What you do get is a vertical “draw distance.” That means if you see something on street level from the top of a building, it’s really there and not some placeholder that will change when you get close enough. I say “initially embarrassing” because you do get something most open world games don’t offer to make up for it. Iit has its flaws to be sure, like a completely rote story, with ugly grey-scale + red cut scenes that may only surprise you if you didn’t play the first game, a painful dearth of side quests for an open-world game, missions that only offer two or three variations (chase/protect someone, hunt and eat someone, go somewhere and destroy the **** out of everything, and most of the time it’s a combo of all three), woefully inadequate armored vehicles, a sometimes wonky camera, and an initially embarrassing draw distance. Luckily, Prototype 2 suffers from no such fate. Of the Avengers, the only one who might stand a chance would be the Hulk, but that fight would likely boil down to a tank-throwing contest that would carry on indecisively until the heat-death of the universe.Įnough about inciting Nerd-World War 3, all that power would be useless if it came in a shoddy package. What about Superman, you ask? Heller would simply eat him to learn his secrets. In fact, I’m fairly sure that James Heller could kick Batman’s cosplaying ass, and rip Spider-Geek in half with a wedgie of such force it would have to be measured in kilotons of TNT. He has no weaknesses, he can assume any human form (as long as he previously ate them to learn their secrets), he can leap tall building, or failing that, he can run up their sides, ignore bullets, reflect rockets back at their previous owners, glide for long distances, throw cars hundreds of feet, destroy armored vehicles by throwing people into them, or by simply ripping them to shreds as easily as you or I open a can of beer. And here’s the thing - it out superheroes every other superhero game I’ve ever played in the past. So yeah, even though I don’t think anyone would consider Prototype 2 a “superhero” game in the same vein as Batman’s “Arkham” games, or Spiderman’s various digital incarnations, Prototype 2 really is, deep down in its heart, a superhero game nonetheless.
He is, in effect, turned into a superhero - a dark 90’s era Marvel-style superhero - and if you told me that the Prototype franchise is based on a series of comic books from the 90’s, I’d simply nod my head in smug satisfaction.
So heaping, in fact, that Heller becomes an unstoppable fire storm of hot death that rains destruction down on anything he wants - be it animal, vegetable, or mineral. In his grief, he goes after Prototype 1’s protagonist, Alex Mercer however, when he finally confronts Mercer, all he gets for his trouble is his own heaping dose of the Mercer Virus. Not super mutants, mind you, just shuffling low damage zombie mutants. You see, during another outbreak of the “Mercer Virus” his wife and daughter failed to get out of New York City fast enough and were killed by the newly infected mutants. Despite its many niggling flaws, I thoroughly enjoyed every single second I was behind the wheel of recently widowed Sergeant James Heller. Let me just get this out in the open right now: Prototype 2 is the most fun I’ve had gaming in a very long time.