Prototype

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If you ask the average player to talk about key features Prototype , then he will most likely remember about parkour, open game world and mutations. It was on this that the developers focused on all exhibitions, it is about this that they write on the website of the Russian publisher of the game. But all this is not the main thing. Moreover, if you look closely, it will become clear that Parkuru is not in the usual sense in the game, the “living https://sister-site.org/samiland/ city” is monotonous, and its inhabitants are non -valid and dull. But Prototype owns one important merit: this game can make you feel like a real superman and experience the very feelings that are usually rely only on comic book heroes. What kind of parkour is really here.

No one knew, and I am Batman!

The first minutes and even the PROTOTYPE watch does not cause anything but sincere delight. Already at the very beginning, the hero is almost an invulnerable superman. Squeezing a single button includes a special mode in which gravity laws are violated in the most rude way. A similar system was in Assassin ’S Creed , But where Altair rhythmically and concentrated clung to every ledge, Alex Mercer, our protagonist, acts less elegant, but much more boldly. He climbs on any vertical surface with a bullet. With the speed of the minibus, it is worn through the streets. A truck is able to raise a decent size and throw it over the horizon, and literally in a couple of hours of the game it can be taught to soar over the city, like a protein-lieutenant, and knocking out military helicopters with an elegant kick. He is cool.

To understand all the charm of these capabilities, remember the film “Hankok” or what the Enhanced Neo in the third part of the “Matrix” did. Prototype gives exactly the same sensations, adjusted that you are doing all this with your own hands. At first, I don’t even want to think about the plot, but I only want to rush around the city and throw cars. Please do not restrain yourself while there is an opportunity, because ahead of you is waiting for several unpleasant surprises.

This is a bird? This is a plane?

But so far everything is fine. All this cheerful running around is even useful – this is how you can get acquainted with the rules of the local ecosystem before you get down into the story in your ears. So, the island of Manhattan try to share two fractions among themselves. In the quarters of the military, order always reigns, calm pedestrians walk the streets and cars are going quietly. On the other hand, in infected ones – the plague and chaos, mutants bite into the throats of panicing residents, and toothy three -meter monkeys hatch from fire tanks. And in the center of all this disgrace – we.

We are equally hated by both, and we, in turn, help someone only if it is beneficial. The primary task is to survive. The world around is changing every day, so you need to keep up and constantly mutate, collecting genetic material. The latter is a kind of game currency: it is accrued for killings, it is paid for quests, it, in the end, bring side tasks and rides. They are scattered throughout the city and vary from the protozoa (mileage on checkpoints in a limited time) to complex (imperceptibly penetrate the military base and absorb a strategically important officer).

As we accumulate a sufficient number of evolution points, we can acquire dozens of various abilities: we learn new combat techniques, increase the speed of movement and regeneration, etc.D. At first, you have to burst out, but by the middle of the game all your actions begin to bring such income that in the shortest possible time you can buy all the necessary mutations.

The most interesting thing is, of course, new types of weapons: initially Alex can only grow claws, but will soon be able to turn his hands into lashes, the most acute blades or tenfold increase his fists. Each new technique is a maniac's joy: the hero begins to tear off opponents into pieces (with all anatomical details!), pushing their heads into the shoulders on the very diaphragm and tire on the sashimi. There are fatalities that you must have heard about: all these stakes from under the ground and the developers flying to the sides, the developers were happy to demonstrate at each presentation. And not in vain – they look really great: every particularly brutal murder is accompanied by dignitan effects like a rapid and flying around a camera.

Do not forget that Alex knows how to absorb any person, adopting his appearance and equipment. That is, let's say, if you “gobbled up” the soldier, and he had a grenade launcher in his hands – he will immediately become yours. This technique will save you more than once when you run away from assault helicopters. Or when you need to get into the secret base – civilians, especially with an evil look and a hood on your head, they don’t let it go there, you will have to disguise yourself as an officer. Not to mention the fact that every person eaten adds to you health and evolutionary points. Finally, sometimes it’s just funny-to turn into some ridiculous gray old man and sit in this form from the roof to the roof.

In Prototype, the term “Sandbox” is interpreted in the most vulgar form: that is, we mean the wealth of choice when passing the game. If, for example, you are instructed to destroy a strategically important object, you are free to choose: to attack it on your own or, perhaps, to hide the tank? Perhaps even not to steal, but, disguised as a soldier, sit in it as a driver and destroy the target in the company with unusual military? Or throw "lean garbage"? In any case, the choice will depend on your game style and preferred abilities, there are almost no artificial restrictions.

Persistent tin

Disappointment comes closer to the middle of the passage (this, in a rough approximation, seven to eight hours). At some point, you suddenly acutely realize that everything around you is fake, all this manhattan is nothing more than a toy city of Lego cubes and milk bags. And the main character is a plastic soldier in the hands of a child. This is in many ways the fault of the engine: the graphics in the game are bad, and this cannot be hidden. Running along the giant glass skyscrapers is accompanied by a fall of some shavings imitating fragments-neither solid dents, nor even the sound of knocked out glass.

Destroyed objects do not even break, but scatter like card houses, the captured car immediately becomes transparent – yes, it is convenient (does not interfere with the review), but this is the case when convenience works against the atmosphere. The explosions are not impressive, the destroyed helicopters fall in the ground and turn into some kind of charred snag. And what is the use of superpowers, if you, with all your desire, cannot feel omnipotent? Even in the elder Crackdown (which, by the way, in terms of acrobatics and opportunities to create lawlessness was a little worse than Prototype) everything is much more convincing. And this is even if you leave behind the brackets the fact that the inhabitants that you grab by the throat dangle limply in your hands, like rag dolls. To believe in this game, you really need to have the imagination of the child.

In New York version Radical Entertainment not and cannot be a reasonable life. Residents, military, mutants – they are all hopelessly stupid. Civilians have exactly two states: calm and panic, and they change them spontaneously, depending on how close the nearest center of infection is to them. That is, on one side of the street there can be a squeal and pogroms, and a peaceful promenade through the road – a peaceful evening. These people do not know how to do anything. It is clear why Alex devours them so impartially: in their level of development, these creatures did not go far from chlamydomonas.

They are fake!

In addition, the developers allowed several gamemeraduer miscalculations that only add oils to the fire. At least the battles with bosses – there are not so many of them, but each is an exhausting, protracted duel, in which you need to constantly ride a goat through a closed (usually) space, occasionally stained strokes, and simultaneously fighting off the numerous small shusher, which makes the retinue of each boss and strives to sting where should not. Why, one wonders, it was impossible to diversify this tyagomotin with spectacular Quick-Time Events? In the end, this is quite a worthy technique – see., For example, God of War And recent Ninja Blade.

The funny thing is that such scenes in the game really are. For example, when Alex needs to capture a tank or helicopter, he must first get closer to the car, then jump onto it, get to the cabin (and after all, the helicopter, for example, can be jumped on the tail – then you will need to make a few more jumps), then, fucking on a certain button, break the door and only then – gobble up pilots. It looks very cool, but you have to steal equipment quite often and the actions described above have to be repeated every time.

The war of the factions turned out to be at all out: yes, nominally you can destroy the center of the zones controlled by one of the parties – the hive of the infected people or the military base. That's just the sense of this – zero: the alignment of forces changes for a few minutes, after which the destroyed buildings “grow” back.

Well, the notorious plot, let's say, is far from as good as you could be. On the one hand, the scriptwriters tried to fame: they came up with an inconspicuous story (having borrowed stamps from a dozen movies and games, but in this case it is not so scary) and a very interesting form of presentation – Alex, we remind, suffers from amnesia and finds out the details about his past, Studying the memories of the people absorbed by him. The knowledge gained is gradually combined into complex chains and ultimately form a confusing network. At the same time, such “nutritious” NPCs come across in the most unexpected places: for example, you can meet them peacefully nonsense along the street, which the game will be announced using an icon.

But even such a wonderful idea can be spoiled if you tell all this with the mouth of flat and boring characters. All dialogs between key heroes are fragmented, they are explained mainly with the help of Hollywood cliches, and the inscription "Loading" can arise unceremoniously right in the middle of the conversation. Despite the fact that script scenes rarely last more than fifteen seconds. There is a paradoxical situation: I really want to know how it all ended (and at the same time it began), but you have to do this, wrapping up from the next stupid turnover. The pleasure of this, of course, is not enough.

Finally, the most terrible miscalculation of the developers (after a bad engine, of course) is that in the latest missions the game becomes just a monstrously difficult. Perhaps the hardcore players will not notice this, but those who are not used to get sadomasochistic pleasure from games are waiting. You have to die to offensive often – any careless movement provokes a large -scale raid, after which you also have a broken hour to rush through the streets, eating passers -by – this is the most reliable way to restore health. The number of military men exceeds all reasonable limits, and in addition, vile aerosol settings appear that spray the gas poisonous for the protagonist – in the zone of their actions, health is steadily decreasing. It’s good at least checkpoints during missions are provided.

Another spoon of tar is control. It’s not that the developers were carelessly treated, there are just too many functional buttons, even on the gamepad you don’t get used to it immediately. And given that in particularly complex battles you have to switch abilities ten times per minute, fans of playing on the mouse and keyboard all the more it will not be good.

Puting us in such harsh conditions, the developers make it clear: superhuman capabilities are not all, and to confront the regular army, you will need something more powerful. This is so contrary to the sensations that we experienced in the first half of the game that I want to growl with anger. In a sense, the ideals areplated. This does not happen! Superheroes do not die, hear?!

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Perhaps the bitter experience of colleagues in the workshop has not taught Radical Entertainment, that in Sandbox games, everything should decisively be fine. And the main character, and the world around him, and graphics, and physics. Otherwise, the player will certainly become boring. In its current form, Prototype is very consistent with its name – it is more like a prototype, a project that in the future can be magnificent, but which still needs to be brought to mind. Alas, for some reason the developers themselves are convinced that this is the final version of their game.

Prototype cannot be evaluated unequivocally. How you react to him, oddly enough, depends on whether you have PS3. The fact is that on this platform a similar game came in spirit – infamous , – which is devoid of almost all of the above shortcomings. Everyone who has the opportunity to see it can safely deduct a whole score from the assessment written below the assessment.

But despite all this, for owners of Xbox 360 and PC Prototype, the best action with the open world, at least from the moment of release GTA 4 And before Assassin ’S Creed 2. Of course, the developers overestimated their capabilities, did not take into account the key role of the sane physics and did not pay due attention to the balance. But get distracted from this for a moment and remember: here you can throw trucks, grow pood cups and jump along New York as if a grasshopper stuffed with steroids. This game is quite convincingly modeling the workdays of a superman. At least for this should be seen.

Reigracy – Yes

Cool plot – No

Originality – No

Easy to master – Yes

Evidence of expectations: 90%

Gameplay: 8

Graphics: 6

Sound and music: 8

Interface and management: 8

Waited? It turned out to be very fun to grow claws and run along the walls of skyscrapers, but despite this, Prototype could not avoid typical flaws for Sandbox-IGR.

Mania rating: 8

"Great"

[[Break]] What, ate?!

In order to absorb a person to be absorbed to others, Alex needs:

Good where we are not

A brief characteristic of Infamous-PS3-Exclusive, which put Prototype on the shoulder blades even before it appeared on sale.

Infamous and Prototype have a lot in common. Both games are devoted to people who suddenly gained inhuman power. Both have a parkour and an open game world.

Differences – in scale and approach. Radical Entertainment offer to climb skyscrapers in a matter of seconds and break the trees with a careless shoulder movement. At the same time, the game Sucker Punch rests closer to the ground and instead of high -speed runs, the player makes the player slowly, carefully climbing each building, clinging to the ledges. Almost like in Assassin’s Creed, with the difference that it is not enough to squeeze one button and enjoy the spectacle – you will have to think and look for the most optimal routes.

Infamous developers do not try to hit the player with the scale and prohibitive wealth of opportunities – they put on details. Residents of the city behave more naturally, but most importantly-they actively react to the player, and do it no worse than any Fable : if you are doing good deeds (moral choice is one of the central topics of the game), they will sing to you praise, and if you behave like a cynical villain, pursuit hiss. In addition, the execution of side quests apparently affects the situation in the city: areas are cleaned of crime, they become fewer enemies and shootings.

The main advantage of Infamous over Prototype is that it looks, sounds and feels much better. Cole, the main character of the game, does not know how to change his body, but he can control electricity and in it feels inner power. In a matter of seconds, he extinguishes street lanterns or discharges a car battery, sucking energy from them. The wet land on which he stepped begins to spark and turns into a deadly trap for any passerby. And it is worth pressing a special button, and the game will immediately show you the nearest sources of energy – electric discharges will pass through all active objects in the visibility zone. Perhaps this is one of the best ways to display the “sixth feeling” of the hero is certainly better than shameful infrared vision and other “spider flair”.

You can read the full review on Infamous in Light Gamery No. 4/2009

Management for the superhero

According to paragraph 5 of Article 84 of the Charter of the Justice League, each person who has superpowers is obliged to have several spectacular techniques at his disposal, which can stun the crowd of onlookers. In Prototype, we found at least four.