Developed by Radical Entertainment, the team behind The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, Prototype follows much the same formula as that Marvel Comics inspired title. Both feature super-powered characters feared by the public and hunted by the military. Both take place in New York City, where their respective characters can travel from the streets to the rooftops, wrecking havoc as they see fit. The main difference between the two titles is that Prototype's antagonist, Alex Mercer, is a completely original character, unfettered by preconceived notions of what he will and will not do to further his quest for the truth.

The question is, can this sort of game handle an original character, or is ultimate destruction best left in the hands of the more professional superhero?

Loved
Weaving Its Web: The real meat of Prototype's story isn't found in the game's normal cut scenes, but in the minds of specially marked citizens wandering the streets of New York City. Grabbing these marked citizens and absorbing them into you causes a flashback that helps fill in the plot, as you learn what your victim knew about the sinister plot that made Alex the way he is. The flashbacks are a combination of solid voice work, stock photography, and bizarre live-action imagery, pieced together like a mental collage by a Web of Intrigue that urges the player to scour the city, collecting memories like Pokémon. The adds a layer of intrigue to a story that otherwise would have been your average tale of scientific misconduct.

Freedom of Movement: The streets of New York City belong to Alex Mercer, and you can feel it in every movement he makes. Apparently a practitioner of the extreme sport of parkour, Mercer leaps over cars and pushes through crowds of pedestrians as he travels, or simply takes to the rooftops with his ability to run up sheer surfaces. As you upgrade your movement capabilities you'll find yourself gliding long distances across the skies of the city, wind-whipping at your clothing. The controls might feel a little loose, but the feeling of freedom they afford more than compensates.

Drunk With Power: Though he begins his new life as a strong guy who can run up buildings, Prototype's upgrade system soon presents Alex Mercer with an astounding array of powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. There are several core power sets to utilize, each with their own unique moves and uses, generally manifesting about Alex's hands. The blade power turns your arm into a massive edged weapon, perfect for taking out some of the game's more powerful enemies, while the tendril power allows you to attack from afar, proving particularly useful in the area of helicopter hijacking. As impressive as the normal powers are, the Critical Mass moves are even more so. I spent a good couple of hours in the "new game plus mode" once I finished my first play through, seeing how many pedestrians I could take out at once with the devastating tendril burst power. For the record, it was around 108.

I'll Be You: Much more than an unstoppable juggernaut of raw power, Alex Mercer can also take on the appearance of any NPC in the game, allowing him to blend in with the population, losing any pursuit that might be following him at the time. This is a mechanic you'll use quite often throughout the game, sometime merely to make an escape, and other times to infiltrate enemy strongholds. There's nothing quite like having a whole fleet of helicopters on your tail, only to drop off the side of a building, turn into a civilian, and then lose yourself in the crowd. On top of blending in, certain NPCs can be absorbed to learn new skills, such as the ever-handy helicopter piloting proficiency, which leads us neatly to...

Tanks For The Firepower: Charging in with your powers blazing is certainly one way to handle a situation, but there's just something about quietly hijacking a tank or a helicopter, wandering over to your objective inconspicuously, and then opening fire with everything you've got. The initial trailers made vehicle hijacking seem like a gimmick, but it works rather well in the game. Once you've upgraded the appropriate power, taking over helicopters, letting another chopper shoot you down and then leaping through the air to hijack the other is an amazingly cool feeling.

Play It Again, Alex: "New game plus" is always a plus! Once you've finished getting your ass kicked for a good 8-10 hours, you can play through the game again with all of the powers you've already unlocked. For extra added fun, do new game plus on easy mode, to help vent the frustration built up from a certain timed event you may have to do over and over again.

Hated
Throwaway Side Missions: Hmmm. A mutanagenic virus is rapidly infecting the city, I regains memories by absorbing other people into my being, and an elite military force is trying to kill me at every turn. I know! Let's see how fast I can jump from rooftop to rooftop! While some of the side missions in Prototype do fit with the storyline, others just seem completely silly and out of place. Destroying a mutant hive? Yes. Seeing how close you can get to landing in a fountain after jumping from the top of a tall building? Not so much.

Difficulty Spikes: One minute you're cruising around, kicking ass and taking identities; the next you're reloading the last checkpoint for the fourth time, cursing at the television screen. This happens quite a lot in Prototype. Where other games are content to introduce new enemies slowly, letting you get a feel for them, Prototype gives you one, and then while you are catching your breath two more, and then five drop in. There were many situations where I found myself having to jump into a situation, take out a few enemies, and then run away, healing up and coming back for more. I did manage to finish the game, of course, but I had to continue far more than I feel I would have if the difficulty was more ramp than jagged mountain range.

The Other Side of the Story: As intriguing as the memory-siphoning story reveal is, the actual in-game cut scenes are rather bland and boring. The voice acting is so-so, with Alex's sister in particular sounding as if she's bored. It makes it hard to care about the characters in the game. Luckily the flashbacks are more than interesting enough to carry the story.

There's no escaping it; this is an evolved version of Radical Entertainment's Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. Many of the powers and mechanics are exactly the same as they were in the green goliath's title. Movement in particular feels much like it did in Ultimate Destruction, with the smashing through cars replaced with hopping over them, unless you choose the Muscle Mass power set, in which case you're one color-change away from being the green goliath himself. Even the Critical Mass feature from Hulk finds its way into Prototype, giving Alex access to ultra-powerful moves when his meter is either nearly depleted or filled past its saturation point. On top of that, one of the main bad guys bears a striking resemblance to General Thunderbolt Ross. Alex might not be able to level whole buildings, but when you can kill an entire city block worth of civilians with one massive attack, why bother?

It's not a bad thing, really. Radical Entertainment did a spectacular job on the Hulk, and now we get a chance to see what they do when they aren't tied down to a licensed character with an established history - and what they've done is pretty fantastic. Prototype puts an intoxicating amount of power in the player's hands and doesn't let up until the last enemy is torn asunder by your wriggling tentacles.

Prototype was developed by Radical Entertainment and published by Activision for the PlayStation 3, PC, and Xbox 360. Released on June 9th. Retails for $59.99 PS3 and 360, $49.99 PC. Played the Xbox 360 version. Completed game on normal difficulty.

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Activision will be offering up three pre-order product possibilities at GameStop, Game Crazy and Amazon, giving serious fans of Radical Entertainment's upcoming open-world, super-powered action game something to covet and/or display.

Read on for the full lineup of goods, along with official descriptions from the Activision folks.

GameStop - Alex Mercer Collectible Action Figurine, 2-sided Critical Hints Location Map / Poster
Become the most deadly shape-shifter of all through the collection of critical hints sprawled across the vast expanse of New York City. Collecting and absorbing the information with in these critical hints will give players a tremendous tactical advantage.

GameCrazy - Limited Edition Hard Back Art Concept Book
This art book captures the details of Alex Mercer's character, shape-shifting abilities and weapons. Additionally it illustrates other characters, enemies, locations and infections that make up the PROTOTYPE game. The game background and conceptual art with in this book will impress all PROTOTYPE fans and gaming enthusiasts.

Amazon - Comic Book
Take a deeper dive into the world of Prototype with an exclusive bonus comic from Wild Storm. Experience the action from a different perspective in this new series as you follows two NYC homicide detectives as they try to hunt down the game's protagonist, Alex Mercer.

Oh fine, there's parkour and it's set in New York City. But the game has more in common with its cousin The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction than it does with anything Ubisoft or Rockstar created; and it doesn't have some pretentious sci-fi or overwrought gangster premise. Seriously – when you're elbow-dropping tanks and flinging pedestrians into airborne helicopters, do you really need some character-driven excuse to have fun?

What Is It?
Prototype is a singleplayer action game set in a sandbox world that happens to be New York City. Gameplay focuses on the sinister superpowers of amnesiac Alex Mercer that allow him to, among other things, rip people apart and absorb their appearance and memories. It's coming out on PC, 360 and PS3.

What We Saw
I spent an hour with the 360 version of the game in a private hands-on appointment, going through the first tutorial mission and a second steal-the-helicopter mission set about a third of the way through the game.

How Far Along Is it?
This build is shy of release code by a bit – Trophy/Achievements haven't even been worked out yet – but it looked pretty smooth for a game two months away from shipping.

What Needs Improvement?
Why Do I Care About Alex?: No matter how vast, pretty or interactive a sandbox game is, it gets boring if you have no connection to the main character. Radical has kept details of the plot pretty close to the vest so far, so maybe there is some compelling reason why I should care about this hoodie-wearing mutant. But unless and until I found out what that is, Alex could get old fast after the first hundred elbow-dropped tanks or so.

What Do You Mean No Multiplayer?: Sounds like Radical bit off more than they could chew when they first announced Prototype – this game was supposed to have a badass multiplayer to go with the badass gameplay. But it doesn't, and I'm docking points for promises broken.

Simultaneous Releases Make Me Nervous: I only saw the 360 version of the game, so I don't know how it plays on PS3 or PC. But I have noticed a sad trend where games that go for simultaneous releases on all three platforms usually break one and leave the other out in the cold for DLC – that's PS3 and PC respectively.

What Should Stay The Same?
The powers: Remember those old Nintendo ads that said "Now you're playing with power"? I think this is what they had in mind. Alex Mercer has all kinds of weird mutant tricks that allow him to run up the side of buildings, tear through the streets of NYC at a blurring rate, glide like a bat, and – of course – kill people in weird ways. One of the weirdest I saw in the tutorial level was where his hand turns into a black and red writing mass that he slams into the ground, which causes a huge set of spikes to jut out from the ground in front of Alex, flipping cars and impaling people.

The control scheme: Alex has a lot of superpowers and a lot of people shooting at him because of said superpowers; players need to be able to handle his big bag of people-killing tricks and get him the hell out of trouble at the drop of a hat. Thankfully, the controls lend themselves to both, with most of the mutant moves mapped to the face buttons, plus a "flee" option mapped to the right trigger that performs most of Alex's parkour moves without the player having to find surfaces that are viable parkour platforms – so for example if you're running through a crowd, Alex doesn't shove people aside and stumble, he just vaults over them and then runs up the side of the building because the flee button allows you to parkour off of pretty much any surface (unlike a certain game that I said we shouldn't compare Prototype to).

So Many NPCs, So Little Time: The Titanium engine developed for Prototype can support a lot of NPCs on screen at one time. Dave Fracchia, VP of Technology at Radical (and former software dev on Reboot), told me that the engine can handle between 80 and 100 pedestrian NPCs plus another 100 or so vehicles. That's 200 things for me to wreck, maim or otherwise inconvenience via Alex's superpowers at any given time. Awesome!

Gotta Absorb ‘Em All: A major storytelling method for the game is the Web of Intrigue – a network of memories that Alex collects by absorbing people. Some of the Web you'll unlock by progressing through the main plot; but there are lots of non-essential memories that fill in Alex's back story that you can gobble up by seeking out and absorbing random NPCs all over town. Having this storytelling method might not make the plot any better (or worse, as the case may be), but it definitely gives you something extra to do in the game. And the really fun part? They might "misremember" stuff, so you'll have absorb even more people to get a clear picture of what really happened to Alex to make him the freak he is.

Final Thoughts
Prototype was a cathartic game to play, but not at all mind-numbingly repetitive. The varied superpowers, dense city and numerous ways to break a helicopter (you can jump off a building and sort of glide into its propeller – so hilarious) kept things interesting, even though I couldn't get into the plot. I'm almost willing to say that even if the plot is horrible, that won't make the game less fun; repetition is the enemy of sandbox games, not pretentious plots. But I'll have to wait and see. Maybe Radical can cook up something so pretentious, it sucks all the fun out of sucking up people's memories.

There's a bit more to it than that, but the idea of consuming other people as a storytelling technique is certainly a novel way of putting a fresh spin on the overly-used amnesia mechanic. It certainly beats the hell out of having to assemble a team of colorful adventurers and then slowly learn about your past through a series of cutscenes interspersed with turn-based battles.

In case you aren't patient enough to watch all 10, let me sum things up for you. It's Hulk: Ultimate Destruction plus Spider-man: Web of Shadows. If those were your type of games, it certainly looks like Prototype will be right up your alley, killing people and taking their identities.

New York Comic Con attendees will have a chance to go hands-on with the game at the show this weekend and we recently got to see the game in action at CES. But I played through an early level at an Activision event earlier tonight in advance of the show.

What It Is
Prototype is an open-world action game that takes place in a decimated New York City. The protagonist, Alex Mercer, has awoken to a pretty large problem. Not only has his memory been erased, but he also has these crazy shape-shifting powers. What is one to do? Why, go on a rampage of course!

You'll fight hoards of militants and enemy mutants by flinging cars, people, or by using any one of your many shape-shifting powers. Radical Entertainment is developing the game, who may be best known for their sandbox-y action games like Scarface and The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction.

What We Saw
I saw an early preview level from the game for the Xbox 360 that I managed to complete in about 15 minutes. Overall, there were 4 mission objectives given sequentially, mostly involving killing someone or something before advancing to the next. I played this demo at an Activision party, meaning I did have an Activision rep on hand to highlight some of the elaborate looking move sets, but I mainly completed it myself without any help.

How Far Along Is it?
I was told it's still in pre-beta. Its expected release date is June.

What Needs Improvement
While I wasn't given the option to fiddle with every feature of the game, from my initial impression I'd like to see a few minor touch-ups to the camera positioning. During busy fights you can lose sight of what you're doing.

The civilian A.I. didn't seem to really react to anything going on in the environment. They were always just running around in panic mode (which could be understandable). At times, I felt like I could simply button-mash my way to victory.

Oh, and it would be nice to have multiplayer co-op, but that's not happening any time soon.

What Needs To Stay The Same
The controls. Performing high-profile acrobatic moves never seemed easier. Holding the right-trigger while running allows Alex to automatically leap over debris. The controls themselves take very little time to get used to.

Final Thoughts
While the game is an original I.P., I'm not sure about how much different of an experience this will be from the Incredible Hulk games they made. The demo I played looked extremely polished, save for a few minor bugs, like cars getting stuck in the street pavement. The framerate, overall, was solid. I'm also interested to see where the story goes throughout the rest of the game.

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Obviously, Prototype sounded pretty darn good in the THX stage room. It had better, if Activision's going to borrow demo room time from THX.

But we were more impressed with what was happening on-screen in Prototype, which follows the violent, sandbox-style adventures of superhuman amnesiac Alex Mercer. If you don't know the premise, Mercer wakes up, super-powered and pissed, determined to find out how he became blessed with the ability to turn his arms into blades and climb the walls of New York City's skyscrapers.

If you're looking for easy comparisons, Prototype looks to play like the hyper-violent bastard child of Crackdown, Spider-man and *gulp* State of Emergency. We were reminded of that last one because of the metropolitan beat 'em up chaos that permeates Prototype's version of the Big Apple — half populated by Infected humans and occupying Army forces.

What we saw at CES was a quick example of some of the game's missions, which can be accessed by GTA-style light columns. The mission, "Rolling Thunder," tasks Alex with killing as many enemies — infected or otherwise — with a tank under a time limit. Seeing Alex wreak havoc with tank shells on the zombie-like infected was exhilarating and packed with over the top violence.

We also saw Prototype's protagonist go on more free-form killing sprees, slicing up Infected with his razor sharp arms, crushing them with his "hammerfist" ability and blazing through them with an organic spiked shield.

Mercer also sprinted to the top of a New York skyscraper, switching quickly to a military disguise to avoid being spotted, then pulling down helicopters with a stretchy "whipfist" ability.

We got a peek at some of Prototype's other abilities, some in name only. These include muscle mass, armor, disguise, thermal vision, and infected vision skills.

While there's plenty of exciting action to be had in Prototype, Radical's Kelly Zmak told us a bit about the game's story telling tactics. Portions of the conspiracy-laden adventure will be told through traditional in-game cut scenes, with others pieced together bit by bit via absorbed memories — Alex can assume the identities and knowledge of the people he kills throughout the game.

Prototype looks far more promising — and frenetic — than I had personally anticipated. While it may not have blown me away graphically, the sheer amount of stuff packed on-screen impresses. It's slated for a Summer release and we look forward to going hands-on with the game as soon as possible.

Radical layoffs at Radical Entertainment [Vancouver Sun]
Report: High Moon Lays Off Staff, Post-Vivendi Merger [Gamasutra] [Pic]

In this title, seminal antagonists Dr. Neo Cortex and N. Brio have invented some kind of technological device that has turned everyone into zombie-like obsessives, and Crash is the only one unaffected. To stop the evil scientists, Crash will have to liberate the area's mutants - not unselfishly, of course. The core mechanic relies on using the unique abilities of the beasties you save to fight other monsters, navigate areas and solve puzzles.

I watched the rep use Crash to knock some sense into a big, knuckle-dragging brute, and then ride on his back - once jacked onto one of the creatures, the player can use that creature's special ability - in this case, the player slowed down time enough to get through a fast-chomping skull obstacle safely (think God of War 2's Amulet of the Fates).

I actually haven't played a Crash Bandicoot game since the first PlayStation, so it was interesting to see what's changed - and what hasn't.

Even though, like I said, it's been a long time since I saw Crash, I noted many of his classic mechanics, like spinning around in a fluid rush to smash open boxes, are still intact, and you wiggle the Wii remote quickly to accomplish this move. Another thing I thought seemed promising was the drop-in-and-out two-player co-op; your friend can pick up a second Wii remote and try being Crash's friend Coco, and when your friend is finished playing, they can simply put it down and you can go back to your game.

Interestingly, though, the characters can be carried not only by monsters, but by one another. So let's say you and your friend are playing co-op and you want to get up to get a drink - you can hop on your buddy's back and they'll simply carry you through the level until you return.

The Wii visuals were decent and colorful, and the gameplay looked like it would be fun to try. When my colleague Flynn saw the Xbox 360 version a few months back, he thought it was a little "more of the same" in terms of the platforming and free-roaming, and suggested it might appeal to kids a little bit more.

Kids definitely are into it - one feature I saw was Crash's house, where you can try on skins for Crash from the monsters you've beaten and page through a concept art notebook. The rep told me that 6 kids were chosen from a big concept art contest to have their drawings appear in the game, and that they were very excited. Aww.

"I don't know if I'm right about this, but I think it's the first open-world game where not only the player evolves over time - which is pretty standard - but so does the world. The world is not the same at the beginning as at the end of our game. Even in a game like Scarface or GTA, the world is really the same. You've changed, and you've built your empire and whatnot, but that's it."

Bennison also defined what he means by evolution:

"When we say New York evolves in our game, we mean that it's almost like a giant game of Risk. Territorial control ebbs and flows across the map of Manhattan.

At the beginning of the game, it's neutral. There's a few little incidents, and you're involved in them. But as the game progresses, there's outbreak zones that are infected. They're no-go zones that get walled off, and you don't want to go in there, unless you're really strange. There's also militarized zones next to them and trying to control them. That flares. It's almost like a forest fire. There's flare-ups. But as the game progresses, the military declares martial law and locks the media and everything down. It starts to become pretty well one or the other, and it evolves even further."

Sounds ambitious; maybe the developer's large-scale goals for the single-player mode were the reason why they decided to bag multiplayer.

Q&A: Creating Intrigue In Prototype's Open Worlds [Gamasutra]

"PROTOTYPE's back-story, visuals and gameplay are stunning, and we have every intention of bringing those core pillars to our book because this is a great opportunity to expand on the world they've created, and build something new and interesting for comic book fans."

DC Comics & Sierra Entertainment To Publish New Comic Series Based On PROTOTYPE Video Game

DC Comics and Sierra Entertainment Ink Deal To Create an All-New Comic Book Series Based on PROTOTYPETM - One of the Most Anticipated Video Games of 2008

Marlow, UK - 15 April, 2008 - DC Comics, the largest English language comic book publisher in the world, and Sierra Entertainment - a division of Vivendi Games, today announced plans to publish an all-new comic book series based on the eagerly anticipated and already highly acclaimed open-world/action video game PROTOTYPE™. The series is set to debut this August via DC's WildStorm imprint, and the addition of such unique, original IP video games like PROTOTYPE is sure to increase their successful line of best-selling comics based on licensed properties. Further details surrounding the new comic book series will be announced later this year.

PROTOTYPE puts gamers in control of Alex Mercer - a genetically mutated shape-shifter with no memory of his past, hell-bent on solving the mystery of his existence - as he tears through a densely populated New York City moving with Parkour-style fluidity and consuming anybody that gets in his way...assuming their physical identity, memories and abilities. Fueled by a three-way war between Alex, the military's elite Blackwatch division and a viral outbreak known as the Infected, players will venture deep into a dark conspiracy, 40 years in the making.

"PROTOTYPE is all about shape-shifting action, and we're using that key element to redefine the open-world game space," said Al Simone, Sr. VP of Global Marketing, Sierra Entertainment. "Another key feature setting PROTOTYPE apart from other open-world games is its incredibly deep, conspiracy-based back-story, and by joining forces with the largest comic book publisher in the world - DC Comics - we can bring this new anti-hero and his tale to an even wider audience of comics fans and gamers alike."

"We're blown away with what Sierra and developer Radical Entertainment have shown us of PROTOTYPE, and know with absolute certainty that this will make for a terrific comic book," said Hank Kanalz, VP & General Manager, WildStorm. "PROTOTYPE's back-story, visuals and gameplay are stunning, and we have every intention of bringing those core pillars to our book because this is a great opportunity to expand on the world they've created, and build something new and interesting for comic book fans."

PROTOTYPE delivers a fresh take on open-world games, with key features separating the game from the rest of the pack, including the anti-hero main character Alex Mercer and his deadly shape-shifting abilities, a stunning representation of New York City circa 2008 as the backdrop, and 'Deceive or Destroy' gameplay allowing players the choice to either blend in with the population or fully unleash Alex's deadly powers. With Radical Entertainment behind the wheel using their innovative 'Titanium' game engine, and touting a catalogue of successful titles including the highly acclaimed The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, Simpsons Hit & Run and others, PROTOTYPE is aligned to be the ground-breaking open-world/action experience gamers have been waiting for.

PROTOTYPE is planned to release this autumn for next-gen console systems and the PC, and is currently rated "RP" (Rating Pending) by the ESRB. For more information on PROTOTYPE, be sure to visit the official game website located at www.prototypegame.com.

Bennison leaves the window open for multiplayer opportunities post-release as DLC, but hints that Prototype would have to do well at retail for them to pursue it. That should comfort those who are interested in paying, say, $70 or so for your games.

Inside The Mind of Prototype's Alex Mercer [Team Xbox]