Prototype

A hearty, thrilling, unrestrained feast of blood-soaked carnage
9/10
Opening
In 2009, Activision's landmark game Prototype was released. It attracted countless players with its brilliant, creative, and playable game design, delightful and hearty combat experience, fragmented yet complete closed loop, and deep yet reversed plot. The protagonist Alex Mercer's hooded sweatshirt outfit and charming personality of being cold on the outside but warm on the inside have become a classic image in game history, too. This work has deeply influenced classic open-world action game IPs such as The Amazing Spider-Man(Video Game) series, Marvel's Spiderman series, and Batman: Arkham series regarding combat and map design. Even today, it is still a considerable outstanding game. Regrettably, due to compatibility, optimization, adaptation, and other reasons, it is very difficult to experience this 2009 work smoothly on the modern Windows operating system. The game also has problems such as uneven operation, low volume, and rough modeling that extremely damage the player's gaming experience.
Strength
The story of the game takes place in Manhattan, New York. After an unknown virus breaks out, the player needs to play the role of Alex Mercer, an anti-hero who was infected and resurrected constantly exploring his lost memories and his duty in this infection. The game's movie-level camera movements and performance effects in the cutscenes are still considerably acceptable even today. Through the highly immersive game system known as the " Web of Intrigue", players can gradually understand this closed-loop, deep, reversal, and charming game world through fragmented memory flashbacks. As the plot progresses, the world of Prototype will undergo corresponding changes, creating a strong sense of immersion. In addition, the player's interactions with the scene are rich in realistic details, such as the broken glass marks when running on the building, the different operations when falling will affect the character's landing action, etc. As a game released in 2009, Prototype also has a certain degree of scene destruction effect, which is truly excellent.
The player's combat abilities in the game are quite diverse, the character's body movements and actions are extremely agile and swift too, giving the player an excellent and smooth map-running experience. In addition to being able to devour and transform into others to disguise oneself, or using blades, claws, hammerfists, musclemass, whipfist, and other biomass abilities unique to the infected to fight, players can also drive tanks and planes like in military games, use rifles, grenade launchers and rocket launchers to assist in combat; since the restrictions on ammunition are relatively loose, players can enjoy the pleasure of venting firepower.
Compared to the Grand Theft Auto series, which also offers a high degree of freedom but constrains players' actions to a certain extent, the moral constraints and punishments for evil deeds in Prototype are almost non-existent. In this crazy world where every battle in the middle and late stages is extremely grand, dazzling, and multi-party melee, players can act recklessly, trample on life and human rights at will, and experience the pleasure of being able to do anything. The powerful and striking character movements combined with the game's blood-splattering effects and rich details of severed limbs bring players a hearty and refreshing violent aesthetic experience. The difficulty of most of the game's mission and challenges is also extremely balanced, to serve the core purpose of "making players feel refreshed". When switching locked enemies, the game will slow down like bullet time. Using this mechanism, players can easily pass through some more chaotic and time-limited scenes.
Weakness
It is extremely difficult to experience the 2009 Prototype smoothly on a modern Windows operating system nowadays. Whether it is the frame rate performance, optimization, filters, or volume, the game has serious problems. Without various player-made patches and software assistance, it is even impossible to play normally. Even so, the optimized game still has certain unsolved problems with volume, operation, and viewing smoothness. The main storyline of the game is quite short, and side quests like challenges occupy most of the game content. In addition, the cost of upgrading in the game is quite expensive, so if you don't complete these challenges, you will not be able to experience the full capabilities of the character due to insufficient evolution points. Although the game's overall worldview and plot are excellent, the main story is extremely poor and sloppy in many character building and detail processing. The lack of foreshadowing and the overly fast pace of the plot can easily cause players to miss key details and fail to keep up with them or even have misunderstandings.
Whether it is the main story mission or the challenge, the game does not have the option to restart or quit midway. You can only choose it when the mission fails or the player dies, such a design is quite inhumane. There is also friendly fire between enemies, players can even cause damage to some mission targets. The health of ordinary enemies and civilians is generally low, any contact with the player could result in their death, which is a bit too exaggerated. There is always an indescribable strange distortion in the volume, other problems such as extremely rough character and scene modeling, slightly stiff character movements, weird enemy locking logic, and the lack of smooth character operation feel and camera movement smoothness also have a serious impact on the player's gaming experience.
Conclusion
As a game released in 2009, Prototype inevitably has a variety of problems in terms of image quality, optimization, operation, and even plot narrative. The problems of the main storyline being too short and the challenge occupying the vast majority of the content mean that only those players who extremely enjoy the game's combat design can have enough fun. Still, simply relying on its outstanding combat, map design, and worldview building, as long as you can accept its shortcomings, Prototype is definitely a work that any video game enthusiast cannot miss. Even if it takes a while to experience this 2009 work, you will eventually find that the quality of the game is worth it.
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BEFORE YOU BUY!
This game is great but the problem is that this game can only run with 4 CPU cores. Why? Because I heard that there's a bug in the code or something.
But don't worry there's a fix. Open Steam > Open Task Manager > Go to Details > Find steam.exe > Right Click on it > Click on affinity > Click off All CPU Cores > Only turn on CPU 0, 1, 2, 3 > Click accept

And there you go, you can play Prototype! When you're done playing just turn on all the CPU cores (don't worry it doesn't damage your PC if you do it a bunch of times). You can also install mods if you don't want to do all of that.

only playable with this mod

Not the greatest PC ports around, requiring a patch from the Nexus to get it working on modern systems, but a solid game nonetheless. It has a certain hopeless & bleak atmosphere that you don't see often in games and it really works in tandem with the story.
Gameplay wise it's really fun and empowering when you can turn into a human blender in a moment's notice, shredding through enemies with your sick ass powers.
Good game, Prototype 3 or a remake when???

Firstly, a warning: This game WILL NOT run without you using THIS MOD (there's also one for Prototype 2) and even then, there's a high likelihood that your audio ingame will be EXTREME low. Which you can SOMEWHAT fix with one of these options. However, dialogue ingame will still be inaudible. So I HIGHLY recommend turning subtitles on. The good news is that, thanks to that mod, you don't have to do the old CPU core limiting or anything and it fixes some other things. I LITERALLY couldn't play the game for the longest time because even though I limited my cores so I could boot the game, I still crashed often and the game was unplayably jank.
SO, thanks to that wonderful mod, I'm finally able to play the game. And WOW! Talk about the ultimate power fantasy.
There's a lot I could say about this game but I'll just give a short pros/cons list
PROS:
Decent story. Although you can't get "all" of it unless you look around the city to find people to consume and give you the story tidbits. And there's A LOT. Tying the lore to what is essential collectables kinda suck. The good part is, you run into maybe 70% of them just by playing. And even then, you kinda get the gist of the very basic story by the end
Extremely fun gameplay and movement. It reminds me A LOT of basically every Spiderman/Batman Arkham game. You can sale every building by "parkouring" up it, as well as eventually glide around.
Combat is great. Very fluid, very fun. Combine it with the carnage and gore and you're literally an unstoppable killing machine
CONS:
Some of the voice acting and animations are kinda.. eh. Even for a game from 2009, I feel like it could've been better. It's not HORRIBLE but the VA's just don't sound "into it", I guess.
The fact this game needs mods and a hex edit to be 90% playable is extremely stupid. I'm glad it's available, but it should be playable out of the box.
The biggest one: The difficulty and the boss fights. Good lord. I usually don't get frustrated at games. I love Monster Hunter. Soulsbornes can get a little annoying but it's always nice to push through. THIS game... for a "normal" difficulty, it's almost excruciatingly difficult. DO NOT hesitate to play on easy. Infact, I doubt easy difficulty would be much easier. Feel free to say "skill issue", but you cannot tell me fighting the bosses in this game were fun in ANY way. Anyway. Just be warned, despite being a power fantasy, this game WILL kick you down when it wants to. It will quite literally THROW everything it has at you, especially in the later half of the game.
Overall,
I'm glad I finally got to play this game. I remember seeing the game on store shelves when I was a kid, but was never allowed to play it. Finally, thanks to the mod I mentioned, I can play it! And, despite the hair-ripping frustrating bosses, I enjoyed it a lot. HIGHLY recommend to anyone interested!

Dumb fun - but a product of its time. The story is fine, but I felt like it went on for too long and didn't have much to say after the halfway mark.

is one of the rare Gem games that you don't see any more from today's game industry unfortunately. The game let you play as Amnesiac protagonist Anti-Hero Alex Mercer who has unnatural God-Like shapeshifting abilities & hunting down specific targets responsible of the event while causing Choas in your way feeling like an unstoppable force in an Open World infected battle zoned New York City. While the game takes place in New York City, Parkouring at High Speed in this game, to this day is still unmatched & fun as ever, even the movements in Insomniac's Marvel Spider-Man Remastered 2020 just doesn't compare & I'm a fan of that game too. The game takes that M Rated Mature to a pretty Dark & Edgy tone, that's because that was a product of its time which was 2009, Alongside another similar great game which is inFAMOUS (Only on PlayStation)
Graphically, this the 7th Gen Version of the game for the PS3 & XBOX 360, not the Biohazard Bundle 8th Gen Version that's only available for the PS4 & XBOX ONE with some obvious improvements in textures & lighting. But if you look past the 7th Gen graphics, does it really matter? As long as the game is set to do, which is having an absolute fun time with your God-Like powers.
was made by Radical Entertainment, the same developers that also did the Hit 2005 game The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction & other Legendary Games like Scarface: The World is Yours & The Simpsons: Hit & Run. Much respect for them for simply wanting to make fun Open World games. Unfortunately, same could not be said by their parent company Activision-Blizzard who pretty much laid off Radical Entertainment's staff for "Not doing a good enough job" basically back in 2012.
Honestly since Microsoft now pretty much owns Activision-Blizzard which still holds the rights to the IP, it might as well be a good time & give the IP to a new passionate game developer to make a very good Quality Modern game, either it be a Sequel/Reboot/Remake which ever, that would be a dream come true especially on powerful current gen consoles to take advantage of. Not only that but for new generations of players to experience as a whole like I did, with the same love & care Motive did with the Dead Space Remake game or what Insomniac Games did for the Marvel Spider-Man games.
For me personally I give a solid 8 out of 10.
Just for creating so many pure fun memories. Played the Hell out of this game back in the day on 7th Gen & 8th Gen consoles, now on PC because I have a Steam Deck OLED.