Enemies will be brutally dismembered and slaughtered by the thousands, and civilians too if you see fit, with no repercussions beyond waves of ‘response team’ enemies, not unlike GTA‘s wanted level. Seriously, Prototype 2 has gore coming out of every artery and hole where flesh should be. In the case of the latter, it is a good disgusting, if you’re into this kind of thing. And by sloshy I mean both in terms of balls-to-the-walls action, and disgusting ultra-violence. The sloshy Hollywood story is coupled with suitably sloshy gameplay. As nice as it is to see Prototype 2 well aware of its subject matter, a generic story is still generic, and given the game’s abundance of in-engine cut scenes, stylised footage, and audio tapes, it’s hard to truly care, or stay interested, in Heller’s plight nor the world around him. Outside of a couple of silly moments, Prototype 2‘s story never takes itself more seriously than necessary, well aware that a super mutant soaring through the city skies and throwing trucks at crowds of civilians, all the while cracking one-liners, is best reserved for cheesy Hollywood blockbuster style storytelling over pseudo philosophy and melodramatic nonsense. Predictable as the story may be, the narrative and dialogue are presented in a way that seems quite self aware of the game’s premise. Simplicity works in Prototype 2‘s favour. The narrative is easy to follow, with fairly predictable twists and turns, and does a good job of tying together Mercer’s involvement with the first game and where Heller, among other characters and organisations, fit into the big picture. The tropes of films and literature mirroring these themes are all there: wise cracking tough guy hero, sensual and lusty female interest, crazy scientists doing crazy science, shadowy government operatives up to no good, and more. What follows is a pretty standard story of revenge, secrecy, conspiracy and murder. Or, to put it simply, the game quickly gives an excuse for Heller to have all the superpowers Mercer has, and then some. With his sights set directly on Mercer, the man he considers responsible for his pain, Heller naturally runs into some trouble which, in turn, infects him with the very same virus. Instead, the story focuses on the newly introduced James Heller, an ex-US Marine on a mission to avenge his wife and child, believed to have died during outbreak. And this is Prototype 2‘s twist: you don’t actually play as Mercer.
Alex Mercer, protagonist of the first game, is suspected to be involved. Prototype 2 picks up over year after the original game, Manhattan suffering a second wave of viral outbreaks, and Blackwatch again returning to ‘contain’ the situation. And this is exactly the kind of game Prototype 2 is.
These experiences aim to allow the player to experiment with their tools and abilities, to disregard reality and make the sandbox their own. Here the sandbox aims not to be a cruel, realistic world, but a toy box, free from restrictions and open to all kinds of player meddling. As seen with titles like Mafia II and Grand Theft Auto IV, thematically and in content, these sandbox games are grounded in realism, telling stories that could very well exist beyond our doorstep, within an open environment that exists independently (and often dangerously) beyond our control.īut then there’s the superhero philosophy, adopted by games like Arkham City and Crackdown. A snapshot of the world we know, or a world that once was. With the former, the aim of a sandbox game is to create a believable, life-like world. Booming this generation, largely due to the increased processing power of current generation consoles over the last, developers appear to have separated into two schools of design: realism, and the superhero.
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