JayDeth

Gonna be honest, I only played the single player for a few minutes, though to be fair, the opening cut scene did absolutely nothing to get me invested in the setting, the characters, or whatever the plot was. Just you and another dude driving then some things explode and suddenly your playing Gears of War with normal sized people. Yay? The multiplayer, lack of an advertised yet absent split-screen aside, was just as boring because I only saw exactly 3 other people trying to play this travesty and played exactly one game of deathmatch, meant for 8 people, with just one other person. I spent most of the match just looking for my adversary and not using the gravity gimmick at all save for floating to and from cover in certain sections. This game could have been just okay or even hilariously bad like Mind Jack, but instead it's just very very bland and no one will ever remember it come next month.

The long and short of it is that the single player is brief and uninspired, but worth a rental at the very least. The multiplayer was seemingly designed for greifers and between them and players who don't have a clue what they're doing, finding the fun is nigh impossible. Even people who enjoy the multiplayer will tell you it has problems. Personally, this was some of the least fun multiplayer I've experienced.

One of the best sandbox games I've played in a while... here's the "but" though: it's not better than the previous installment per se. Different, but not better. The weapons, in this game's case the weapons are any given growth you arms turn into, are more balanced, but there's less of them. Additionally, leveling has been streamlined, a fact everyone and their mother seems to enjoy for whatever reason, making the choices easier but a lot more restricted. As par with any sandbox game there's plenty of collectibles and side events to discover, but you only know that you're near them when you get with 160 odd feet or yards or whatever and you have to find it from there using a hot-or-cold-esque meter. Since this game takes place in NY City-ish Land it's pretty much required that you use a guide to find any of them, let alone all of them. Doing enough of these in any given area will unlock a bonus, but as they are extremely difficult to find, the bonuses are small, don't affect gameplay much, and aren't required to beat the game. Thus we have one of the few instances in a sandbox game where I haven't felt compelled in the least to find all the collectibles and side bits. One small thing of note that I really enjoyed was the side mission radar you have. Here's how it works: sometimes you'll find specially marked people to devour and the game will then direct you to a specific console on the side of an enemy (called Blackwatch) van that you need to access and then you'll do a little side mission. Most of the time however, you'll access the van first as they are one of the few things always marked on your map. In this case, you have to find the guy you need on your own with the help of this radar thing. It works by clicking the thumb stick which sends out a radar like ping from your location across the game world and your target will send one back once it hits them, giving you a general direction to go in as well as an idea as to how far away they are. It's a really innovative way to tell the player where to look for stuff without actually telling the player where it is and I only wish the game used this feature as the means to find everything not directly related to the story. Ah, the story... Prototype 1's story wasn't the best, easily the weakest part of the game, but Prototype 2's story is as generic as they come. I don't want to spoil anything, but by the time I was watching the cutscene before the final boss fight (one guess as to who it is) I had long since found the story to be bordering on the cartoonish, the villain no doubt wishing he had a mustache to twirl as he monologues about his evil plans for world domination. And after you beat him the game just ends with very little resolved. Why then the positive rating? If you can't see the fun to be had from playing as an extremely agile Clayface who heals himself by absorbing hapless pedestrians through osmosis, then you are the definition of odd.