Review Rewind will be a feature where I go back to older games and review them. This can serve two purposes: one, this might make you find a game for cheap that you've previously passed up. And two, I finally have an excuse to go back and play all the games in my library I haven't even touched yet. Anyway, onto the review!

Prototype came out in June, 2009, so it's not a huge leap backward in time, but I didn't have much of a chance to play it until recently. It's a third-person, action sandbox  game set on Manhattan island in New York City. Granted, it's not a true one-to-one recreation of the entire island, but Radical Entertainment did a good job in grabbing the big, important parts of the city and even the street layout for the most part. I can tell because I've never been there, but I've looked on Google Maps! *grin*

You play as Alex Mercer. Starting out, you're dead on a slab, about to be dissected. Suddenly, you awaken and escape from the building, Gentek headquarters, only to find yourself being pursued by armed guards. Your body starts changing. You're suddenly able to jump unnaturally high and escape from the guards. Oh, and you have almost none of your memories.

It turns out, you've been infected with a virus that gives you greater jumping distance, better health, and most importantly, the ability to shape-shift, even into other people. The game allows you to upgrade yourself using the experience points (EP) you earn throughout the game. The list of these upgrades is quite extensive, and gets very expensive as the game goes on.

Like I said, you're in Manhattan. Every place you see, you can go. The game has free-roam down to a science, I think. You can completely ignore everything and just wander. Or kill. Or wander while killing. The only thing that stops you from 100% free-roam action are the occasional pop-ups giving you little tips or telling you that you have upgrades you can afford to buy. While early on, they're pretty nice tips, I don't really want to see them after 35 hours of mayhem. I know how to glide, thank you very much. An option to turn this off would have been awesome!

I won't go into the storyline at all, except to say it's somewhat convoluted, and doesn't make a lot of sense if you just do the main missions. But that's not a bad thing in this case. The game has a sort of collection system called the Web of Intrigue. The web is made up of something like 130 different nodes, all of these are memories of the people with a red marker above them.

The memories were so short and scattered, it didn't make a lot of sense to me at first. You only get a voice-over and short bursts of visual imagery. When I started really trying to hunt down these people of interest, it all started coming together slowly. This is where the backstory lies. The gameplay and plot of the game are the present (rather, the past two and a half weeks or so), while the Web of Intrigue is everything that has led up to the end of the game. The presentation is really fascinating.

The problem with the Web of Intrigue is that the people you have to track down are placed in seemingly random sections of the island, and they'll only show up if you've been connected to their node by eating other people.

The gameplay is simple at its core. You have one button to run, one to jump, one each for standard attacks and special attacks and one for targeting. As you unlock special upgrades, they all require special button combos, situational requirements (like being in the air, or running), and aren't perfectly clear on how to perform them. For example, I've unlocked all of the "devastator" attacks, but I'm only really able to perform one consistently. Also, who thought X+B (square + circle for you Playstation types) was a good idea?

The upgrades aren't all bad. You get upgrades to health, speed, jumping, air-dashing, weapons, and vehicles. You also increase the effectiveness of your different attacks.

Overall, the gameplay is a wonderful, gore-filled killing spree. Your main enemies are the marines and Blackwatch troops, though the "Infected" also turn up shortly after the game begins. While the marines can hurt you pretty badly with armored vehicles, helicopters, and rocket launchers, you can tear into them like a knife through butter. If sheer chaos isn't your style, you can walk among them without drawing much attention. You can even enter their bases by consuming the base commander and liquify everyone inside, without drawing any suspicion.

The infected hunters, on the other hand, are big, nasty things that are rather tough to fight, especially early in the game when you don't have much in the way of power or health. It wouldn't be so bad if every single time they hit you, you weren't stunned like a red-headed step child being beaten by her father. And they can hit you five or six times in a row with no respite. The only benefit is that once you beat them down enough, you can consume them for a large health gain.

The only real down-side I see to this game is in the mission difficulty. Even on the medium difficulty, I found them to be very hard. Especially at the end, when Blackwatch has the equivalent to the Infected hunter that can sniff through your disguises. Thank you, Radical, for taking away the only effective weapon I have when I have a quarter-inch of health meter left while the entire island is trying to kill me.

The missions can be left alone for a while if you need, though, because the game has mini-game events. Jump off a building, glide, and try to hit a bulls-eye. Get from point A to point B as fast as you can. Kill as many meat sacs as you can in the time allotted. And more. There are a lot of these, and they all give you a bronze, silver, or gold medal, depending on how well you do. And if you can get gold on all the events, then you can go for platinum! Luckily, if you do well enough to get platinum on any events before unlocking it, you'll get those platinum medals automatically. The events are a great way to blow off a little steam when you're getting your ass kicked in the latest mission for whatever reason.

And if you want to back off from the destruction and killing, and just explore, there are orbs to collect. If you played Crackdown, you know exactly what's up with them. They give you EP, and once you collect all of each type, you get an achievement. It's a great way to get to know the city, especially early on.

The graphics aren't the greatest, eye-splitting thing on the planet, but they're decent. The only real complaints I have is with the humans and vehicles. Vehicles, there are only a large handful. A larger variety would have been a great thing to have, considering it's New York City. Humans, same thing. But to add to humans, the character modeling could have been better. An extra polygon or two in the face. Something to make them look less like a mannequin.

There isn't much to the sound of the game. People screaming, exclaiming in excitement about something you did. Bullets, explosions, that sort. I would've liked some sort of soundtrack to hear while I was playing, beyond the "You've been caught" generic fighting music.

The game has 40 achievements worth the usual 1,000 gamerscore. Don't expect to boost too much without a good investment of time and effort (and frustration). Not a single achievement is worth over 60 points, and those are given for completing the game on hard, completing the story mode without dying, and that sort. Very stingy, in my opinion.

So, I've aired my praises and complaints that I've had so far, playing to the near-end of the storyline. For all the things I dislike, overall, I like this game. It's a damn fine sandbox game. Looking at Radical's list of previous games, this one is kind of a diamond in the rough. I feel it's earned every single fraction of the score I've given: 7.7.

FYI, I played and reviewed the Xbox 360 version. If you're looking to pick up Prototype, its price has dropped online. Amazon has it for $30 new with free shipping ($25 for PC), and it costs even less used, though you forgo free shipping. You'll probably be able to find it cheap at your local used game store, too.