[PROTOTYPE]TM

[Stark]

I've been banging on through [PROTOTYPE]TM and I've seen most of it as it's very, very easy.

Firstly, the story is actaully pretty cool and reflected in the game; this isn't Racoon City or Resident Evil 'lol army can't kill zombies' nonsense, and as time passes (over the 18 days of the outbreak) New York turns first into a warzone, then into a wasteland, then into a bizarre alien landscape.

Full of tanks.

Anyway, travelling around with the jumping/freerunning is a lot of fun, but like other similar games a very short outwards ledge will stop your ascent cold (until you get the double/triple jumps anyway). The UI is quite minimalist, and Mercer's body is used for feedback, which is nice. It has regen health AND potting from bodies, which is cool. There's a very high level of interactivity and you can pick a lot of things up and use them, etc. The stealth stuff with disguises is very very simplistic (as in, you look like the President and the army sees you run up a building, jump 50ft in the air, glide on tentacles to the ground, punch the ground creating a blast wave and knock over a tank but they're NOT QUITE SURE you're not the President) but fun with the 'stealth consume' abilities.

The combat is fun. It's like Crackdown but moreso; more agility, more fighter-esque counters and rolls and critical strikes, and you can use guns if you're really strapped. Mercer's high-end combat powers are quite ludicrously powerful, and his different offensive modes all have different uses and many, many upgrades available. Fucking up the army is hell fun, and you can even help them against the reasonably dynamic infestation of New York (and they need it, because biomonsters at close range > Bradleys).

Some mechanics are underused - for instance, you steal memories when you eat someone with tentacles, so you can learn how to drive a tank or fly a chopper by eating the right sort of people. I would have liked to see much more of this, with Mercer having to actually investigate stuff and learn things, rather than the typical GTA-style missions we have here. The 'web of intruige' (a series of linked individuals and memories that apparently reveal the big plot, gained through consuming the right people) is interesting, but since each memory doesn't actually give you any clues to the nearby node locations (ie who the fuck you're supposed to consume next) it's pretty much random. The few times the memories revealed a location (off a map or x and y st) it does work, however, which was neat. Yes, I know my way around New York without even using the map; thank computer games. Eat scientist - omg soldiers in chelsea - bounce to chelsea - eat officer. When it works it's impressive when it doesn't it's essentially their version of random flufftext pickups.

However, the biggest problem for the game is difficulty. In general the game is laughably easy and nobody can do shit to you - but they have setpiece boss fights that are absurdly hard. One is against A GUY with A TASER and somehow he's more dangerous than a fucking tank or squad of Apaches. They also pull out the lame 'your powers are gone now' thing in the middle of the game, which is terrible. I'm not seeing any real scope for replayability - although you can restart your char with all stats etc to complete the web of intriuge, which might last. The 'event' minigames are all bland shit (basically races, kill targets and... um... kill targets). If they don't DLC out coop in a hurry, there's no way I'll keep it, despite it being quite a fun game. There's just no meat to it beyond the plot.

[CaptHawkeye]

It looked like the kind of where game that advertised the superhuman aspects of your character and *gasp* YOU ACTUALLY ARE. I'll get it once I have a second job I oh so need.

For whatever reason, Mercer's abilities seem strongly inspired by "The Thing" to me.

[Stark]

They're heavily tentacle based, yeah. Jump? LEGS OF TENTACLES. Lift tank? ARMS OF TENTACLES. He can multiply his mass many, many MANY times over to destroy, say, all of Times Square with tentacles at once.

By virtue of starting at the end (Mercer is basically retelling his adventure to a mysterious other on the 18th day) the game drops you right in with all the abilities so you learn how to play really quickly, which is neat.

[CaptHawkeye]

Oh good, none of that arbitrary ability unlock shit that makes 50% of the content unplayable until you hit some pre designated point in the storyline.

Well, it isn't just his "tenitcoolz" but it's also the fact that he can absorb people and run around pretending to be them. "MacReady grab the flamethrower!"

[Stark]

Err...

No. Once he starts talkign to Mystery Man, you go back to the 'waking up in morgue' bit with only some of your powers (whcih you buy with sexperience evolution points) and the availablility of these is constrained by mission progress. That said, you get 80% of them inside the first 2 hours of play, so it's not awful. You don't miss out on any capabilities (like wall-running etc), generally just upgrades etc. You can already go anywhere and kill anything, you just lack the specific tentacle abilities at the start.

As an aside, the XP fucking ROLLS in, so you never have to worry about unlocking anything.

[CaptHawkeye]

Eh, that'll work. As long as it's not annoying GTA style "can't unlock 2/3s of the city until you play 20 hours worth of story" shit.

[Stark]

The first thing I did was go to wall street and eat bankers, then bounced up to central park, then broke into the military camp at battery park. You can't leave Manhattan (and amusingly all the bridges are clearly not blown, even after DAY 7 - 49% OF POPULATION INFECTED. ) but you can go anywhere.

EDIT - That reminds me of something I find appealing about the game - Mercer is a cunt. He's not RAR GRIMDARK (although he has a very silly hoarse voice), but he simply doesn't care (or even think about) the destruction of New York by biomonsters. His goal? Find who made him a monster, and kill them. The end. He's not very intelligent, he doesn't consider what's going on, and he doesn't care that New York is essentially doomed.

[CaptHawkeye]

He does seem like a Dr. Manhatten personality type. Now that he's a superhuman he probably just feels no attachment to humanity. And why would he after all? He's totally self-sufficient, super powerful, and more or less immortal. Why should he care?

All he's got is his own agenda and obstacles stubbornly standing in his way.

[weemadando]

I'm keen to play this - when you say that you lose all your powers mid game, is it a complete loss of them and you have to start over from scratch, a mere temporary loss for a mission or two... Or is it just the aforementioned "jump back in time to the actual start" thing?

[Stark]

You only lose your offensive morphing powers mid-game (ie the big spikes/hammers/tentacles etc) and not any of your jumping/flying/wallrunning/disguising/health/etc powers. Only the active, activated 'powers'. It's just fucking annoying because it means you can't kill heavy stuff (like the big biomonsters or tanks) barehanded anymore - and it's around the same time the military really steps up, so there are mobile virus-detecting drones seeing through your disguises, javelin teams everywhere, M1s everywhere, strike teams of 3 Apaches a phonecall away, etc.

The opening sequence is about 5m of play (or as logn as you take to reach the points) before you go back to the start, where you basically lose eveything but quickly 'gain' it anyway.

[weemadando]

So do you actually recover those powers or did they just go: "shit we can't have a game where the superhero is, you know SUPER, so lets nerf him mid game?"

[Stark]

It's temporary.
Spoiler

The military infects you with something to use your body to create a cure to the virus, which disrupts your powers. It goes away later.

If you're quick through those set of missions, it's probably less than an hour you're without your powers.

And man, the 'devastation' attacks... the devs have NO PROBLEM with you having utterly absurd 'kill everything' abilities.

[weemadando]

Awesome. I'm sold. I loved Hulk: Ultimate Destruction (most literal title in vidja game history) and this just looks like more of the same.

[Stark]

The dynamic city is really quite neat; as you near 'infected' zones, people begin to be zombies, the sky changes, buildings are aflame, units of soldiers move on the streets and drones observe above, until you reach teh TENTACLE HIVE and stand on the top of a car with a SAW and butcher the tactically useless zombies by the hundred.

There's an achivement for killing 53, 456 infected, and I'm pretty sure i'm about 20% of the way there already. Tanks > zombies.

[Havok]

This game has no multi player... seriously? Like no squad action? No SHOOT THE BACKPACK!! No getting killed by faceless, merciless high pitched, 12 year old racists that talk like black men from Oakland?

[Stark]

Well you're a unique biomonster superguy, so there's not really much scope for Gears-style teamplay anyway.

A mode where you take over regular guys would be boss; you take the chopper! Chairman and I have tanks and OH GOD A HYDRA!!! People have speculated they may add coop with DLC, but it better be free.

[weemadando]

I wouldn't pay for "hey it's a second super-powered guy" co-op, but I would pay (though not much) for the "we're just fucking grunts! OH DEAR FUCKING JESUS! FUCK FUCK FUCK! RUN!" MP. Assuming of course that there would be others who would partake in that co-op.

[Stark]

Sadly the models for the NPCs are pretty bad (probably a side effect of having hundreds onscreen at a time) so they'd have to make new 'player' soldiers.

[Chardok]

I've played it for like 10 minutes -I will be dedicating FAR more time to it beginning in about 20 minutes - but it SCREAMS Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, which is just chock full of goddamned win. So I'm excited as all hell, The lack of Coop/multi is disappointing - but I got the impression that these features were far in the dev cycle since it was only recently announced they were cutting it, so it should be available via DLC in short order (Maybe a month? Two, tops.) and though I am having trouble seein how it might be implemented, I think it would be fun to play a horde-type mode where one player can control the boss-type ZMOBIES and one person controls Alex (And when Alex kills the one you're controlling, you just take control of another), or helicopters, or tanks, etc. etc. etc.. Or if you could play as Blackwatch fending of just wave after wave of infected minus Alex Mercer, of course, because he would just murder you QUICKFAST.

[Stark]

Since there's 18 days of infection and Mercer spends much of his time brooding, unconsious or being ill there's plenty of scope of infected vs soldiers. And the game doesn't have the lamer 'zombies are dangerous' thing.

Chards, in the intro, when the 50 zombies rush the 6 soldiers, were you pleased to see the dakka dakka totally rape them? I was. Player soldiers could even take down hunters with a bit of planning and javelins.

[Chardok]

Chards, in the intro, when the 50 zombies rush the 6 soldiers, were you pleased to see the dakka dakka totally rape them? I was. Player soldiers could even take down hunters with a bit of planning and javelins.

Hellllllls yeah, man. I was listening to dev commentary about the Blackwatch dudes and they were all "They're badasses, scared of nothing and they're totally cool with killing women, children, families, cities, whatever, to get the job done." I was thinking "Yeah, right, so awesome, they lose New York to stupid Zombies" Then I Saw the intro trailer and realized that they ARE that badass, they are really afraid of nothing, and if they're losing New York, it's for SURE not for lack of trying. Seeing them in action makes me realize that it's not ineptitude or shitty equipment, it's just THAT GODDAMNED BAD.

Everytime I saw a Blackwatch dude go down, it was because hegot goddamned well swarmed or blindside attacked in a way that was totally feasible (There was 30 in front of him that he was mowing down, and he got hit from behind, then swarmed). Goddamn, they really did a great job on this game - If they released a "fake" sequel in 6 months, I will so buy it.


God, I'm a sucker.

This may just tide me over until

2010

SKILLS FOR KILLS, AGENT

[Stark]

I think they did the intro scene on purpose; it even has the 'form a musket rank' shot and the call to 'open fire'. Except, the zombies get hacked to ribbons in seconds, in time for Blackwatch to execute a civilian!

Y'know Chards I might just have to make a INCREASE YOUR KILLING POWER - 2010 banner.

[Chardok]

I think they did the intro scene on purpose; it even has the 'form a musket rank' shot and the call to 'open fire'. Except, the zombies get hacked to ribbons in seconds, in time for Blackwatch to execute a civilian!

Y'know Chards I might just have to make a INCREASE YOUR KILLING POWER - 2010 banner.

Man, that's how cool they are - they clearly did this so that the zombies would ALL round the corner, and get within 50 yards, where they practically cannot miss - thereby CONSERVING AMMO. That is fucking efficiency, I tell you.


I will so jump on the Crackdown Banner Bandwagon. I will, of course, not make it myself, lacking artistic talent of any kind; but instead, commission someone WITH talent to make it for me.

[Stark]

Have you seen Captain Blackwatch McScar tell the general that 'containing a city of 12 million people might be a bit outside my team's capability'? Then the general says 'oh nevermind just kill this superhero guy' and the scientist says 'realtime genetic mutable mass-from-nowhere even the clothes are replicated' and McScar says 'cool, we'll get him' without batting an eye.

And then HE ATTACKS YOU WITH A TASER. McScar rules.

Also, Batman grapple guns. He's awesome.

[Ford Prefect]

It's a pity that it's so easy, but it does however sound totally rad, so that's cool. Relatively dynamic New York infested by genetic abominations? Boss. Army of evil black clad soldier mooks who are not useless? Boss. Ludicrously powerful tentacle based killing abilities. Also boss.