Nothing Can Save You. Not Men. Not Weapons. Not Even Armor.

I cleared the story of Prototype 2 (PC) in around 19 hours. Right after, I revisited Prototype (1) on the PC and completed the story in about 20 hours. The reason why I played those two games back to back is to confirm my disappointments with Prototype 2.

First off, Prototype 2 performed extremely poorly on my PC. Apparently there's a memory leak issue that was and never will be patched. Some will find the performance I got to be unplayable, but I tolerated it. It's a shame that it did not run well on my PC because Prototype 2 is such a prettier game than Prototype 1.

As for the meat of the games, Prototype 2 is very similar to Prototype 1 except for a few changes here and there. The two active power set up makes for interesting combinations at the cost of some depth in attack moves. Stealth consuming is much easier and fluid compared to Prototype 1. A block power replaces Prototype 1's shield power, armor power, artillery strike, and patsy ability.

As opposed to Prototype 1's single big open level of New York, Prototype 2 has three separate zones. This along with how powers are acquired results in a loss of open world freedom and craziness that provided funny moments in Prototype 1. The side missions to get new powers in Prototype 2 are more substantial than grinding skill points in Prototype 1, but I miss the hives and bases being scattered around the map.

Performance issues aside, Prototype 2 addresses some of the annoyances of Prototype 1 (e.g. rocket spam). However, what was also changed are mechanics, systems, and objects that gave Prototype 1 entertaining randomness when the player is freely roaming the open world.