[PROTOTYPE]

Prototype has to be one of the greatest fucking around games to come out in the last 3 years. I say that because you can waste a good chunk of time throwing people into buildings and elbow dropping into cars before remembering the game has a main quest line.

Prototype, a sandbox game,(By Radical Entertainment and Activision) gives you controlled of a super powered test subject called Alex Mercer. He wakes up in the morgue of the testing facility and sets out to find out what happened to him. Yes, another main character with amnesia and the entire story revolving around it; not the freshest idea in the cliche box but I doubt you'll care much.

Prototype gives you a superhero(villain?) level character and sets you lose in New York City, more specifically Manhattan (duh) with plenty of high buildings you will most likely be hurling yourself off of and landing on innocent people below. Like I said, Prototype is the best game to just have incredible amounts of fun without even touching the main quest line. You are given incredible amounts of power usually coming in the form of giant blades, spikes and bludgeons. High jumps can't kill you and actually cause shockwaves throwing anything nearby off to the side. You can also glide by squirting out jets of blood from your hands and feet (that's what it looks like, it may be magical grape jelly that makes you fly for all I know) making traveling through Manhattan feel effortless.

The controls for these may take some time to get use to but are overall easy to understand. You can charge up jumps by holding jump button while running to do a mega jump that you can use to easily clear barricades and small buildings. Selecting different weapons is simple by letting you use a radial menu that slows down the game to a crawl giving you SOME time to chose the right weapon before being torn open by a giant mutant or a tank. There is a quickslot option that maps a weapon, an appearance, a sensing ability and a shield ability to the D-Pad which allows you to massacre an entire block then quickly transform into an old lady and walk away like nothing happened. The human consume ability is enjoyable to say the least. It replenishes your health but also gives you that person's appearance. What makes it amusing is HOW you consume someone. You either punch them through the chest, slam them on the ground, or snap their spine. If you have a mutation weapon selected it gives you different moves.

As you could've guessed this game is bloody, bloody, bloody. Blood and body parts will be all over the place when you go on a rampage. Even when certain areas of Manhattan get infected by the virus you're trying to keep under control, the streets and buildings turn red and people mutated into blood covered zombies.

Oh right the story. The story for Prototype is confusing. Its like a conspiracy/revenge plot with you trying to discover who you really are and what the company (GenTec) is doing with all these mutants but the government is involved and trying to cover it up but the virus is escaping somehow and there's this woman you're trying to save. Its really confusing. Its so confusing that there are people you can consume to fill something called a Web Of Intrigue which explains what the hell is going on. they needed collectible human brains to try to explain to the player whats going on in the main story they're playing through. Right then.

My biggest gripe in Prototype is the lack of a block button. There IS a dodge button but sometimes that just doesn't cut it. Especially when there are monsters (picture a giant gorilla turned inside out) that do an chain attack that you can't block or jump out off and when there's more than one you can kiss your mutated ass goodbye. Another thing was some of the combos you could unlock. Some of them have you press two buttons at once but sometimes they pick strange buttons like X and B which are impossible to press without hitting A or Y (unless you have strangely slender fingers) so it makes them un-usable in a battle against the army or a hoard of mutants. Last thing the graphics could have used a bit more polish. Things look muddy and at times textures look cloudy and messy. The explosions are.....oi the explosions.

If you want a game that's high in messing around and low on story, Prototype is a great choice. Solid gameplay, simple enough controls, and a high replay value. What more could you want? (Plus its probably like 15 bucks now so its worth a check out)