Prototype 2 Preview

If Prototype incentivised its two million players by offering a juicy carrot on a stick, with players building up a catalogue of swanky super powers for their time investment in the game’s big open world, Prototype 2 wants to do one better: it’s going to dish out entire bags of carrots.

Turning new protagonist James Heller from grieving widower into a walking biological super-nuisance – one with an insatiable thirst for punching tanks, obviously – is now going to happen in increments that are little but often. Now you’ll unlock new abilities, alongside entire suites of upgrades, by poking your head into side missions, bonus objectives, or just by stomping mutants to death, with your permanent boosts combining with a new perk system dubbed mutations.

A brief pre-alpha demo for Prototype 2 handed out the “Bird of Prey” mutation for completing a side mission and, if then equipped, makes dashing through the air more potent. What mutations lack in innovation they make up for in simplicity and efficiency, allowing players to tailor Heller to fit their personal preference. There’s going to be a good amount of mutations, according to developer Radical, and they’ll be bucketed into an assortment of options – offensive, defensive, locomotion, and wildcard.

Also, Heller can now yank the cannon off a tank and use it himself. This might not be as significant as lots of the other things, but at the same time Heller can now yank the cannon off a tank and use it himself. Fans of the original Prototype needn’t worry, either – Heller will also still be able to karate kick helicopters. Phew.

I also saw one of Heller’s new abilities, the Biobomb, which turns its unlucky recipient into a spewing mass of pulsing black tendrils that – you’ve probably guessed it already – explodes with a remarkably powerful (yet gooey and squelchy) detonation. Organic bombs? I think most of us would rather stick with our naturally grown vegetables.

The explosion – its after-effects stylised as thick, wispy trails of grey smoke – also neatly showcases Prototype 2’s new rendering engine, which seems to already be showing increased visual fidelity alongside smoother framerates over its predecessor. With any luck, running up a skyscraper and then gliding over the city in Prototype 2 won’t have the uncanny side-effect of turning the game into a slideshow.

Heller’s targets in this bloody exchange of bullets, blades, and biobombs are soldiers of the Blackwatch, a morally dubious group of mercenaries who patrol the Green Zone of New York; or what’s left of it, anyway, seeing as most of the city has been reduced to crunchy smouldering embers wrapped in twisted organic mulch.

A few snippets of cutscene show that the freaky biological infection – which Alex Mercer let loose at the end of the first game – is now spreading into these so-called safe zones, and the Blackwatch are happy to mow down a group of curious civilians in order to secure the peace. Seeing as they’re all clad in evil-looking uniforms with menacing headgear, I’m willing to bet they’re hiding some sinister undertones as well.

Radical is being very cagey on plot specifics, but we know Heller’s ultimate mission is to kill Mercer – perhaps he was one of the people who preferred inFamous? – and that Heller’s own superpowers come directly from Mercer himself, but the rest is being kept firmly under wraps. While the subject matter is still a tapestry of conspiracy and science gone wrong, it’s now more important to Radical that the general context of the game makes more sense.

The original Prototype was a confusing mess of a story unless you really invested in the Web of Intrigue missions, but that’s now been swapped out for BlackNet. It’s a similar idea – complete bonus objectives to flesh out the narrative – but will encourage players to see it through to completion due to those sweet sweet unlocks, and we’re also being promised an extra degree of competence in its execution.

The last area we saw was a trip into the New York sewers, to wipe out an underground mutant lair. Down here it’s all nasty smells and nastier monsters, with Heller wiping out waves of gnarly mutants with his superhuman arsenal of tendril whips, arm blades, and (still a bit creepy) ability to absorb people. Making combat more engaging and more efficient is a focus, so now enemies tend to have more defined strengths and weaknesses, and are more aesthetically distinctive to help with identification in hectic engagements. After taking out a monster dubbed the Hunter with a mix of tendril-spewing attacks and good old fashioned punching, Heller unlocked an upgrade for his arm blade – another example of the frequent incremental unlockables at work.

Recent years have seen developers taking a genuine shine to the kind of mayhem-filled sandboxes Prototype inhabits. Saints Row, Crackdown, and Just Cause are all gunning for the same kind of indulging power fantasy, but Prototype 2 promises to let you karate kick a helicopter with more ferocity than ever before. What’s not to like?