Prototype Review

Movement is the argument. Alex Mercer runs up the side of a building without a prompt or a stamina bar, leaps off the top, glides, lands in a crowd and disappears into a stolen identity, and the whole chain happens at a speed that makes most open world traversal look apologetic. The powers escalate genuinely, from claws through the whipfist to armour that lets you wrestle a tank, and the consume mechanic ties disguise, healing and story progression into one messy verb.

What it never solves is the world. Manhattan is a monochrome grid with no personality, missions repeat a small set of shapes far past their welcome, and the military and infected factions fight each other in a soup that reads as noise on screen. Alex himself is an unpleasant blank, the plot is delivered through a memory absorption gimmick that explains rather than dramatises, and the difficulty spikes on the later hunter fights are cheap. Great toy, thin game around it.