The game begins on the eighteenth day of the city’s infection. Alex Mercer has a fully upgraded set of powers, letting you get a taste of the things to come before the narrative flashes back to the beginning of the infection. Even though Alex only has a few powers available after this, the game is very generous with upgrades, both in quality and quantity. The full list of Alex’s powers is massive, with so many combo moves and abilities that you will be hard-pressed to remember them all in the thick of battle. However, the game lets you upgrade as you wish by spending “evolution points” on whatever powers you would like, provided you have enough EP to do so. Doing just about anything will net you points to spend, so you will rarely find yourself on the poor end of the gene pool. Destroying infected water towers is a particularly good way to quickly earn large amounts of EP.

Arguably, the thing that Prototype does the best is freedom of movement. From the beginning, Alex can easily run up the sides of buildings, run at high speeds, jump long distances, and fall from great heights without penalty. It isn’t very long before the Glide and Air Dash powers are unlocked, allowing Alex to soar great distances between rooftops. Once all of Alex’s movement abilities are unlocked, traveling from one side of Manhattan to the other is a joy. It is so much fun that hijacking helicopters or tanks just to get around becomes almost pointless, despite the fact that helicopters are technically the fastest way to get around. However, hijacking vehicles for extra firepower is another story.

As the infection spreads through the city, the military is working to suppress it. This back and forth struggle is represented by different zones that pop up around Manhattan. Red zones are overrun with the virus, often housing an infected building called a hive at the center of the zone. Military bases are found in the center of blue zones throughout the city. Despite the large number of powers available to Alex, he will need a lot more firepower if he wants to take down a military base or an infected hive. This is where hijacking tanks and helicopters comes in handy.

So how does a super-powered amnesiac learn to fly a helicopter? The answer is Alex’s absorption ability. The virus running through Alex’s system gives him the ability to rewrite his DNA to the point that he can “absorb” anyone he runs into and take on their form, sort of like a deadly human copy machine. Alex gains the memories and skills of everyone he absorbs, allowing him to pilot helicopters and handle various military weapons. This ability also ties into Prototype’s Web of Intrigue feature. While the game has several hidden orbs to find (in the same vein as Crackdown), the Web of Intrigue is a much more compelling collection-based activity. Basically, there are several different people scattered about Manhattan with knowledge of the outbreak. Each time Alex absorbs one of these people, he unlocks another piece of the puzzle about what is really going on. Finding these people is completely optional, but not doing so means you will miss out on a lot of the game’s narrative. The main storyline is very well done and completely understandable on its own, but the Web of Intrigue provides a lot more plot details utilizing an interesting piecemeal presentation. It gives the feeling that you are piecing things together just like the main character.

At first, Prototype doesn’t seem all that impressive visually. However, whatever it lacks in textures and polygons, it makes up for in numbers. At any one time, you can find yourself in a fight with several helicopters, a few tanks, squads of soldiers, and hordes of the infected all at once. Prototype is able to throw a ton of enemies your way and fill the screen with mayhem with very few hiccups to be found. When you are fending off several infected hunters while running up a wall to elbow drop a tank or kick a helicopter out of the sky, you won’t be thinking about anything as mundane as a blurry texture.

Another thing I should mention is that Prototype is out to paint the town….in red. Blood and severed body parts flow freely when Alex Mercer is around. There is nothing to stop you from carving crowds of people into bloody chunks, whether they are enemies or not. If innocent civilians get in the way, Alex won’t think twice about chopping them in half to get to his intended target. Prototype is tailor made for those who prefer games that revel in causing epic amounts of gory mayhem without any apologies.

Prototype is far from a perfect game. There are only a few different character models for the military, making large groups look like clones. Enemy AI seems to be unimpressed when somebody drops into the middle of the street from several stories up or runs along a wall, yet they freak out when you pick up a random person on the street by the collar. Computer-controlled helicopters will sometimes run into the side of a building inexplicably. Absorbing a base commander in full view of all the soldiers will raise the alarms, but coming back a minute later wearing that same commander’s form as a disguise doesn’t raise any suspicions. The difficulty of certain missions suddenly jumps up to a much harder level than those immediately previous to them. There are a ton of little nitpicks like this that I could bring up, but none of these things got in the way of having fun for me.

Despite all of its flaws, Prototype still manages to create a large sandbox that is a lot of fun to play in. Tossing cars about, slicing tanks apart with a giant blade for an arm, and unleashing a barrage of tentacles on your enemies never gets old. Prototype is a perfect example of a game that is more than the sum of its parts.