Prototype (PC) - Reviewed

Step away Hulk, Spiderman, Wolverine, Venom, Carnage & every other conceivable heroes & villains. Here comes Alex Mercer the most unassuming assuming Anti-Hero

Brought to life from the death literally from virus that run amuck in his body and Manhattan, Alex Mercer is out for blood. Based on an open world action game, the game progression is Fast. literally. Alex Mercer moves like Pepsiman, he can run faster than a helicopter on highway, up buildings and jump from one building to another, putting the likes of Spiderman and Superman to shame with his speed and agility.

In normal games, if the character is fast, other's will be traded off for its speed. This is not so with Prototype. Alex Mercer can throw a car at flying helicopter, jump onto a tank and rip the cover off without effort and also do HULK SMASH on the floor, throwing shockwave around like a length of silkcloth.

STORYLINE

The gist of Prototype is this, Alex Mercer is having an amnesia and is trying to figure out what is wrong with him after waking up in a morgue (talk about waiting up on the wrong side of the bed), he is unable to remember his past nor why is he suddenly able to run up walls, pick up another person effortlestly and do like Venom, assimilating with anyone that he wants to. Or to put it bluntly, eating anyone he wants to gain their memory, skill & looks. It is superbly fun to play Prototype as you get to run around on rooftops, unlocking intriguing story, watching the landscape of manhattan change as the infection takes over the city day by day while battling infected being and also military.

GAMEPLAY

In Prototype, you run around with your legs, instead of hijacking vehicles which you can do later on by eating up drivers to learn how to drive tanks and helipad which will then allow you to commandeer the walking destruction machine to wreak havoc on anything you deem wreackable. Baring that, you can also morph your arms into claws, blades, hammer and whip to rain hell on the monsters. But if you are up for some fun, you can also pick up weapons, rocket launchers and others and shoot anything that moves.

Being able to assimilate anyone and anything while also raining havoc onto enemies open up a number of possibility for you to approach your missions, you can either morph into anything that looks military and walks into the military base, or you can send all the military based grunts go tither to get into the base. Its up to you.

Of course, after playing the game awhile, you would realise that Alex Mercer has no problem falling from the tallest building at full speed and then standing up with the casualest among the casualty of your jumping shockwave (see what i did there? Punded!) with nary a scratch on your health bar. The fact that you can also eat everything that runs on two legs in game also means that the health supply is aplenty ingame!

MUSIC

Strictly speaking, I was too engrossed in the gameplay rather than listen to the music, but! I can tell you this! The game has superb sound effect, the sound of distressed metal as you wrench it off the floor to chuck it at the tank or just to create mayhem on the street below, the squeal of the pitifull human as the monstrority called Infected ends their life or the plead of help and beg of mercy as you wreck havoc in game is as real as it can be and blends well into the overall gameplay.

There, I filled in the mandatory Music part of this review. Onwards next to the conclusion!

CONCLUSION

This is an utterly impossible game. Taking all the conventional things that makes a game likable and fun, Prototype throws that out the window and creates its own rule and its own story. The superb gameplay couple together with the intriguing storyline and side quest will keep anyone entertained for hours end. I for one were entertained and look forward to going home and boot up the game.

P/S: BTW Prototype is an incredibly violent game, blood, gore and other things is abundance in game, the language is colourful and will make babies cry in sleep while the action is incredibly violent. Don't say I didnt warn you.... 


Prototype is available for 3 consoles, PC, XBOX 360 and PS3 click HERE to see the full list of PROTOTYPE availability


-Because I Can-

Review: Prince of Persia PC Port

Many moons and many suns has pass since I wrote anything on Awwsnapped and I have a perfectly good reason for that. The L word (pun intended). I got lazy. It's not that there is no new game, or no new toys or no new well... anything. It's just that I got lazy but I am here today to change that and I will start off today with this brilliant brilliant looking piece of work. 

Game play

Prince of Persia. Out a week or so ago, the Prince of Persia series is rebooted in this new series and the new 'Prince' looks very good. Notorious for their steep learning curve and level, a lot of casual gamer were turned off from the Persia series for the hard to execute perfectly-timed-acrobatic-wall-jumping-hanging-from-the-cliff- leaping-from-one-wall-to-the-other gaming mechanism. I was one of them. This all though were naught in the new Persia series. Yes, there is still the jumping here and there, leaping from one wall to the other thingy machingy but instead of the game over screen you constantly get for the first 1 hour of gaming while you learn the curve, you get a beautiful magician lady in distress which will help you whenever you fall off the cliff or failed to time your move correctly. No more game over screen. Hardcore Persia gamer would complain that this tone down the hardness level quite a lot but it is also a refreshing change for the casual gamer which allows us to join the series.

Prince of Persia is best played using a game pad. If you do not have a decent game pad for your pc. Invest in one. I would recommend the XBOX game pad as most game that were ported to PC comes from the XBOX series and they already have an integrated setting for the controller.

Graphic

Each moves and attacks are perfectly and flawlessly executed with a flourish of movement making you want to execute it again and again just to see the move. Graphically enchanting, the game also took a leaf out of Okami game. One of the trademark of Okami game is the slowly expanding of flower with flourish and grace as Amaterasu restore nature. In Persia, the graphic is slightly the same albeit rendered in less flourish. This does not make it look less astonishing, but in varying degree it does give a refreshing look to the same level as your go through it again.

Music,Sound & Voice over

All the conversations in Prince of Persia has voice over, instead of the cheesy stuff that you MIGHT expect, the voice over fits perfectly well with the character. and the dialog is funny enough that you would just like to hear them talk. The music is relaxing and nicely composed but more often than not, some parts of the level are ran through with no accompanying music.

Character

 

What makes this game lovable is not the revolutionary graphic, the superb game play or the beautifully compose music. It's the character. My understanding of the 'Prince' from the last series were always of an uptight Prince which is out to save the world or his kingdom or his loved one. the NEW prince though is a likable "Entrepreneur" which finds opportunity everywhere. Namely, robbing graves. Yeap, no longer a prince of one kingdom or another (as far as I know) he is a grave robber. A very charming, cheeky and mischievous grave robber which thought that he can easily save the secondary character Erika and score a point but instead ended up getting chased by monster, jumping from one cliff to another and losing Farah. His donkey laden with gold coins. 

 Conclusion

The game is a solid restart and brings a much needed refreshing breath to the series. The graphic is nothing ground breadking yet it looks breathtaking enough for you to stop and stare at times. The characters are lovable and provided a curious glimspe of their former life, their attitude and the ocassional banter between characters are superb addition. All in all, Prince of Persia captured my heart.

-Because I Can-

First 5! - Hellgate: London

UPDATE Jan 2 2008: A continued Review of Hellgate: London can be found HERE

I am smitten. It has been sometime since I found an FPS game that runs well on my Acer Ferrari 4000, looks good and are interesting to boot. I downloaded the DEMO for it and boy, even the download speed impresses me. Granted, for others its a normal speed. But the speed I get is 100kb per sec. Very fast for me. Anyway, besides the praises of how it is nice and all that.Lets move on to the game play shall we?

The graphic is nice. On my laptop it looks amazing actually. The detail is there, the shadow is scary and the light flicker is terrorizing me. Granted, it does hell to my laptop when I crank everything up, so I tune it down a notch and it run beautifully. Then there is the game play. This is the part where certain aspect mess up. Demo Single player only allows me to play with Blademaster and Gunmen. Blademaster is basically a warrior with high defense and good attack. Gunmen are high attack with low defense. (Think archer)


I played both class briefly and found my calling in being a gunmen. The aiming is not bad, but the whole thing feel glitch. At times you can shoot between two very huge object and take out the demon on the other hand, but at times, you cant even shoot between a tin can! The aiming is hell too, I aimed at a box and the bullet hit 2 feet to the side. This is the where the saying " You can't hit a barn with a shot gun even if its right in front of you" comes in. Then there is the grenade, throwing a grenade means you throw it and hope it lands on whatever you are aiming for because most throw that I made at the same location at the same altitude ends up at a different place. Cool eh? Took me at least 3 try before I can land it where I want it. Granted, the grenade is powerful. I can take out a cluster of demons in one shot with one grenade.

And the AI, goodness, at times the AI are smart. They can come at you with a vengence but at times, the glitches are amazing. There is one particular demon that jumps at you when it sees you. So the correct thing to do for me would be to hide behind a huge wall or inside a building. But guess what, the demon "phase" through (or as some would say it, glitch through ) the wall and attack you!


But what makes this game interesting to me is the Skill tree ala Diablo/ WoW style. You learn certain skill via a pre-set of skills that link to each other, you get to add stats every time you level up. This gives you a choice to customize your character to whichever you see fit and I like that features. It allows us a certain flexibility and individuality. The weapon looks cool, different "availability" of different item are classified via color. Common items are in grey, uncommon item in green, rare item in blue, and I would assume very rare item in red while legendary item in orange ala WoW style.

Conclusion:

The game is not without its fault. Glitches here and there, the graphic are superb for an old pc but will look normal on most high end pc.The gameplay is an interesting concept which can still be refined.

Granted, the first look does not look good for it, I will be buying this game when it comes out. The game is not perfect but its still very good.The concept of it is interesting and the availability to play it online with your buddy makes it nicer.If you are planning to either get battlefield 2142 or this, I would go for this.I had 2142 and I prefer Hellgate over BF 2142.