GR's review was okay but missed a massive, massive issue: It's the SAME GAME as spiderman web of shadows. Jesse mentioned similarities to the hulk, but I guess Jesse hadn't played web of shadows, or he'd see whereas the hulk (which i also completed) might have a bit here and there that's similar, web of shadows is prototype, but you're spiderman. As a nerd, of course, I have. This goes way further than gameplay mechanics and menus/skill trees, it goes down to the plot and entire narrative structure of it. Here's an edited blog post i wrote on my friends site:
This post will be a charming review of my time with a new video game, and I aim to be positive. That game is Prototype. I got this a day before release in the intention of having a timely review up, but in the traditional style, I decided to procrastinate instead of even simply playing a new game, which in itself is an activity that whittles away the practical hours. Sigh. Anyhow, a few days after release and I’ve pretty much binged on it. As such, I’m here with a shovel full of opinion to thrust into the gaping furnace that is your collective mind.
There is somewhat of an explosion of ‘sandbox’ games this console generation. The continued success of the GTA franchise combined with the large swing of focus in the western RPG genre towards players making their own choices are two contributions I can think of off the top of my head for this. The fact that developers have greater scope to take the gameplay off set rails due to hardware increasing in power this generation is no small contributor, I’m sure. With games like Crackdown, GTA IV, The Hulk, the Spiderman games and more recently Infamous on the market, it’s pretty natural to wonder how another run-about-a-city-and-smash-stuff romp can justify itself to the recession wearied gamers with one or more of these already (i.e. probably anyone with a 360 or ps3).
The simple answer is it can’t. Alright, the sunny outlook is over. Move along, Beatles fans. I can’t even get this far without being negative. But seriously, hear me out here. I’ve had fun with prototype. It’s been a lot of fun, in fact. It’s got its flaws, but it’s a pretty solid game. I’ll get on to that. The main flaw with prototype is a pretty enormous one, and it’s one every review I read overlooked. Playing Prototype shocked me, and it’s a shock I haven’t had since when I first saw ‘Limbo of the Lost’, the notorious point and click adventure game that was built nearly entirely from chunks of other games, with an added dose of fail. Needless to say, it was quickly pulled from shelves by the forces of epic fail. While Limbo of the Lost used parts of other code to make a new experience, Prototype is in some ways worse, using different parts to dish you exactly the same experience. This brings us comfortably to ‘the point’:
The entire game has already happened. What’s more, it was released in the past year. What’s more, when it was released, it was released BY THE SAME PUBLISHER. Why this hasn’t caused more of a fuss, I don’t know. I can only put it down to poor sales on the part of the game I’m about to chat about.
I’m one of the (probably few people) who thoroughly enjoyed ‘Spiderman: Web of Shadows. Web of shadows had its shortcomings, as it was a pretty expansive and ambitious affair. A lot of reviews slated it for a few bugs here and there and repetitive missions (which were a bit annoying), but the swinging mechanic was absolutely gorgeous. The impression of gravity when you ran off the side of a building and the physics to each swing were really marvelous and something I haven’t been as impressed by in any other game. Motion is, of course, a key aspect to the Spider-man character, and Shaba nailed it. It also had an interesting combat mechanic that consisted of fighting in mid-air, on walls and on the ground, and it really worked. You could slam someone into the air, jump up and fight there, and then throw them into the wall, zoom over and fight horizontally there, and it all gelled together nicely.
There’s a simple reason I’ve just got off the beaten track to talk about this, and that is quite simply that I’ve just about listed all the main differences between Spiderman: Web of Shadows and Prototype. The two games are virtually identical. The upgrade system is almost a clone. The absorption of people is the same. So many of the moves are identical. A large amount of the powers are the same. The city looks identical. The plot is identical. Even the narrative structure of the plot is identical. The mission types are identical The enemies are identical. It’s STAGGERINGLY identical.
Both games revolve around you being a super powered person in a city which is victim to an increasing spread of viral infection transforming the inhabitants from normal repeating models walking up and down a pavement to aggressive zombies, and in latter stages to big beasties that jump out of hives. In Spiderman the virus is Venom’s fault, and in Prototype it’s the military’s. The same thing happens to the letter. Both games open with you at the end of the narrative in the middle of the action and plenty of days into the infection. You have a bit of a scrap in a war-torn (and, for some reason, fair lot redder) city covered in zombies, monsters and military people shooting at them. Soon after it cuts back to happier times, and you end up working your way back to that point from the previous days, as the infection gains pace in the city until it’s pretty much 100% infected . In both, you’re already infected, but can control it to your advantage. Both revolve around the choice of siding with humanity or the viral infection.
The missions are dished out exactly the same way: You’re in free roam mode until you go to a character and get them, but between you can go to places on the mini-map to do challenges like kill so many enemies in so long, or get from A to B quickly, etc.
You shape shift between powers in both, so that USP is out the window for it, but the one aspect of Prototype that is a bit unique and fun is the absorbing people and taking their identity. Getting rid of the preconception that you can’t stick your hand into a mans back while no one’s looking, absorb him in a big biological mess and then parade about as him frees up opportunities for some cool game play. Sneaking into military bases by stages is the main use: Get one guy, become him, look for the guy with the next level of clearance, etc. That’s pretty much only use the game makes of it really, but it is fun to do it the first few times, and definitely adds to the experience.
What’s not so cool is the writing. It is probably the worst and most unacceptable I’ve seen in a recent video game. It is so, so cheesy. You just can’t build a character around the spurting out of stupid sound-bytes such as ‘You keep coming, I’ll keep killing!’ unless that character is Sylvester Stallone, who, in a cut Rambo moment, punched a man’s head off. He can say it. Similarly lame is the amount of prompts you get to ‘experiment with different combos’. ‘Why not experiment with new combos to see what is most effective’ is a hint you see pretty much every 5 minutes. That just isn’t a hint. People do that anyway in games where you have a linear move set.
One of the points I have to pick up on from the IGN review is the reviewer moaning about texture pop-in. This just was not a problem for me. I don’t know if he put up a review done on a low-end PC in the 360 section, but the critics 10 out of 10, GTA IV, has hugely more noticeable pop-in of details like bins and boxes on the roadside as you’re driving along at even conservative speeds.
I’m afraid prototype is getting two out of five Kim Coates heads. It would be a good game had it not been for the fact it is identical to Web of Shadows. If you haven’t played either, go for web of shadows. The bugs and gripes about web of shadows are just as prevalent in prototype, but it’s a better game if you’re going to look past them in either. Prototype for me has been enjoyable as more of the same at a slightly lower quality.
You might notice this has been a pretty straight laced post, but to be honest, I found the experience pretty sobering. It’s certainly ruffled my feathers to find out that a big player like Activision is willing to publish two nearly identical games, and more importantly, no one seems to notice or care. I sincerely hope this is something we won’t be seeing more and more of, because seriously, if Prototype was DLC for Web of Shadows I doubt it would have been out the scope of a decent expansion, it’s that similar. Shape shifting into someone else’s game entirely is probably the greatest power Prototype has to offer.
Looks like I’m not the only one in the world to notice this, there’s been some murmurings on forums of the stark similarity. I thought i’d grab some choice quotes from different posters on the gamespot one for you:
‘I keep hearing everybody saying how great this game is but lets be real…this game is a boldface bite of Spider-Man WOS. All they really did was flip up the characters and enemies, add some gore and a layer of new paint and…Voila you have Prototype.’
‘It’s Web of Shadows without the webs, and it’s amazing how much worse that makes the game.’
And my personal favourite:
‘The original title of this game was â€
