In 2009, the original [Prototype] was the sole new game with its own completely new concept to reach the top of the UK charts. It was a scrappy kind of underdog, graceless and gruesome. At its best it turned its ugliness into a virtue, rushing around New York in an open world whirlwind of guts and destruction. It didn’t provide the most obvious territory for a sequel even if it didn’t close one off either. The angle that [Prototype 2] takes is an unexpectedly fascinating one, though.
Instead of returning as grim mutant Alex Mercer, you get a new character, returning soldier James Heller. Mercer hasn’t vanished though, but is instead placed as the antagonist. It’s something other games have done — Pokémon Gold had the original Red show up as an opponent; Devil May Cry 4 has you fight previous protagonist Dante — but rarely quite as centrally.
Mercer has released a new version of the first game’s deadly virus, and Heller is shown in a secret file as being homicidally obsessed with Mercer, holding him responsible for the deaths of his family. Heller gets assigned on a mission anyway for lack of alternatives, the two come together, and he ends up with his own version of Mercer’s monstrous empowerment. He gains stuff like flight rather quicker than Mercer did, but can build up new powers in a similar way.
Giving the powers to someone new allows the game to portray Heller going through some of the initial personal adaptation that its predecessor skipped over in favour of having Mercer just roll with it. There is also something in Heller being Black, in contrast to Mercer as Interchangeable Angry White Male Video Game Protagonist, which adds new elements to his character, even when it isn’t foregrounded. The very first time he transforms into one of the Military Science Complex bad guys, he says “God damn this is going to come in handy” with a relish it’s hard to imagine from someone already as able to blend in as the default as Mercer.
[Prototype 2] adds some technical polish to the original, so that it’s more ugly when it wants to be rather than at all times. It uses a similar red and black and white palette in starker, more stylish ways. It also adds some smart new abilities, like a targeting pulse that lights up the city before being reflected back from your prospective victim’s location, and tendrils to create ‘black holes’ that gravitationally bash enemies and objects together. The appetite for vicious, viscous destruction is renewed, and its parodically corrupt and evil authorities are satisfying targets for it.
It’s the moments when it roots its darkness in something more specific than cackling evil that hit harder, though. Experiments with what happens when you put people in containment with a mutant monster are one thing, but there are more grounded moments or authoritarian horror alongside it. You run into military police picking on people everywhere, sarcastically calling people “bro” and speaking disparagingly of refugee camps. One audio clip of a military murder has them demanding to hear a child speak only for a parent to futilely yell “he’s autistic, he’s not infected, I swear to god”. There’s a limit to how truly radical a game from the same publishers as Call of Duty can be, but [Prototype 2] does even more work than the first game to bring something more than just the thrill of destruction in how you get to play as the lesser of two evils.
Top of the charts for week ending 28 April 2012:
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