Prototype

Once, you were a normal man, a scientist at a biotech firm. Now you’re a shape-shifter with unthinkable power. What happened to you...and are you even human anymore? As Prototype opens, it’s all a mystery. What you do know — courtesy of a nifty flash-forward sequence that doubles as a tutorial — is that New York City is crawling with armed forces and diseased monsters, and you’re destined to fight both of them. A lot.

The game could use a few more enemy types, especially among the Infected. Thankfully, Hunters are fun — and formidable — opponents.

Open-world games are all about discovery, and in that sense, Prototype really delivers the goods. As you muscle through the main story arc, the game slowly explains the virus that’s transformed you and infected New York, while clarifying the military’s role in these events. Want extra details? They’re scattered about the city in the form of 130 special people you can find and “consume.” Besides giving you health and XP, consuming these folks lets you see a brief memory of theirs that ties into the overarching plot. Like the diaries in BioShock, these bonus snippets add tasty meat to the game’s backstory.

As you consume special targets that comprise the Web of Intrigue, you'll view memories hinting at your origins and the source of the virus. Most of these flashbacks are dark, apocalyptic, and eerie.

The other thing you discover throughout the game — as you unlock it — is your amazing range of powers and abilities. Running up the sides of buildings, leaping huge distances, and gliding through the air (thanks to shape-shifting wings) give you a great “master of your environment” feel that’s reminiscent of Crackdown and Radical’s Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction for Xbox. But they’re just the beginning. Offensively, you’re a ruthless antihero: you can turn your arms into solider-slicing blades, bulk ’em up to bludgeon a tank, or morph them into a whip that scatters hordes of troops. You can also hijack military guns and vehicles, and use them at will; or pick up cars and pedestrians and fling them at enemies. Prototype’s 31 main missions and countless activities (like timed races and assassinations) give you tons of opportunities for Wolverine-style bloodshed, too. More than most games, its breadth of interesting powers compelled us to mix them up frequently, rather than spamming a few key moves.

Get close enough to that chopper, and you can hijack it, then rain missile-death on targets below.

To their credit, the developers didn’t just settle for sheer violence; they also incorporated a stealth element that draws on your ability to assume the form of the last person you consumed. It’s fun sometimes — there’s a devious thrill in munching a base commander, then sneaking into his base as him, for example — but it also highlights some weaker parts of the game. Eating someone without detection can be finicky control-wise, and overall, the game’s A.I. seems a bit dim: the old turn-the-corner trick made some foes forget our attempts to consume them, and bystanders often freaked out when we killed one of them, but were perfectly calm seconds later. You wouldn’t see that in Liberty City — and while we’re on the subject, can we just say that we’re now officially sick of open-world games being set in Manhattan? (At least the Spider-Man games have an excuse.)

Gliding just feels so good. It's a great complement to super-leaps and sprinting up buildings.

Still, none of those complaints kills the joy of hopping between skyscrapers, gliding through familiar skies, and jump-kicking helicopters. Prototype offers an engaging tale, and it lets us stomp baddies in endlessly engaging ways. For action and superhero fans, that’s an irresistible mix.