What does stuffing game dialogue full of profanity really accomplish? Why do you put me in this horribly gloomy environment, then try to make me laugh with sitcom humor? Why the balls does Alex Mercer need an accomplice when he’s already a demigod? These are the questions I ask Prototype 2 after the first hour of gameplay.
Prototype 2 is a dark ‘n disturbing, apocalyptic, open-world, RPG hack ‘n slash potty mouth simulator. Or something like that. The idea picks up where the original Prototype leaves off. You play James Heller, a soldier whose family was supposedly torn apart by Alex Mercer, a super-powered freak on which the destruction and unholy corruption of New York City is blamed. Zombies and twisted, bleeding creatures rampaging across a half-broken landscape. Standard stuff, right? Alex gives you his shape-shifting, spiderman-shaming powers with the explanation that he wants to destroy the people that are actually responsible for the apocalypse. Extremely bloody murder ensues.
Don’t take my tone the wrong way, I -loved- the original Prototype, and I may actually be a bit bitter since I own Prototype 2 on the Playstation 3 instead of on the PC. It looks terrible (sorry, console gamers). The sequel has yet to captivate me, and I’m not quite sure why.
After a few rather linear sequences, the city opens up to you for you to do with as you please. You can run, jump and glide around the urban wasteland freely, doing storyline missions, sidequests with various objectives and tiered rewards for better completion, and optional targets for you to kill that make you stronger. All three are entertaining, though there isn’t much point in trying to get gold medals on sidequests until you’ve progressed through the game and become stronger/more agile.
So far, the game just feels bland in comparison to the original Prototype. If I had to give you a verdict right now, I’d say to stay away, but my opinion may change after more time with the game.
I played the original Prototype, though I don’t know anyone else that’s even heard of the game. The original was all right. I like the open-world, sand-box games, but the story didn’t really keep me in the game, and once I got tired of the super powers I moved on to other games. When I heard about Prototype 2, I didn’t even give it a second thought.
Now, Just Cause 2… now that’s a great sand-box game. If perhaps a bit too ambitious and too short of a story. I remember finishing the story in 4 hours, and then looked a game completion and I was at like 3%.
Prototype’s writing revolved almost entirely around shock factor, but the entire game desensitizes you so that any shock you may have had at the beginning is completely gone by the time you complete the game. In my humble opinion, the best sandbox game writing (coming from someone with little Grand Theft Auto experience, mind you) was in Spiderman 2.
Just Cause 2 is definitely a fantastic game, but as you say, it’s like visiting a mountain range and hiking one short trail. The entire mountain range is still there if you want to climb it, and the freedom of being able to explore an entire island like that is a beautiful thing, but I’m sure a massive majority of players don’t have much interest in hunting down every statue, every water tower, every communications station, every upgrade box, etc, etc.