Quick Points
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Prototype 2 is the sequel to the 2009 game by Radical Entertainment which is an open-world game about the aftermath of a viral contamination of New York Zero. The sequel brings a new protagonist Sgt. James Heller who is infected by Alex Mercer and is on a mission to kill him after he learns that Mercer killed his family. Mercer hopes that Heller will join his side because of Heller’s unique response to the virus. The story is nothing special and is basically just there to move you along and sets Mercer as the final enemy. Heller being new to being infected starts off with basic powers and builds up to the point where he can easily take out an army. The main power for Heller is his shape-shifting ability that allows him to take on the shape of the people he consumes. This tactic is used to gain access to bases, upgrade your powers, get new missions, or to evade alert. Nearly all missions in the game have you eventually consuming someone to gain access to an area denoted by a special marker above their head. Markers for powers and missions will also show up over the heads of people or the infected along with the mini-map on screen. The alert system, at least in normal, isn’t particularly hard to evade and takes a lot to activate. You can run up a building or fly around in front of soldiers and they will show very little concern. When you do activate it all it takes to evade is to get out of the line of sight of the soldiers and shape-shift to another person. There are two meters representing the alert level of each form you can take. There are 5 different attack powers in the game which you will gain through the story missions with only two immediately available to you to attack. The power select menu is mapped to the L1 button where you can select which power you want on either triangle or square. Some of the enemies will be resistant to some of the attacks and weaker against others but I found that sticking with the claws which is one of the first powers in the game to work better than the others against the majority of the enemies. Throughout the game I felt no real challenge with the fights except for a few occasions where the game didn’t act like I expected. With an upgraded locomotion Heller can be harder to control in tighter arenas which there are several of. When you get to the second island you’ll probably be upgraded enough to not even care about getting into alert status because it doesn’t take much to kill the army sent after you. You have several upgrade trees in the game which upgrade in when you consume certain enemies or when you get enough XP to get Heller to the next level. There isn’t much variety with the mission structures which usually consist of finding a person and consuming them for more information. The game usually values stealth over straight out action with in-mission challenge such as not getting into alert status during the mission. This is also extremely simple with the game telling when you’re being watched and not allowing you to consume people while you’re being watched. One of my least favorite features that have shown up this generation is also in the game, talking on cell phones. For some reason when talking on cell phones you can do anything even if you’re a mutated person who game create blades. This game has a bit of a twist that can lead to amusing stand offs with enemies as they will wait for you to finish your conversation before trying to kill them which is nice of them. Apart from the story missions there are three types of side missions called collectables which the game gives you an easy way to find them. Each of the three have you find something, either black boxes from soldiers, lairs, or street level missions that have you killing everyone involved. Each doesn’t have specific points on the map but on the menu map there are indicators that show approximately where they would be. This can also make you easily overpowered for you missions because it is extremely tempting to just go around and collect these before even starting the story missions on each island. The game is pretty solid in its mechanics and pretty fun to beat, rip apart, and to destroy things but doesn’t go beyond that. Having not played the first I can’t compare it with that but it should be a good follow up to anyone that likes this series. It does do some stuff to lessen the frustration that is seen in other open world games with things like the collectibles maps and the movement mechanic that allows you to easily run up buildings and fly around which makes traversal far easier than others like it. |
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