Gamescom: judgement time

NiSuTe Europe at the Gamescom 2009

The crew of NiSuTe arrived a few days ago on Tuesday at the Gamescom just to find us up to our necks in work. Struggling to get to all developers in time since the place is huge and having the hardest time to even find the time to write about it, the whole team pushed the boundaries of overtime (working from 7:00 AM to 3:30AM, YES that is only three and a half hours of sleep and that for 5 days in a row!) It was almost getting the better of us with people falling asleep while writing, but this all meant nothing in the face of so many games to conquer. Blizzard, Capcom, and Sega were most definitely the best interview partners this event, with the bringing of great games for us to write about. All in all a great start for a first time event. We are looking forward to going next year.

What the crew thought about Gamescom: Read more

Getting too old for gaming.

I have to admit it, I am getting too old for videogames. In my never ending quest to find and review the decent games out there, I struggle.

Growing up during the Nintendo 8-bit era, games were challenging then, the first Sonic game on the Megadrive was insanely fast for it’s time, but insanely slow when played now. Games are larger, busier and have more functionality. Heck, look at the first controllers that only had a cross shaped D-pad and 2 action buttons. Compare it to a PS3/X-Box 360 controller. Bit of a difference eh?

During my latest adventure with Prototype, I was subjected to over 30 different kinds of combinations available with the player’s avatar. Not only did you posses 4 different versions of your power (claws, bulked up arms and hands, tentacles and your own plain fists), you can also wield a vast assortment of weapons. Even ignoring the regular weapons you are still left with your 4 different styles of attacking. Each style has it’s own defensive and offensive capabilities, and there are several button combinations that perform different kind of combo’s or unleash a specific kind of attack. Read more

Golden Boy reviews: Prototype

The pain…

There is nothing more frustrating than making a review of a game that you are wanting to love, but does nothing else than kick you in the balls. Repeatedly. With a steel reinforced worker’s boot. Call it tough love, call it masochism, Radical Entertainment calls it Prototype.

Before we get to the reasons for that, let me explain the setup of the game first.

You are Alex Mercer, a ‘man’ (and I use the term loosely) declared dead, who wakes up in a morgue just before becoming the latest X-Files autopsy report. Next to this unfortunate accident, you have no memory and apparently suffering from throat cancer too. Lo’ and behold, you are confused, vengeful and speaking through a mouthful of gravel, but unfortunately for the rest of the world also in possession of powers granted by a military experiment that can destroy anyone and anything.

Enter the clichéd story of the man with his memory lost, although most writers would swerve like Michael Schumacher to avoid a catastrophic storyline accident like this, Prototype actually managed to find a way to incorporate it into the game mechanics by having you suck the memories out of people you encounter either randomly or mission related, thusly laying out the story in front of you.

Ow, I didn’t mention this? Thanks to the government experiment that gave you your near death experience and amnesia, (do these things ever go as planned?) you are now able to change your body make up at will, allowing you to shape shift your limbs into claws, clubs, hentai-style tentacles of doom, your appearance and last but not least: appetite, because dear old Alex eats people up for health and their juicy low-fat memories that help you understand (and make sense) of the ‘story’.

With the story laid out and the weapons handed to you, it’s time to lay waste to the city. As the game progresses you are given more powers, the ability to wield guns (but you won’t), to throw cars (but you won’t), to hijack vehicles with a button mashing sequence to get around a city (but you won’t).

Experience is gained through kills and completed missions and is used as the currency to upgrade offensive and defense abilities, although you will never ever need anything else besides the tentacle and it’s two upgrades, with it’s long reach and one-hit-kill functionality. Granted, it doesn’t work against tanks or buildings, but you can just tentacle hijack your way into a chopper – which are never in shortage – and use that for when you need the fire power.

A lovely city, with lots of potential murder.

Why so serious?

The cut-scenes and dialogue try to picture Alex Mercer as a decent man out for justice, but he isn’t fooling anyone. Between tentacle-raping and eating and killing people with a tank, Alex occasionally throws you a “am I doing the right thing?” dialogue which does nothing more than make you chuckle. The guy is bloody hardcore and even though the game wants you to believe that there is a moral choice, it’s all thrown out of the window the first time you gorily digest an innocent civilian.

Next to the story-line, Prototype also boasts a number of side missions that have absolutely no relation to the main event at all. They revolve around running from point A to point B as fast as possible, running up a building as fast as possible and killing enemies as fast as possible (something that you do plenty in the main story). All these side missions reward you with experience, which you don’t need because the main missions drown you in experience.

The whole reason why I got so frustrated with this game is that some of the missions throw you against impossible odds and are usually connected to a prequel mission. Meaning that you have to do the pre-mission all over again every-single-freaking-time you fail the mission it’s all about. Hacking/destroying a genetic detector might be fun the first 10 times, but after a few hundred attempts this gets very old. Inescapable cut-scenes don’t do much to relieve the pain either.

Pilot, prepare for my tentacle of doom!

Can I get some aspirin with that?

Something that also comes standard with 3^rd person action-adventure games is a camera that acts like a cat chasing a red laser dot on the wall. The targeting system is to blame for this. When fighting one enemy it works fine, but when fighting in a big battlefield with bullets and tentacles and choppers flying all over, it turns into a migraine inducing carousel of horror that had my eyes flying out of their sockets.

So do I recommend Prototype? It doesn’t happen a lot when a game causes so much confliction. Although the violence is amusingly brutal and bloody, the story is so poor that it’s hard to care for the protagonist and a lot of the missions are frustratingly difficult and repetitive. Combine this with a wild and uncontrolled camera and you are in a roller coaster ride from hell.

Alex Mercer: the man who leaves explosions in his wake.

Final verdict:

The good: Rewarding ways of doing off your opponents, great visual and audio quality.

The bad: If I need to type this out again you haven’t bothered to read the review. Now go read, you lazy bugger.

The ugly: Can someone find Radical Entertainment a better writer?

Grade: A Nisute 7/10. What it lacks in story and common sense, it makes up for with violence.

Details

Format reviewed: X-Box 360 (also available on PS3)

Origin: Romania

Publisher: Activision

Developer: Radical Entertainment

Release: Out Now