One of my favorite games of the last console generation was Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. Unbound from the ties that usually ruin licensed properties, it took advantage of name recognition by letting loose an extremely powerful being in a city filled with easily destroyed enemies. This seed of "realism - with a  sprinkle of magic" was planted in the minds of developers. That seed has now borne fruit, and that fruit is Prototype.

Deciding that they would rather own an intellectual property and have even more autonomy, the developers at Radical Entertainment revealed their open-world creation. The protagonist is far from the Green Goliath, and looks more like a typical 23-year-old hipster than the incredible anything. He's Alex Mercer: the prototype of...something.

After getting some hands-on time with Prototype during Activision’s Pre-NYCC Cocktail Mixer, I’m happy to report that the game not only lived up to my own expectations, but managed to impress the room with intuitive controls and extremely fast gameplay.

Starting off, it was obvious that the game was made with the same intent that Hulk: Ultimate Destruction was. The team at Radical wants the player to feel incredibly powerful in the body of Alex Mercer, and found success in conveying a feeling of near indestructibility. Tank shots barely leave a mark on Alex's hoodie, and with the exception of some of the more powerful “infected” enemies, most foes can be dispatched in a single brutal attack. The reason for this isn’t just because of Alex's hard-hitting punches or shape-shifting abilities, but because of combo-attacks and seamless animations.

Radical fancies Alex as a parkour of sorts, and he’s able to leap over vehicles and work his way through crowds quickly and easily. The controls are also worth complimenting; even in my short play time I became immersed in the character, beginning to feel completely in control of his every action.

Jumping into the air and selecting an enemy, the game slowed down, allowing me to choose my attack. I opted to kick, and the game shot back into its typically fast nature as I shot towards my enemy. Foot planted firmly in his chest, he was pushed to the ground, and, if I wanted to, I could have let go of the button, allowing him a peaceful death. Instead, I pushed on, holding the button down and treating the soldier’s body like an organic surfboard and plowing into nearby civilians. Again, deciding against simply allowing his mutilated body its end, I hit X once more and kicked his corpse into the distance. It was beautiful.

This type of seamless interaction is what really made Prototype feel as fantastic as it did. Hopefully this same sense of fluidity carries over to the full game and avoids feeling too repetitive. Then again, I'm not sure how repetitive surfing on people's bodies can get. They could probably make a full game out of that. Other aspects of the game, such as taking over enemies to learn their abilities, or changing into different defensive or attack modes, were fun in the short time I had a chance to play, but neither will be fully realized until the game hits shelves in June.



There were other awesomely epic attacks going on, and I may have seen someone else playing shoot tentacles in every direction in order to kill a few dozen enemies at once, but, again, I can't speak to that other than what I saw. With a simultaneous release on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC there will be little excuse not to give Prototype a try. 

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