However I let my misgivings lie, and installed the game (thankfully not encountering the known glitch that stops it from installing). Initial impression weren’t good, the voice acting is mediocre, the graphics are below the quality of its contemporaries and the controls feel clunky. There is an odd delay when you press jump that just doesn’t make it feel fluid. I understand why this is, as you are charging for a great jump height, but still, it took some getting used to.

If you’ve played the Hulk game on the PS2 or indeed the more recent “Spider Man: Web of Shadows” you’ll start to notice instant similarities. The gameplay is far from unique and in a lot of places feels like a blatant rip-off. Web of Shadows is pretty recent in my mind so I’ll stick with the comparisons to that.

Here are the qualities so far that the 2 games have in common: Set in New York, main story revolves around an infection breakout that turns the people into zombies but that gives the protagonist extra abilities, abilities include shooting tendrils from body, protagonist can climb and run up walls like a spider, there is a military presence in New York also that is unaffected by the infection, there a load of collectibles to get which allow you to purchase upgrades a lot of which can be found in and around Central Park and Times Square, protagonist can pick up and throw cars, during the course of the game and spread of the infection the city gets more and more chaotic… etc

On top of this, at a point about midway through the game you unlock an ability which makes you look almost identical to the protagonist at the end of Dark Sector. If this was a coincidence, it was a big one. I mean the outfit look, colour

What sets this game apart though is the ability to hijack Tanks and Helicopters. It’s a nice touch, but doesn’t really add a lot to it as they can be destroyed rather easily (and again this has been done before and better  in games like Just Cause or the more recent Mercenaries 2). The only really unique ability I’ve seen in this game is the ability to mimic and patsy people. You can walk up behind a soldier, consume them, then become them and point at another soldier to claim they are the target. It’s a nice way of creating a distraction so that you can slip into a base.

Other than that the story is rather basic, guy gets given a load of powers, wants to find out who did it to him, has amnesia… etc. Throughout all this his sister is helping him track people down, completely oblivious it would seem that  her brother, who you play, is out there killing thousands of people. To add to the mediocre plot, the voice acting is sub-par. Compared to even Mercenaries 2 it’s lacking. On top of all this the graphics and musical score aren’t a high point either. Graphically it looks below Web of Shadows in a lot of areas, and the score just isn’t memorable.

Overall, it’s a slightly above average game. It’s fun to play but won’t leave you with any lasting memories. If you are looking for a sandbox game to roam around in I’d recommend inFamous, same type of game but I’ve heard that in nearly every area it’s superior to [prototype]. I’ll give you a definite on that in the next while  though as I plan to also play inFamous to see if it really is that good. But for now I really can’t see why [prototype] could be considered any more than a rental.

In this regard I think Mercenaries 2 succeeded. From the start you aren’t given any inclination that this is going to be a serious game. The lead protagonist is a Mercenary, named Mattias Nielson (who looks suspiciously like the Techno Viking),  who blows stuff up for the right price. Some guy hired him to do a job and then tried to kill him, but instead shot him in the ass. So you spend the game trying to hunt down this guy who shot you in the ass. It’s not going to win any Oscars for its dialogue or plot, but what it is is cheesy and fun. Right out of the gate you are given a semi-auto grenade launcher, then you are given access to a satellite to drop a bomb on a fortified gate, you are then given a Tank to lay waste to an entire compound of destructible buildings. This opening tutorial level really sets the tone for the game, in that you can do whatever you want in this world, however you want. Gone are the usual sandbox meager beginnings where you have to scratch in the dirt for ammo for your pistol.

Albeit, you do have to work your way up in standing and what you can buy after this tutorial, but at no point do you feel you are in a world with nothing to do. To find the man that shot you, Solano, you have to become friends with competing factions in Venezuela, work for them and get their trust before they will give you information about his whereabouts, as each of these factions are in competition you have to balance what work you will do for them, as helping one faction might make the other angry at you. Think of the movie “A fistfull of Dollars”, you play Clint Eastwoods character.

The work you do for each faction is also fairly varied, there are the usual straightforward side missions such as “blow up this building” or “capture this guy”, but on top of this there are some race levels with cars, boats or helicopters, or delivery missions where you have to deliver medicine or chickens without them flying out of the back of your truck. It’s varied enough to keep it interesting, and the rewards you receive for completing them always justify them.

Which leads to what impressed me most about this game. The world is quite expansive, but not the biggest I’ve seen, and the graphics are pretty good, but not ground breaking, but what impressed me the most is the sheer number of interactable vehicles, weapons and usable airstrikes in the game. From the start you recruit an Irish Helicopter pilot, then a mechanic who builds specialized vehicles (although she is rarely needed) and then a Russian jet pilot. Once recruited you can get vehicles or weapons you have purchased from faction shops delivered to you, or you can call in airstrikes on enemy locations. If you don’t have the resources for these, you can simply steal any vehicle, whether boat, helicopter, car or tank, or pick up any enemies weapon. This is not unique to this game as it is pretty much a stapple of all sandbox games, what separated this one though was the sheer variety to choose from. I don’t think I used one vehicle more than once before finding a bigger, faster or more armed to the teeth alternative.

That being said I tended to stick to the variety of helicopters the most and didn’t even scratch the surface on the plethora of available civilian vehicles or boats. Also, with weapons, I tended to mainly stick to what I picked up off of the enemies. You could spend days just trying to use each and every one of the weapons and vehicles available in this game. Further to this are the variety of airstrikes, one of the most satisfying parts of the game, as they just keep getting bigger, brighter and more explosive the further into the game you get. Ending with you getting your hands on a Nuclear Bunker Buster. Very few games have pulled off the Nuclear explosion well. Mercenaries 2 can be added to the list that has. I won’t try to explain it, rather I’ve recorded a video of it in use below.

Overall I was satisfied with this game. From start to finish I found it fun. I never felt like I was retreading the same ground, or approaching a mission the same way too often. The varying strengths and weaknesses of each vehicle you got meant you had to re-evaluate each mission to see how best to approach it (i.e. I want to steal that fuel and kidnap that person, so I can’t use missiles as they are too indirect and might blow up the fuel tanks, I will have to use laser guided bombs, sniper rifles and surgical airstrikes… etc) The main plot is quite short and there are no real options for buying personal armour for Mattias, which makes you feel naked when you are outside of a vehicle, but there are not enough gripes about this game to make me not like it. It has restored my faith in the sandbox genre, now hopefully Rockstar can follow suit and take a leaf out of Mercenaries 2′s book for GTAV

**Go to the Vimeo to watch the clip in HD**