| Author | Review |
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Vorpal Smilodon
207,977
TA Score for this game: 1,163
Posted on 01 May 12 at 02:12, Edited on 01 May 12 at 15:25 |
This review has 32 positive votes and 9 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
Prototype 2 is hands-downs the best melee-focused action-sandbox game on the market, though it incorporates elements of stealth and shooter well within it's core superhero-action mechanics. Think of Prototype 2 as Red Faction: Guerrilla, Assassin's Creed and your choice of the Hulk or Spider-man games all rolled into an infected zombie-flavored pie-shell. This might make the game sound generic, but what it ends up as is a game that gives you great gameplay choices and unique weaponry.
Gameplay Choices
The story may be linear, but how you fulfill your missions certainly isn't - in a given situation you have the option to sneak peacably by in the skin of a soldier, use that stealth to consume every last enemy one by one, take up a gun and fight on their side against the infected, hijack your choice of tank or helicopter, or just tear the missile pods off of their sides for some heavy weaponry - all in addition to the main gameplay which consists of action-heavy combat with your choice out of five different weapon-arms, throwing cars, reflecting missiles with carefully timed blocks and eventually forcing some of the infected to fight on your side.
Story
Suprisingly good, the prologue in particular shines before the sandbox opens up and I personally ended up spending a lot of time searching out all the collectables - but you can hardly fault sandbox game for having a fun sandbox to explore!
Collectables
Surprisingly painless, the game incorporates a vague impression of collectable location on the map, as well as keeping track for you of those you've collected. This alone would be impressive, but more so is that collecting sets of collectables unlocks upgrades, somewhat similar to the Fallout perk system - you get a choice of various upgrades, from 25% less damages taken to getting more health out of meals or doing 10% more damage against military units ir jumping 25% further.
Environment
A particular improvement from the original Prototype is the environment - instead of one giant city, almost identical everywhere, the city in Prototype 2 is cut up into three sections, the Red, yellow and Green zones, each with a different look and feel to keep the game varied.
Achievements
Very easy overall, they should take no more than an estimated 16 hours and require little beyond playing through on hard(doable on your first playthrough), collecting everything and doing about half of a second playthrough.
Suggestions
If you're a serious gamer, I definitely suggest playing on Hard for your first playthrough, or the game may end up too easy.
comments
Leave a comment if the review disappoints - if I've forgotten to mention anything I'll be happy to add on or clarify.
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Astute Vagabond
517,602
TA Score for this game: 1,245
Posted on 28 May 12 at 13:55, Edited on 28 May 12 at 14:04 |
This review has 15 positive votes and 2 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
Originally written by myself for www.gamerscoreaddicts.net
Prototype 2
Developer: Radical Entertainment
Publisher: Activision
Those of you who played and enjoyed the first Prototype are in for a treat. Prototype 2 is a direct sequel to the first game and those who know the character of Alex Mercer may be pleased to hear that he returns as a major (but not the main) character in this game. For anyone who has not played the first prototype do not fret - there is a plot summary for the first game in the main menu.
Story
Prototype 2 plays from the perspective of James Heller – A US Marine Corps sergeant hell-bent on getting revenge on Alex Mercer for taking his wife and child from him. The game starts with an interesting, news report style cutscene leading into a confrontation between James Heller and Alex Mercer, resulting in Alex Mercer infecting James and telling him to discover the truth. Heller then finds himself trapped in a testing room fighting for his life and discovering his newfound abilities as an ‘evolved’ infected. He can now morph his arms into various different weapons, consume people to regenerate and perhaps most importantly gain the memories of those he consumes.
Being able to gain the memories of other is a huge driving force for the story, allowing Heller to consume members of Gentek (a genetics research company) and Blackwatch (a Special Forces group) to unravel the secrets and discover the ‘truth’ Mercer spoke of. Heller soon discovers that all is not as it seems and certainly not what he was told during his service in the Marine Corps.
The story is a heavy feature in Prototype 2 as even the side quests often involve hunting down individuals with information that - whilst not crucial to the main tale - give extra detail for any gamers interested in learning more. Sometimes the game can seem too story focused as it can give several cutscenes without advancing the story at all.
Gameplay
Prototype 2 plays like a standard sandbox style game with a large focus on melee combat. Heller can fight with regular attacks or by using his arms as weapons such as claws, whips, tendrils and more. Each weapon type has a unique set of attacks which are more efficient in certain situations and keep the fighting fairly varied. There are also several different types of enemies, ranging quite drastically from regular infected and soldiers to huge infected and super-soldiers. There are also some enemy vehicles to be destroyed in the form of tanks and helicopters.
Despite this variety in fighting style and enemies, Prototype 2 has little variation in the objectives given throughout the game. Most of the time is spent either “hunting” someone to consume or infiltrating a base, with the odd timed collection task here and there. Due to the lack of variation the game can, at times, feel very repetitive to slog through the missions - particularly near the start of the game as you have few weapons and it takes longer to manoeuvre Heller around the city.
The game takes place in New York which becomes known as New York Zero (NYZ) after the outbreak. The city is split into three zones (green, yellow and red) based on the level of infection in that area – green is completely sanitary and safe, yellow being a mixture or those infected and not, red is a complete danger zone homing only infected and the military attacking them. Getting around the city is made easy by Heller’s ability to run up walls, jump incredibly high and glide long distances. Each of these abilities can be upgraded by completing side missions and completing sets of collectibles to make travelling even faster.
There are various different types of collectibles scattered throughout NYZ and Prototype 2 integrates collectibles into the sandbox environment well. Firstly, the three main types of collectible are field ops (groups of soldiers to kill), Blackboxes (dead soldiers with information on them) and infected lairs (lairs to fight in). Each of these collectibles “ping” on the in game map and notify the player of a rough direction when they enter the vicinity of the collectible. This feature makes it a more relaxed, simple and enjoyable experience which encourages players to seek them out.
The fourth type of collectible comes in the form of enemies scattered throughout the city that are indicated by a certain symbol on the mini-map when Heller is near. These enemies have the ability to grant upgrades to the player upon consuming them and so the player should be on lookout for them at all times. One downside to these enemies is that they can be killed by other forms of combat or environmental hazards before the player is able to consume them. They do, however, re-spawn at another location on the map. The player will have to hunt them down again if they wish to obtain the upgrades.
Graphics and style
The graphics in Prototype 2 are very crisp and display the setting of NYZ well. During my time playing I found no graphical hiccup, which is rare for any sandbox game. The explosions are displayed in vivid, colourful clouds and inanimate objects interact well when incorporated into battle, such as cars being launched across streets etc. During combat, the player can trigger a slow motion effect which often displays a lot of detail and makes the player feel bad-ass about exerting revenge on Heller’s opponents. The slo-mo effect lasts very briefly in comparison to most games which apply the same feature, so it never feels like a hindrance in the overall gameplay.
The cutscenes portray the characters in great detail, with highly defined facial features and expressions. The body alterations Heller and Mercer undergo are represented particularly well. Generally, when Heller consumes an individual and accesses their memories, a cutscene with a hazy background is displayed; making it clear to the player they are witnessing a memory.
Music and sound
The music that plays during cutscenes and tense moments sets the atmosphere well and the entire story is voice acted well with little to no text reading required. During most of the gameplay there is almost no background music present, leaving only the sounds of the environment to really accompany Heller as he goes about his day (no varied radio stations here!). This wouldn’t be too much of an issue as you could put on your own music if it wasn’t for the fact that Prototype 2 has the game stopping every few minutes for a cutscene which a player wouldn’t want to miss if they wanted the full story.
The voices are well done in main game cutscenes however the memory cutscenes distort the voices making it somewhat difficult to make out what is being said.
Longevity/Replayability
Overall, Prototype 2 does not take too long to complete story-wise. If the player intends to go for everything including side missions and collectibles, they are looking at around 10-20 hours. The game does have a “New Game +” mode in which gamers can challenge the newly unlocked insane difficulty or go back into free roam to clear up anything they may have missed. There is even an option to take on Radnet challenges, aiming for as high as platinum medals. These additions could add quite a significant amount of game-time for a player who wishes to squeeze every ounce of content available from the game.
Overall
Prototype 2 offers good gameplay, a decent story and is definitely worth one playthrough at least. The variety of weapons and enemies is interesting, however I feel the game falls in overall enjoyment as it becomes repetitive, lacking the entertainment of much background music whilst playing. Although the game offers a fair bit of longevity with challenges some may find it tedious to continue after beating the game once.
Rating: 7.5/10
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XZxF4LLENxZX
32,533
TA Score for this game: 1,245
Posted on 10 July 12 at 18:28 |
This review has 7 positive votes and 3 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
Mercer is back. Unleashing the monstrous plague once again upon NYZ and the poor, helpless people walking in it's streets. A mutated, seargent called James Heller is out with a thirst for vengeance and Mercer may have created his own death wish.
Firstly, the Story! Heller has lost his wife and daughter to Mercer's virus and is now on a suicidal march against the mysterious Blackwatch group and Mercer's 'Evolved' (Infected beings that have the same abilities as Mercer and Heller but are far weaker). Unfortunately, despite Radical's best attempts to create a tragic story with it's black and white cutscenes, it fails to create a true story-driven world that immerses you in it and makes you want to continue on. Even Mercer's dastardly plan fails to create tension and suspence because Heller is just too damn powerful. Heller's godlike power is an intentional addition but it also means that you know Heller will come out on top. Even on Hard, Mercer is no match for his protege. The tragedy always fails to reach you because Heller's constant swearing kills the mood. However, Heller is not a completely dark being and of course he has a great soft-spot for his family and friends and he even spares a Colonel's life because of his family. All these times allow travel deeper into Heller's personality but these moments are short and few. Even most of the main characters have no strong character that makes them stand out and they only appear to be additions to carry on the storyline and then die. Missions haven't got a very strong sense of fludity and the side missions don't really add much background apart from making you see that Blackwatch aren't as good as they seem and do some gruesome stuff. However, the game's story is really only carried on by Heller mercilessly consuming people which eventually becomes a quite dull way to enter plots.
The graphics aren't amazing either compared to other open world games like Arkham City and Assassin's Creed but have nice details and there are hardly any glitches in the actual cutscenes. Gameplay is extremely strong though and does what Radical intended: Make us feel like a God-Like unstoppable machine. There is a lot of depth to the weapons and abilities and you can execute a lot of moves that leave your enemies in a pile of infection. You have an array of attacks and there are sections of the game that stop the missions feeling like Deja Vu and falling into repetitivity. You can control tanks, APCs and Helicopters and you can wield human weaponry. Because of Heller's extreme power, the difficulty lowers and you will find Hard a breeze. The Open-World mini-map means you can track collectibles easily. You can level up Heller and unlock Mutations which makes Heller even stronger. Walking through the 3 Zones is quick and fluid and more importantly: Fun!
Achievements are very easy and if you put a bit of effort in you could get them all in a Week-1 week and a half.
All in all, Prototype 2 is a very good title but is ultimately lowered by it's accessibility (Hard is Easy) and lack of a character-driven story. However, the gameplay is amazing and the graphics do their job, I bought this with tempered expectatations and was pleasantly surprised. There are better Open-World Games out there but if you want a fun, satisfying experience, then Prototype 2 will please! 
+ Amazing gameplay
+ Collectibles are easy to track
- Lack of difficulty
- Story is very average
8/10
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NinjaKIUK
120,932
TA Score for this game: 1,245
Posted on 29 April 12 at 20:50, Edited on 29 April 12 at 21:13 |
This review has 4 positive votes and 9 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
Firstly this is my first review and im not looking to do a book about this game im simply going to do a "rating out of 10" review, reason being i dont like to spend hours reading irrelivent bulltihs.
so...
::SPOILER FREE::
::NOTES::
PT1 = Prototype 1
PT2 = Prototype 2
GAMEPLAY - - 7/10
Gameplay for PT2 is a little better than PT1, movement is more fluent and a litle easier to control.
Camera angles for PT2 are sometimes a pain in the ass and can annoy you somewhat especially when you get swarmed by infected.
GRAPHICS - - 6/10
Graphically this didn't impress me, i didn't see a huge difference from PT1, the graphics for explosions etc looked a little more "3D" and glossy but thats all, the CUTSCENE graphics were nice but would have been nice to have seen some ingame graphics touched up.
CONTROLS - - 8/10
As stated in "gameplay" movement is much better than in PT1, you actually feel as if you have "power" and i liked that. The layout for controls is also nicely laid out and easy to get to.
GAME DIFFICULTY - - 4/10
This game is not difficult at all, you should have no problems ripping this game to shreds in about 2-3 days MAX (took me about 4 - 4.30 hours on HARD)
ACHIEVEMENT DIFFICULTY - - 6/10
Alot of the games achievements can be done in its first playthrough, there are about 3 maybe 4 achievements that will require a 2nd playthrough. The reason its a 6 is because of the issue of playing it again, if you take away the 2nd playthrough ide say 4/10
OVERALL RATING - - 6/10 - 3 stars
SYNOPSIS
This game isn't a BAD game but its not a GREAT game, ide recommend playing PT1 first to get abit of back story but whether you do or not is your choice.
Any questions or suggestions on how to improve etc please let me know but please take into consideration that i only want to give a review based on the games mechanics and playability, i do not want to post about the story etc i talk about how it plays, looks etc, thanks
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