The modern world holds nothing of surprise to us. There are always new developments in science and technology that never go to mainstream because of further review and, all in all, our simple lives carry on day by day, only progressing as slow as the movement of time itself. But what happens when science delves too deep within biochemistry and changes something that actually does affect the world as we know it. Movies have shown it time and time again – games have been made of the genre countless times – Zombie Apocalypse.

Prototype is the one of the latest games to hit the shelves which, once again, talks about a zombie infection outbreak – however, the game play and story line is much different to that of your ordinary FPS, Zombie Slaying, action packed title. For a start, this isn’t an FPS – no first person view here, this game is in 3^rd person, camera behind your character constantly unless you target something, which can allow you to view what’s going on behind you while running forward – a brilliant feature making the game that much more exciting.

Your name is Alex Mercer – and you don’t know what’s happened to you. You wake up in a morgue belonging to a company called GenTek, a bio-engineering company. You need to find out what’s happened to you because you hate it, you have all these amazing abilities and you feel like you’ve been cursed – surprise, surprise. You start off with all the abilities and powers that you could collect throughout the game, and after that, you start the game from the beginning – so it’s like playing the game as a movie, going back and forth in time figuring out what happened to you.

As said, you have special abilities; the zombie virus has done something to you and not made you a mindless, brain craving maniac. Your powers range from morphing your body to hold weapons, change form into another being, see the world in a different way (night vision and more) and have shields/armour. But among all of those, the coolest ability would have to be being super human – human abilities to the extreme. You are able to run up walls, jump from building to building, pick up cars and throw them at anything your heart desires.

Throughout the game you meet new characters; the most common seen would be your sister, Dana. She is the only one to help you find out what has gone wrong and is basically your eyes and ears in the virtual world, tracking down the right people at the right time in order to get you where you need to be. You also find a Doctor Ragland, who, in a section of the game, helps you when Dana can’t (reasons you will have to find out for yourself). You have a lover which turns out to be a person who you really shouldn’t have gotten involved with in the first place (hint, hint).

In terms of gameplay, the game has done exceptionally well to make the player continuously play non-stop. You lose life when something hurts you, and you can regenerate by staying out of the line of fire or consuming another being – human or not. The life bar is easy to see and you are able to upgrade it when you get enough EP (or points).

When you kill any person who is a threat to you, and/or consume them, their life becomes your life – and if they are of human form, you will take their form of appearance as well. Consuming becomes a vital part of the game, as you need to be a certain character in order to complete the mission. Be wary, though, of where you change your appearance, as doing so in public will often get you spotted as a danger, and the military will be on your ass in no time. As well as obtaining their life, certain people / demons have memories which lead you closer to finding out what exactly happened to you – the characters are not random, though, and are shown to you so it’s not a tedious task to handle.

Once you are seen by personal of the military, you will either need to kill/consume all members attempting to hunt you, or hide somewhere and take another form before they see you again. At certain times in the game, there is absolutely no chance of defeating the personal chasing you, as there are often tanks, helicopters, gunmen with missile launchers – as well as demons and zombies, all trying to kill you at the same time. It’s debateable but, at times, the amount of characters trying to get a piece of you can become over-whelming. That being said, though, the game is relatively easy and not challenging at all in terms of puzzles, etc – it’s just all action, all the time.

As you would expect from a game which is made like a movie, it has some very clever twists which you wouldn’t have thought of when you start playing the game. Also the fact that it’s not very long, similar to most other sandbox genre games, a little more than 10 hours total – so if you’re looking for something to keep you company throughout the school holidays, you’re better off with something else.

All-in-all, a brilliant game which has been well thought out in all aspects, especially the controls. Only improvement we could see was the targeting system, as when in a situation of fighting demons, and military are in the same area, you can often land up aiming and killing military personal, and then you’ll have both sides attacking you. Remember to try stick to killing one side or the other (depending on the situation).

We hope to see more successful games like this from Radical Entertainment.

Score: 8.1 / 10

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