Prototype is an excellent open-world action game weakened by terrible storytelling and shallow missions. Players step into the world of Alex Mercer, employee of the mysterious GENTEK corporation, as he wakes from the dead, determined to recovery his memories amidst a city-wide viral outbreak.
Alex's powers are analogous to Marvel Comic's Venom super-villain: superhuman durability, senses, strength, and the ability to shapeshift his body to project a variety of weapons including shields, blades, tendrils, and hammers. The game itself is structured like other open-world games: Spider-man 2, Crackdown, and GTA4. Players can roam the city starting story-related missions, side missions, or just causing havoc among the civilians, infected populace, and military presence in the New York City sandbox.
If you like satisfying, frantic, kinetic action - Prototype has much to offer. The game controls well and from the beginning Alex has enough power to defeat entire marine battalions. By mid-game, using talent points accumulated to upgrade Alex's powers, players will be able to elbow-drop tanks, jump city blocks, and throw cars into helicopters.
The game offers more than just satisfying melee combat. Alex can hijack tanks and helicopters, both vehicle types handle well and can inflict seriously fun damage onto foes. Prototype even features satisfying third-person shooter action. Alex can equip rocket launchers, machine guns, and assault rifles and lock-on targeting allows for effective run-and-gun action.
The protagonist is definitely an anti-hero, a fact that has been commented on by many players and critics. Alex consumes victims - military, infected, or civilians - absorbing them at a genetic level to heal and inherit their memories. This is a major part of the game since there are no other way to move the story forward and healing is only accomplished by waiting for regeneration or consuming humans. There is no in-game penalty for civilian penalties and the game keeps track of Alex's body-count.
Despite all this destruction and fun, Prototype has issues, some annoy and frustrating. First and foremost, Prototype suffers from some of the worst story-telling ever. It's not the story itself that's the problem. Yes, Prototype's story is a pastiche of Resident Evil and other outbreak movies, but it had potential to be very exciting with some genuine plot twists. It's the terrible cut scenes and dialog, on par with a Uwe Boll movie, that might exasperate some players. The plot is terribly inconsistent: characters appear and disappear from the narrative without consequence or reason, plot twists meant to be dramatic are confusing as if missing cut scenes were omitted from the game, dialogue is horrible - although I am sure the voice actors did the best they could.
Mission variety is shallow compared other recent open world games like GTA4 and Saints Row 2. You basically have destruction missions, evasion mission, or protecting missions. Game difficulty can swing widely. By mid-game, you might have armor, infantry, helicopters, drones, super-soldiers, and mutants all simultaneously fighting you. Your powers give you the abilities to handle the onslaught but the epileptic camera might give you nausea.
Conclusion: Prototype is an satisfying action open-world game in the spirit of Spider-man 2 and Hulk Ultimate Destruction (not surprising, given they share the same creative team). If you enjoy action without substantial plot or creative use of the open-world game idea, you will enjoy Prototype and get hours of fun out of it.