Amnesiac in New York

by ERIK LEIJON

The latest in a recent onslaught of superhero sandbox games, Prototype (PS3, 360/Activision, Radical) is a reasonably fun game. The game was equally reasonable under its previous incarnation, Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, a 2008 superhero sandboxer that starred the titular web-slinger in an open-world Manhattan, a city where Spidey’s abilities to run up walls and his superstrength came in handy as the civilian population succumbed to a viral/paranormal infection.

Replace Peter Parker with some dull normal with temporary memory loss and voilà!—new intellectual property simmering in the pan. Prototype’s prototype, if you will, was a Spider-Man game from last fall. It seems an unnecessary blow to tell you the long-jumping and street-level beat ’em up fight scenes closely resemble one of developer Radical’s previous superhero-ific projects, The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction.

At the very least, Prototype is inspired by some pretty decent games, so despite the astonishing lack of originality, Prototype is still quite fun, as long as you have muted expectations. Alex Mercer is this week’s hoodie-sporting young man destined for infamy after he awakens with no memory and new superhuman powers that allow him to run up skyscrapers, jump from any height and pick up and toss tanks and helicopters with reckless abandon.

The island of Manhattan, looking authentic on a broad, macro-scale, is the backdrop for an all-out war between the military, a covert agency called Blackwatch and a resilient horde of mutants. Postcard spots like the Empire State Building and Times Square are present, and the view from the tallest buildings can be spectacular, but drop to ground level and suddenly the sameness of the buildings becomes apparent.

The missions themselves—of which there are many though the game follows a fairly rigid storyline—are also grand in scale as Mercer fights on rooftops and sneaks around enemy bases, but they typically end with Mercer touching a fluorescent light pad to kick-start the mission-ending cutscene. The missions could have benefitted from some distinctive flavour, since the action-packed fights against tanks and mutants aren’t too memorable and players become entirely dependent on cutscenes for progressing the story. There are also side-missions but unless you’re enamoured with the game and for reasons unknown want to keep playing, they feel largely tacked on and useless, especially considering there’s always a story-driven mission available.

Although given top-billing, Mercer’s ability to transform his arms into various implements of destruction such as claws and hammers is an underutilized feature. More often than not, his missions involve absorbing a specific character’s appearance and memory in delightfully gruesome fashion, and then running around heavily fortified areas in disguise. If caught, Mercer simply has to run up the nearest building and revert back to natural form when nobody’s looking, allowing the mission to reset itself à la Assassin’s Creed.

You’ve played the best, and Prototype feels like the rest. In the competitive gaming world where titles only have a New York minute to impress, this superhero sandbox game will only get your déjà vu sense tingling.

Who you gonna call?

Speaking of Manhattan, NYC’s favourite fictional paranormal response team, Ghostbusters (Wii/Atari, Red Fly) are chasing spectres on every console imaginable. This is one instance where Wii owners didn’t get short shrift with an inferior, afterthought adaptation. The dialogue and music are as authentic as the other versions, and using the Wii remote as a proton zapper works terrifically.

A must-play on every console if only because it may be the last new Ghostbusters content we’ll ever get, but the Wii edition is one of the best titles the console will see this year.