That being said, “Prototype” isn’t that bad or that good. The controls are a pain in the later parts of the game, the plot is laughable, the side missions are terrible, and the difficulty is a hack job. At the same time, the game evolves as it grants you some additional powers that are not witnessed in other games, and being involved in New York’s destruction, at least on this scale, is not something that happens everyday. This is a rental at best and certainly not worth the full price tag, especially since the storyline doesn’t last more than 10 hours.

[Rating: 3/5]

“Prototype” was developed by Radical Entertainment and released by Activision for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC on June 8, 2009. The version reviewed was the Xbox 360 version.

Hey kids, I finally have a mega badass “Prototype” trailer to show you. The game, which has had a somewhat rocky development cycle, seems to be coming along nicely, but details on its story have been fairly mum… until now. The trailer, which shows protagonist Alex Mercer tearing up the streets of New York, offers a lot of good details on what to expect from the games story. While the main premise is a tad cliche – Alex wakes up and has no idea who he is or why he has powers – the supporting characters seem rather interesting, and it looks like there will be a lot for gamers to figure out once the game hit stores shelves in June.

Executive producer, Tim Bennison, explains what exactly were looking at in the trailer. All of Alex’s powers look pretty chaotic – in a good way. Bennison refers to wanting the player to feel like the “ultimate badass.” If the game manages to impress me as much as its trailers have, then the crew at Radical Games looks well on their way to achieving that goal. Keep it tuned to TGH for more news on “Prototype.” The game is set to release on the first of June, so hopefully we won’t see any more delays. Latas, all.

If you’re one of those gamers that was hoping to someday see a sequel to “The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction” you may have to wait a little longer, but if you can settle for a spiritual successor, then you might be in luck. Radical Entertainment, the studio that developed “Ultimate Destruction,” looks like it has another winner on its hands with “Prototype.” Darker and more smashy than the Hulk game, “Prototype” looked like it had a whole lot of potential, especially when it comes to destroying NYC. Check out what Radical Entertainment’s Chris Ansell had to tell us about their upcoming game.

#14 on TGH’z Top Black Video Game Characters list goes to Marcus Reed of True Crime New York City.

Before GTA thought about bringing open world video games to the NYC, a little game called True Crime developed by Luxoflux for Activision, followed up their sleeper hit True Crime LA with an NYC version. I personally think they did a better job recreating Los Angeles as that game was pretty much street for street like the real thing. Maybe it was a rushed job to create NYC, but they took some liberty (no pun intended) with the geography of Manhattan. The streets are longer for instance and there aren’t that many landmarks.

Activision spared no expense when it came the voice actors for this game. Making appearances are Laurence Fishbourne, Traci Lords, Christopher Walken, Mickey Rourke, Redman, and Howard Stern’s sideshow act Beetlejuice. They all lend support to the main character Marcus Reed (voiced by an unknown). Who’s Marcus? Well he’s the stereotypical “gang member” who inherits his fathers empire in NYC when he gets put away. Now before you go getting all bummed out, this game takes a twist not seen in most movies.

After coming to a cross roads in his life Marcus, hitting rock bottom, decides to give it up and become of all things a police office. Yes, NYPD. Not many gamers are used to seeing the boys in blue as a black male, and like the popular show New York Undecover, we actually get to see the character in street clothes doing police work. I don’t want to give too much away, but I applaud Luxoflux and Activision for giving this title to a minority character. Many skipped over this game because it was right at the dawn of the “Next-Gen” but it was a good title (not to mention controlled way better than any GTA). It also flew under the radar, due to the Rockstar blockbuster GTA: San Andreas. But one thing they True Crime can boast about is they got Jay-Z and Camron to bless their opening track with the smash “Welcome to New York City”. I can’t think of another game that has a Jay-Z song as the title track, can you?

With the console market already a very crowded place with three different consoles serving the needs of three (mostly) different demographics, what would happen if a fourth company released another console? It seems like the answer simply would be that the market isn’t big enough for four consoles and it would be destined to fail. However, what if that company was already one of the biggest companies in gaming, and that already has a firm hold on a sizable percentage of the gaming industry? What if that company was Activision Blizzard?

Around since the late 1970s, and founded by defectors from Atari, Activision currently sits atop the list of third party publishers, and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger everyday. Since the completion of their merger with Vivendi earlier this year, the moniker Activision now adorns multiple franchises at the top of their genres – “Guitar Hero,” “Call of Duty,” “Tony Hawk,” and the biggest of all “World of Warcraft,” just to name a few. Take a look at your game collection, and see how many of your games either have Activision, Blizzard, or Vivendi on them, and then think back to the Atari 2600, and how many quality games over the last 29 years have been released by this one publisher.

What would happen if this time next year, as the industry was getting poised and ready for the holiday deluge, the sequels to all the games mentioned above were only available for one console – Activision’s? Their catalog might not offer the depth and diversity as the PS3’s, or the Xbox 360, but it would be the only place to get your fix for “Guitar Hero 5,” “Tony Hawk 10,” and “Starcraft 2.” They’re all quality games and they would only be found on one exclusive platform. Sure, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo would have a wealth of other games from other publishers to fall back on, but when the biggest piece of the pie is gone, is there going to be enough left for everyone to share?

In addition to their library of franchises they would, no doubt, also have the capacity to produce their own, new, franchises as well. After all, there are ten separate development studios under them, including such heavy hitters as, Infinity Ward, Neversoft, and Raven. These studios would be able to increase their capacity from their current one title per year (or every other year), to more than that, because they would only have to commit their time to developing for one platform, instead of three separate ones. It might even encourage additional creativity for studios to venture outside their comfort zones. Red Octane to develop something that isn’t a rhythm game. TreyArch could make an RPG. Infinity Ward could make a platformer.

What if this mystery console had a low price point, and could offer great graphics? What if this mystery console was appealing enough to encourage at least a limited amount of third party support? If it launched with a host of great, and established, first party titles as well as third party support, and you could actually have a viable contender. When the 3DO launched in 1994 it was able to get commitments from a host of third party developers – everyone from EA to Konami (granted that didn’t really pan out too well), if this console could pull in one EA or Ubisoft, it might be able to compete.

I fully realize that there is very little chance of this actually happening, for a whole assortment of different reasons, but it would be a huge shake-up of how the entire industry operates. Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft would no longer be able to look to Activision titles to help move their consoles. It might be too late this console life cycle to happen, but, who knows what the future holds. All those analysts predicting a converging console future might need to start considering a wild card.

Some upcoming Activision Blizzard titles and ongoing franchises:
World of Warcraft
Guitar Hero
Marvel Ultimate Alliance
Call of Duty
Spiderman
James Bond
Tony Hawk
Diablo 3
Starcraft 2
Geometry Wars
Project Gotham

-written by 2.0