Title: Prototype
Players: 1 players
Platform: PS3, Xbox 360, PC
Developer: Radical Entertainment
Publisher: Activision
Price: $59.99
Release Date: June 2009
Website: www.prototypegame.com




It remains to be seen how the exploration, disguise, and customization elements of the game will shake out but Prototype seems to be a very accessible game with engaging combat.



In Prototype, the player controls Alex Mercer, a man who wakes up in a morgue in New York City with no memory. It's not a time to be in New York - a vicious plague has turned the city's inhabitants into mutated freaks. The military force charged with keeping order quarantines the island and openly massacres the belligerent infected stalking the streets. Good thing you're not infected, right? Actually, you are.

Fortunately, Alex's infection has granted him superhuman abilities. He can leap dozens of feet into the air, run up the sides of buildings, and hurl heavy objects like cars. He's also a shapeshifter, able to turn his hands into deadly weapons. Ordinarily you'd have a choice of which "hand weapon" you can use but with the demo I played at an Activision event last night, the weapons switched automatically at different segments. When I reached Times Square, Alex grew giant claws. The claws seem like the basic weapon and are capable of fast, devastating slashes.

While you can do pretty well at Prototype's combat just by mashing the same couple buttons over and over, experimenting will reveal some pretty impressive attacks. For example, you can stab your claws into the ground and cause a giant spike to shoot out from the ground underneath your foe, impaling him. The game uses auto-targeting for the most part but you can also manually target to kill mission-specific targets. It's a god-send, considering how many infected, military troops, cars, and other objects were around. It's impressive how much stuff the game managed to process on-screen at any given time while maintaining a solid frame rate. While I'm running around doing my thing, the infected and military were battling as well.

Killing foes causes them to drop red orbs which give you health and EP. Through a character advancement screen accessible through the menu (not included in demo), EP is used to unlock new abilities of your choosing. You can't spend points on base attributes like strength or agility like a role-playing game but you can choose to give your max health a boost as well.

After I turned a squad of troopers into a bloody mess, the military brought in tanks. Alex's hands became thick and blunt, like clubs. My attacks were slowed but they were more powerful. While I pounded away at the tank, it was pointed out to me that you could also charge up abilities by holding down the buttons. I ended up smashing the tanks into smithereens with a few mighty overhand blows but you can also yank the driver out and commandeer the tank.

It was also possible to hijack the attack helicopters that soon arrived. After manually targeting a helicopter, it took three simple button presses to leap up, scissor through the air, and grab onto the side of the chopper. Then it was just a matter of tapping the Y button furiously (not unlike the hijacking sequences in Mercenaries 2) to lift the canopy of the chopper and jump inside. Alex then slaughtered the pilots with his new weapon, a long sword-like blade, and began to fly the heavily-armed chopper. Hijacking choppers is supposedly one of the harder manuevers in the game but it really wasn't too bad; then again, this is a preview build designed to be deal out as little damage to the player as possible.

In the retail game, Alex won't know how to fly helicopters or drive tanks right off the bat, though. Alex is able to devour his foes for extra health or - in some cases - valuable knowledge. In order to learn how to fly a helicopter, for example, he'd need to consume a helicopter pilot. As Alex searches for clues on his identity, he'll consume key enemies to acquire leads and advance the story. One feature not in the demo was the disguise ability. Alex can assume the likeness of those people he eats up. If the military is hunting for Alex, he can consume some average joe and take on his appearance to evade pursuit.

As this was a specially designed preview, there were still rocks left unturned. The demo was geographically limited to the Times Square area so I couldn't get a sense of what the greater city was like and whether it's worth exploring. Is Manhattan just one big war-zone or are there quiet areas as well? Character advancement, as I mentioned, was also disabled so the depth of customization offered to players isn't known. Also, in the demo, the difficulty was turned way down and Alex sported advanced abilities. How hard will the game ultimately be and how long will it take to build up to this level of power? Then there's the disguise elements - how much will they add to the overall gameplay experience? There's a lot of questions but combat's easy to learn, fun, and makes you feel like a bad-ass super hero. Those of you attending New York Comic Con this weekend will have a chance to go hands on with the game and I suggest you take the opportunity to do so.