Review Prototype 2 (XBOX360)

genre: action, adventure

Prototype and Infamous were the first games to offer you a experience of a human being suddenly having god like powers. Compared to Infamous Prototype offered more variety in skills and powers and had no moral compass. The abilities you gained were larger in scale and far more destructive. Basically it came down to: 

"Here are your powers and the world, go play and have fun".

Prototype 2 expands on this and makes you even more powerful.All of the gameplay mechanics from the original are present and tweaked. The controls are tight, smooth so that moves are incredibly easy to pull off. Gliding, combat and the crazy powers are phenomenal and this time you don't have to wait that long to get them since you can gain them early on by completing side missions and finding collectables. Certain areas will contain hives where you also get the opportunity to upgrade once you do what is required of you to do in that hive usually consuming or defeating infected monsters. But these are only visible on the map once you stumble on them by accident. That means you have some exploring to do if you want to upgrade all your powers. Not that you need them because from the start you are already incredibly powerful. More so than Alex Mercer was in the beginning. Which brings me to the one thing that you immediately will notice. Prototype 2 is too easy. Playing on Normal in the original was far from easy. It had missions where you would die pretty quick and where you were forced to consume people like crazy to get health back. Granted most of the difficulty consisted of overwhelming you with enemies that could pack a punch. In prototype being overwhelmed by enemies is no cause for concern at least not that much.And the consequence is that you will breeze through the missions. As always I tried to do as much as possible and decided to do all the side missions. Surprisingly it is in these missions that you will find the challenge most of the gamers are looking for. One type of mission was cargo delivery where the objective is to retrieve the packages as fast as you could within the given time. Problem was that you had to ignore using the glide ability which is pretty much the most used ability in the game. And on top of that there was no room for error which reminded me of the Dahaka chases in Prince of Persia:Warrior Within. In this case however it was not that difficult in principle but it requires some adjusting and restraint. There were also missions where you were forced to stay in cover as a soldier and were limited to using the weapons that were at your disposal. Not being able to use your super powers added quite some tension. These missions were a welcome change of pace and enhanced the feeling of how impressive the super powers actually are. So while the challenge is lacking you do feel like a God in this game. And to be honest that is a wonderful feeling as long as it lasts. The story starts where it was left of from the original and does something pretty unique. Alex Mercer our hero from the first Prototype becomes the main villain. Too bad though that Alex Mercer is more active off screen and is not that impressive as final baddie. In the original the last two missions were incredible epic. They really felt like missions that belonged and were incredibly intense. In Prototype Alex Mercer was simple to beat. Which was a little disappointing. I quite liked how they fit Heller into the story as it makes you sympathize with him from the start. However the consequence is that he really can't be bothered by all the conspiracy and end of the world stuff. Which makes the overall story feel less epic. Overall I think Prototype 2 is a game that you will enjoy especially if you have played the first because then it becomes clear how much the game play mechanics of the original have improved. It is possible to enjoy the game without having played but then I think you will miss out on some wonderful details that will make you appreciate this sequel even further.