Prototype Preview

Prototype doesn't pull any punches when it comes to gore

Beyond that, Prototype might be considered a tad too generic. Alex's emo design and gruff voice won't surprise anyone, and his hard-luck tale is one we’ve heard a million times before. The game opens with a tutorial that sees him enjoying the use of many of his super powers, including razor sharp claws, a devastating ground pound and the raising of spikes from underneath the city concrete, in a packed Times Square. The city is devastated, overrun by feral zombie-like creatures spawned from a mutagenic virus. The Black Watch, a shady special wing of the military, is desperately trying to contain them. Then there’s Alex, a man for whom the word “upset” is a gross understatement. He’s angry at what’s happened to him and isn’t afraid to take it out on anyone who gets in his way.

Which isn’t something you’ll have to worry about much. By holding down the right trigger Alex will sprint, building up momentum to the point where he’s going so fast that the good citizens of New York blur into each other. In any case, why bother running on the ground when in the blink of an eye you can run up a building and leap off of the roof, landing right where you need to get to with a cool superhero slam into concrete. It’s a wonderful feeling, something anyone’s who has had to suffer the Tube at rush hour has fantasised about doing at least once in their life. And it promises to never get old.

After this 10 minute or so tutorial, Prototype does a Metroid and takes away all those cool powers you’ve just enjoyed messing about with. The game flashes back three weeks to the moment when he wakes up on a slab, thought dead by two lab coats. He’s not, obviously, and causes quite the stir when his eyelids open. From then on amnesiac Alex makes his escape, not knowing how or what’s happening to him. But he soon discovers that he’s able to do the odd extraordinary thing, like run up a wall and keep on running.

Raising spikes from the ground is one of many special powers available to Alex

Prototype follows Alex’s journey to fill in the blanks in his memory. This “Web of Intrigue”, as Radical calls it, will be fleshed out over the course of the game as Alex consumes key characters. When he does, their memories and knowledge of what’s going on is absorbed, filling his brain with cryptic, unclear flashbacks. It’s all very confusing. It’s all very intriguing.

And of course Alex unlocks all those crazy powers as he progresses, too. This being an open world game, you can choose to follow the main story missions, take on side missions that give you the evolution points needed to upgrade or go off the beaten track and just smash the crap out of tanks and helicopters and put as many craters in the concrete as you can muster. Causing mindless, thrilling mayhem will, we imagine, be what consumes most of our time with Prototype.

Will Prototype be as good as inFamous? Does it even matter? Both games might be in the same genre, but they both have distinctly different mechanics – inFamous with its karma system and Prototype with its consume system. There are obvious problems, as with every game: the graphics don’t grab you and the melee combat feels, from what we’ve played, a tad repetitive and shallow. But what’s important is what’s good about the game is what should be good about the game: playing about in the sandbox. It’s what should ensure that, actually, the real world is big enough for the both of them.

Prototype is due out for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC on June 12.