Limitless power, but what to do with it?

You are Alex Mercer. What exactly that means is initially unclear because this is a man who has lost his memory, but awoken in a morgue to a world in which he possesses untold power. A viral outbreak has claimed Manhattan, forcing the island into a military quarantine. The infected citizens are undergoing radical, monstrous changes -- none more drastic than Alex himself. This anti-hero finds himself with the ability to shape shift and absorb other beings. As the most powerful being on a closed island, the entire city is your playground. And it is a game world that feels unfinished.

Prototype is a single player, open-world action game in the style of Crackdown or The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. You play as a man gifted with superhuman powers and the option to go most anywhere you like and do most anything you want once you get there. It's sandbox gaming with a heavy focus on pure action.

Though you play as a man bestowed with superhero power, Mercer is anything but heroic. There are no moral choices here. Mercer has vowed to destroy those responsible for his current situation and he has the means to do it. To gain new powers or refill your health bar, you'll literally absorb other living beings. Find yourself a little low on hit points and you can simply grab an innocent bystander, crush his or her head, and then consume them for a quick boost. If you find yourself in a pinch with attack choppers chasing you through the roads, you can absorb a person and morph into their likeness to blend in with the crowd.

Click the image to watch the Prototype video review.

As you work your way through the game you'll unlock new and ever more exotic powers. There's an air dash and a glide move that help you quickly travel from one side of Manhattan to the other. There's a massive elbow drop that can destroy a tank in one hit. There's even a whiplash arm that can be used to latch onto passing helicopters to hijack them, Just Cause style. These moves give Prototype its personality. These are what set it apart from most other sandbox games and make it worth a look. Sure there are a few guns to fire and some tanks you can drive around, but the real draw here is the fact that you can turn your arm into a giant blade and then dice monsters with it. Or, if you're a bit twisted, the draw is the fact that you can grab a person by the neck and simply run across the city with their flailing body in tow.

But how long can you do flying elbow drops onto tanks or throw people off of rooftops before it gets boring? The world itself here is far from the most engaging...

The answer to that will vary by the player, but obviously messing around with the powers isn't all there is to do in Prototype. The storyline involves 31 missions including everything from simple seek and destroy affairs to stealthy infiltrations to escort missions and massive boss battles. Most of these missions are standard in design. In fact, if you've played many open-world games, you've probably played identical copies of these in the past. And since repetition is oftentimes the name of the game here, you can be sure you'll be doing uninspired tasks over and over again.

Did we mention the copious amounts of blood?

Quite often Prototype follows the design philosophy of everything and the kitchen sink. Instead of fighting a few enemies, the game tosses dozens upon dozens at you. Then it throws in a few tanks and helicopters as well as a couple dozen innocent bystanders for good measure. It's a design that creates a lot of tension, though I found the action too chaotic at times. Even the policing system is dialed to the max and too aggressive. You can't do something as simple as run through the city while leaping off of buildings without alerting the Strike Teams, at which point you're forced into some shape shifting or combat. This can make the basic act of exploration more work than it should be. There is very little downtime to counteract the high stress of the missions.

Prototype's design leans heavily on the fact that you can refill your health by consuming victims at any time. Some attacks can drain half of your health bar or more. Others juggle you in the air leaving you open to frustrating combos from enemies. And sometimes you'll think you've dodged an attack only to get hit a few feet away anyway. But it's OK, because you can always go get more health, right? Not really. The action heavy sequences involve barely surviving to the next checkpoint or running in and out of the action ad nausea trying to stay alive. Skilled players won't have too much trouble, but Prototype's chaos could quickly become overwhelming for others. I found several points of the game to be unnecessarily aggravating to the point where I would have turned Prototype off and walked away if I weren't reviewing it.

Alongside the main quest is a set of side missions called events to tackle at your discretion. Beat them and you earn some Evolve Points (EP) used to upgrade Mercer's powers. Radical smartly hands out EP like candy. Complete just a mission or two and you'll quickly find yourself spending EP to grab new powers and abilities early and often. It's hard to stop playing when you know you'll get a new move by making it through just one more mission.

Unfortunately, there isn't a whole lot of variety in these events and I often found myself wishing they made better use of Mercer's vast array of powers. Those included here are dominated by things like checkpoint races and killing sprees -- things that have been done so often as side missions in games like this that they're hardly worth mentioning. It's cookie cutter game design at this point. There is one exception: A mission that tasks the player with gliding long distances towards a bulls-eye. Why aren't there more imaginative events like this? You can throw a person hundreds of yards. Why not include some sort of shot-put event? There was a real opportunity to get creative here, but instead too many of the side missions directly mirror the mindless killing or limited stealth of the main game.