Crackdown...with Tentacles

About a month or so ago I started playing a game that I never thought I would enjoy. I believe I only had this thought in my head because I hadn't read very much about the game and the title didn't strike me as interesting (having somehow developed the idea that simple one word titles are boring). I am speaking, of course, about Prototype.

You play as government experiment gone (gasp) horribly wrong, Alex Mercer. Perhaps we should just call him an escaped government experiment, since he seems to be exactly what the government was going for, much to their chagrin. After waking up in the hospital to some guy trying to cut through your skin and deciding that, in fact, you'd like to keep it intact, you make your escape.

The game is based around a mission system, much the same way that the GTA series is focused. There are missions to kill as many enemies as possible in a given time period with a different power, weapon, or vehicle, missions to see how quickly you can hit way points, and missions that even challenge you to fall from the sky and see how close you can get to the middle of a target. The missions are varied and entertaining enough to keep you playing the game, which is good, because there is a lot to enjoy here.

Mercer has a wide range of combat and special abilities that he upgrades throughout the game by earning experience. You earn experience by flogging enemies and completing missions. Each power is well animated and fleshed out and feels like it could make a definite impact on the way you play the game. I find myself using the Armor defensive ability with the Blade offensive ability because the combination makes for a surprisingly powerful melee character. If that sounds like it could cause some mayhem, you're right. The game doesn't hold back on the violence and gore, and you can expect to see a lot of things that will remind you that Prototype is rated M for Mature. For example, the Musclemass ability, which basically turns Alex into a grayish version of the Hulk, literally rips enemies in half when you devour them.

Speaking of devouring, the story is moved along through visually intense cut scenes that you can watch by basically eating certain enemies and civilians. The cut scenes are static images overlaid with sounds, movement, and other elements that are thrown at you while a voice over plays in the background. They are interesting and sometimes creepy, and they present enough of the story in large enough chunks to keep your attention.

Unfortunately, though the missions are varied nicely in the beginning of the game, as the game goes on it suffers from a great deal of repetitiveness, brought upon by the lack of any new kind of activities to engage in. At the time of writing this I have to confess that I have grown bored enough to stop playing, which is a shame because I haven't finished the game yet. Once you reach the highest tiers of your powers, the game starts to drag because you aren't really being rewarded for any of your work.

I would definitely recommend this to anybody that enjoyed Crackdown, as the two games have a lot in common, my favorite similarity being one of the main means of travel: leaping to the top of tall buildings without having to worry about dying from a fall.