{"id":37999,"date":"2012-05-18T12:26:25","date_gmt":"2012-05-18T10:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=37999"},"modified":"2012-05-18T12:32:59","modified_gmt":"2012-05-18T10:32:59","slug":"prototype-2-review-xbox-360","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/reviews\/37999-prototype-2-review-xbox-360","title":{"rendered":"Prototype 2 review (Xbox 360)"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/strong>Back when I penned my review for The Godfather II<\/a>, I identified a gaming phenomenon I dubbed \u201cThe Diablo Factor\u201d.<\/p>\n

Most gamers will be familiar with the occurrence: you\u2019re playing a game, and just when you decide to quit you pick up one more piece of armour in that elusive set you\u2019ve been chasing, or you unlock a new ability you were patiently working towards. Then, after fiddling with your new toy for a while, your next attempt to quit is again thwarted by the crafty game dangling yet another tasty carrot in front of you.<\/p>\n

Repeat ad infinitum.<\/p>\n

Prototype 2 understands \u201cThe Diablo Factor\u201d – constantly luring you back to play with sweet upgrades and powers you\u2019ll earn by doing almost nothing, and despite being little more than a technical and exceptionally violent overhaul of the original game, there\u2019s enough allure in the satisfying gameplay to make it a sequel worth considering for the fun factor alone.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s not really worth considering in Prototype 2 is the excessively elaborate storyline, a tale that\u2019s so painfully stretched out and force-fitted to the repetitive missions that narrative cutscenes, though well produced, quickly become a snore-fest.<\/p>\n

Quite simply: Alex Mercer, original protagonist, is now antagonist to James Heller, a military vet who\u2019s also infected with the nasty virus that\u2019s turned the pair into rapidly evolving killing machines. Their city of Manhattan is yet again infected with said virus, and as Heller you\u2019re tasked with avenging your family\u2019s death, stopping the blah blah blah\u2026 yeah, you\u2019ve heard this all before.<\/p>\n

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What makes this \u201cstory\u201d as well as the motives driving everything you do feel so feeble is the way everything is worked into such a simplistic and monotonous gameplay structure. Main missions always consist of either hunting a scientist or military commander, infiltrating a compound, or beating the connective tissue out of a designated enemy.<\/p>\n

Just when the story starts to veer in the direction of an interesting twist, it always swerves abruptly back to a mission objective you\u2019ve done a dozen times previously. A good way to picture it would be imagining what the mission objectives might\u2019ve been like for the arcade classic Rampage: no matter what building you\u2019d be destroying or which person you\u2019d chow down on, you\u2019d always just be demolishing or eating to achieve victory. While such inclination for annihilation is a lot of fun, Rampage never pretended it needed justification.<\/p>\n

However, Prototype 2 finds its saving grace in combat that\u2019s an absolute blast, a plus that I lauded in the original game and one that developers Radical Entertainment clearly know is the game\u2019s driving force.<\/p>\n

Controls have been tweaked to make selecting powers and weapons a cinch, and even the button-mashers among us can accomplish some impressive kills with little cognitive effort. Navigating the infected Manhattan is as much fun as ever, and even though the vehicle hijacking and building traversing mechanics have returned they\u2019ve both been refined to make creating the type of destruction you want never feel like a chore.<\/p>\n

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A graphical facelift accompanies the revamped controls, and brings with it new additions like the kickass Tendril power that grotesquely suspends foes from their surroundings, and the Biobomb that rewires pedestrians into unwilling organic explosives. It\u2019s undeniable that these along with the Heller\u2019s host of other abilities are all beautifully rendered for maximum eye candy and gore.<\/p>\n

The violence itself, as per Heller\u2019s quote in this review\u2019s sub-heading, is nothing short of gratuitous, and pounding an enemy\u2019s face into mincemeat or slicing them limb-from-limb are as visceral and satisfying as they sound.<\/p>\n

Once I\u2019d finished staring through a screen perpetually spattered with entrails though, it was actually quite difficult assigning a final score to Prototype 2: on one hand, if you\u2019re after a crafted narrative, surprising mission twists or thoughtful combat then you\u2019re best off not even considering it, but if you\u2019re content with pretending you\u2019ve recently undergone a frontal lobotomy and can be satiated with little more than blood by the bucketload and hearing someone scream \u201cf***\u201d every twelve seconds, you\u2019re sitting with an absolute gem.<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s also the undeniably strong allure of \u201cThe Diablo Factor\u201d. Heller is awarded some manner of power or ability almost every fifteen minutes, and scouring the sandbox for collectibles or completing side-quests always gives you something tangible to play with, like doubling your jump speed or making you bulletproof. Being so pleasantly strung along by sweet upgrades is a huge motivator to plough through the cookie-cutter missions, so ultimately it\u2019s going to come down to what kind of game tickles your own personal joystick.<\/p>\n

Me? Sometimes I\u2019m happy foregoing common sense and playing games that let me do nothing but cause wanton chaos and destruction, so I\u2019m scoring Prototype 2 with that mindless approach in mind and \u2018tilting\u2019 the final score as such: as modern gamers we spend so much time obsessing over bleeding-edge visuals and storylines based on New York Times bestsellers, when often all we need is something that simply hearkens back to the basics, games like good ol\u2019 Rampage that unashamedly let us have fun simply destroying stuff.<\/p>\n

Check out MyGaming’s Prototype 2 coverage<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\t\t