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Description
If the fact that the sheer amount of games that have at least one super solider or experiment run out of control, you think they know better then to give thier experiments free will, otherwise they might notice something is very wrong with taking orders from a aging general. Prototype, (which doubles as a popular term) gives it a somewhat swift kick to the face when the game's protagionist, Alex Mercer, wakes up in a morgue with amnesia and having delevloped some kind of power that allows him to take the form of another and turned him into some kind of non-flying, non-swimming mix between a down-syndrome Batman and a cracked-up Sonic, this sounds good on paper, but gameplaywise, it can F^$# with the entire thing. I've had Prototype for a few years, while the cheery side of me want to absoulutly recommend this game to all of you, my professionalism will (gladly) take over for this review while I tie myself up while judging this in three catagories: Story, Gameplay, and everything else.

                                                                                          Story:
Protoype loses a few million points from the start by falling flat on it's face, falling off a cliff, catching fire and ends up ten miles away somehow, Alex Mercer has amnesia, and he embarks on a quest to find out who did this to him and why. The story missions hardly have any story at all based on what I picked up, besides a few facts, New york city is under a infection of sorts that turn people into slobbering, mutant monsters, but they act more like zombies like then anything else, so I'll ignore it, Alex has to contend with both the infection going underway in the city and the Millitary, which in this game is called Blackwatch, which can also be a popular watch if anyone starts selling them. The main missions, as I mentioned mere sentances ago is all I got from the main missions you mostly get the story from eating the brains out of anyone who might know what's going on. The "Web of Intriuge" as it's called is split up into eight sections, some parts will be filled in the story, but you have to hunt for the other parts throughout the entire game and city, and the possiblity of finding one without throwing a controller in fustration is awfully low, and when I finally completed it, I still had a hard time understanding what was a few things, first of all, what the hell is this priatha-thing-a-crap? Why should I care? Can I rest now? Please?

                                                                                        Gameplay:
This is the core elements of Prototype, the entire game takes place in the sandboxed up city of New York City, the city is nicly sized, you have the means to get around it, but it hardly gets points in that catagory because they just copy-pasted the real New York city. The Controls for this game, while I may hardly mention them, actually fit in quite well with the entire game. Alex, in his shape-shifting running around paranoria, has a arsonal of ways to deal with his enemies, You can pick up car's air conditioning units, or people, eat them(if it's a person.) or throw them, but you'll hardly use it. You can steal gun's from the millitary and F*#@ shit up, but you won't use it either. You can turn your arms into either Claws, Blugening objects, or a giant sword, but you won't use them either, because the extendo-whipo Tenacle thing has absurd range, huge damage, and can liberate enemies from thier top and bottom halfs, and it's no use on buildings, but you can just hijack a Helicopter when the millitary kindly sends one to you if you bother thier mates. I have to throw out a very good fact that the engine driving the game is quite impressive, you won't see Bioshock rendering about 100 things happening at once seperatly, and while the graphics may LOOK bad up close, it's the fact of how many things it shows at once actually pulls you in somewhat in the game and makes you feel like your in New York city.

                                                                                     Everything Else:
Prototype may have the gameplay aspect holding it up, but the other crumbling catagories are somewhat holding it down, but the best part about Prototype is when I decide to stop caring about the missions and dick around, this is another of Prototype's core elements, You can eat an old man, take his identity, run up the nearest skyscraper, and preform an elbow drop on his confused and frightened wife, or Silently eat a solider without them noticing, walk back to base and accuse your 'buddy' of being you, and while the other's are shooting at him like subjected retards, eat them too! Prototype also has "events" which are used for mainly XP grinding, but it won't be nessicary due to the fact that the whipo-tenacle thing only has two upgrades. The events are mostly the same, most of them having you kill something with a spesific something, but it seems largly inconsistent, after Murdering half a city block, why then see how fast Alex can run up the nearest skyscraper? It also has you finding and eating random soliders or zombie-look-and-act-alikes that seem largly out of place, which has a tendancy to lead you to having to murder even more, it approaching killing as you would approaching a bug and smash it with the heel of your shoe, also you get so many upgrades that some of them seem somewhat worthless.

All in all, Prototype is a polished speticle of a game I might recommend playing if you need to kill time, but if you feel that a game should be able to stand on Gameplay mostly, this game is quite adquate for you, but get under that well presented sandbox, and you'll see it's trying very hard to disguise it's problem with linearity. It's not a very bad try, mind you, and it does a good job at being a Sandboxish game, but it gets boring donig the same things after a while, but it never gets old of seeing if you can get people to be run over by a car or throwing them off a building, or just smashing them into the ground and causing a shockwave big enough to make hobo's stay under a bridge for life, it's a very enjoyable experience, but other then the great Gameplay and how many ways you can kill a squishy being, it loses it's charm after a while. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to figure out how to free myself from this chair.