Alex Mercer (Barry Pepper) is having a terrible, no good, mixed up, very bad day. He wakes up in the morgue with a headache and no memory of who he is or how he got there. He discovers he's been infected with that horrific virus, dropped in the middle of Penn Station in New York, that's spreading across the city. He discovers not only does he have horrible super powers thanks to said virus, but those same powers enable him to absorb his fellow humans and experience their memories. The United States Marine Corps has been tasked with hunting him down and capturing him, along with the mysterious private military force Blackwatch. On top of all that, the gray hoodie he insists on wearing makes him look REALLY emo. That's the start (after the obligatory "here's the awesome powers you acquire if you progress" flash forward) of Prototype, acquired by Activison in the Vivendi Universal buyout.

You know something? If I lived in an open world game created by Radical Entertainment, I'd live in a hut in the middle of nowhwere, because shit is DANGEROUS. First it was a crazy ass Springfield in Simpsons Hit and Run. Then the Hulk tore up the city in The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. Tony Montana was alive and flooding early 80s Miami with rivers of cocaine in Scarface: The World is Yours. Now, Alex Mercer and the virus have taken over Manhattan and made millions into crazed 28 Days Later zombies in their latest game.

Scratch that, even a hut would not be safe, because some magical point or achievement granting orb would likely be situated next to my hut, and I'd eventually probably get stepped on or shot in the crossfire.

Or eaten, as in the case of Prototype. The game posits an interesting way of telling its story. 70% of the cinema narrative is told by Mercer to an unnamed individual whose voice is disguised, 18 days into the infection chaos that has gripped the city. To discover the whys and wherefores of the 40 years that led up to this, and Alex Mercer's role in it, you must piece together the Web of Intrigue. Among the denizens of the city there are "targets of interest" which, if you capture them and absorb their bodies with their powers, will give you tantalizing hints of the origins of this madness and men who created it.

That's not the only power Alex Mercer has in Prototype. Ohhhh, no. Radical has structured this open world game like some sort of bizarro Spider-Man Web of Shadows- the virus grants Alex powers such as giant wolverine like claws, a battering ram fist, expanded musclemass, and the whipfist, a giant tendril that fires out and whacks off any bad guy on your trail, not to mention making it easy to latch onto and airjack a helicopter.

Eating people also has a nice side benefit- by absorbing them you can assume their form and disguise yourself to get into sensitive areas. Infiltration and stealth become an integral part of the game. You can learn added skills and absorb knowledge on how to use guns and bazookas- the game lets you pick up any weapon the Marines or Blackwatch drop, even though your powers are usually more effective.

In addition, transportation in the game is a blast. Holding down the right trigger, Alex can dash up walls parkour style and ascend to the rooftops, dashing across them not unlike the many Treyarch games of yore. Yes, Radical Entertainment taking the majority of its cues from another developer? I'm shocked, I am SHOCKED. I referred to airjacking helicopters earlier, and you can also hijack tanks to too around the area and blow up as much shit as you possibly can. Ooooh, can this be ever so fun. There's so much joy to be had in simply tooling across the city looking for a web of intrigue target or a collectible orb (this one's got 250).

However, as fun as it can be, and with the amount of powers you have, it don't mean nothin' if you don't have an actual game to put in your sandbox, and that's where Radical falters. There are 31 missions in the game, but while there's a good amount of missions that let you utitlize the powers Alex has to plan our your own way of attacking them, there are just as many that are exercises in frustration that force you on rails or to use a certain kind of power a certain kind of way.

Combat starts out as thrilling but eventually becomes an exercise in monotony. There's only a few types of villain in the game, and more often than not the game simply cheats with numbers to hold you back. The AI isn't thinking its way around you, it's simply locking onto your coordinates and hammering you with as many bad guys as possible. It gets most annoying when you start encountering the Hunters early in the game. Chances are you'll find yourself getting your ass handed to you by these things, really quickly, because they seem to have a block move... and you don't. The further you progress in the story, particularly in the final third, the more the game simply cheats. There was a boss battle in the middle of Times Square which took me FOREVER to make a dent into- and one of the big reasons was that no matter where I was, or what I was doing, the game would send two hunters to my coordinates instantaneously. I'd have to contend with them whittling down my health bar while avoiding the attacks of the ginormous boss right in front of me. This isn't challenge. This is CHEATING. The final boss fight is even worse, since there's only one real way to do any damage on the guy you're fighting and it's a tedious bit of trial and error catching that.

Also crippling the combat is the fact that most of the powers outside of the whipfist aren't quite as effective. Yup, Ben Croshaw was on the money.Since so much of the game is cheap-ass close quarters fighting with monsters or tanks, the whipfist is the one thing that lets you strike enemies from a distance and actually do some damage. Or hit multiple groups of enemies. Or let you grab a helicopter or human target with ease. It creates a radius of destruction around you that makes the other powers superfluous, no matter how cool they look. Why go one on one when you can just... whip it out? You'll also find yourself using the vehicles as much as possible.

Most of the side missions are the standard "use this weapon/power" challenges and foot races, and web of intrigue target challenges that are at times frustratingly laid out, but are great fun nonetheless.

Then there's the story. Now again, I know that story shouldn't count for too much in a video game, but here they make it a pretty integral part of the gameplay. Alex's quest is about finding out the why and how he got into that morgue as well as survival and fending off the military and Blackwatch. The more targets you devour for the web of intrigue, the closer you get to the truth- only the truth is rather... dull. It's the standard boilerplate of Cold War paranoia leading to horrific experiments on American citizens leading up to now, when even after a tremendous loss of life they still think they can control it. We've seen this before in a million movies, TV shows, and games, and there's little in this story that's new and surprising. The only really unexpected twist is the idea that the chief scientist on the project, Raymond McMullen (Paul Guilifoyle) may be more morally upright than it initially seems, and actually horrified at what he has done. But this idea is abandoned eventually. Blackwatch and their sinister corporate sponsor, Gentek, and the monsters they created, aren't too interesting. The game also makes the same points about the Patriot act and national security that even if you personally agree with them, as I do, seem pretty stale for 2009. The game also tries to make points about the Marines being bad, but Blackwatch being worse, that don't really amount to much since the game itself considers any member of the military fair game.

Another thing that's annoying is that even if you catalog all the web of intrigue targets, the game lets you replay the memories but it doesn't allow you a full playback option to watch it in order, which is strange because it makes a point of grouping them all in different sections depending on who you've absorbed. The story isn't just overly familiar, it's disjointed, and I can't help but wonder if the disjointed way of telling it was a way to cover up the fact that it's overly familiar.

As for the main narrative, Alex himself is fun to play, but as a protagonist strikes one note of wounded antihero and doesn't really deviate. Pepper (Battlefield Earth, *61) does a bang-up job bringing passion to his voiceover work, but as an actor I've always found him to be more interesting when he's not speaking, and just letting his facial expressions do the work. Because he can get REALLY over the top. It's most amusing when he tearfully cries at a general he's going to hunt down and absorb, "DAMN YOU FOR MAKING ME DO THIS!!!" despite the fact that he's killed, maybe, oh, a hundred thousand people at this point in the game? Granted, there's a plausible reason for Alex's callousness but it doesn't quite work.

There are running subplots about Alex's sister and a doctor working on a cure for the virus that remain frustratingly underdeveloped, especially when both characters just drop out of the story. The game tries for a final act "ah ha!" plot twist, but it just had me scratching my head, wondering if Blackwatch/Gentek security was REALLY that dumb. Or perhaps there was a piece of the story I was simply missing.

There is a way to see the entire story, from the first experiments in 1969 to Alex's rampage in NYC, in order, and that's to read the Prototype comic book from WildStorm, written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray (The Last Resort, Terra, Heroes For Hire), and drawn by Darick Robertson (The Boys, Wolverine) and Matt Jacobs (Brother Bedlam). Of course, Activision hasn't bothered to let anyone know about that. There are in-game ads for DC and WildStorm, but the thing's been running since April and I've seen zero coverage of it anywhere on the gaming sites. Granted, this is nothing new- how many of you know about the Resistance and Starcraft comics WildStorm publishes?- but you know, it might have been nice.

Graphics wise, the game looks pretty much all right. Alex's powers are appropriately gross yet cool looking. The cityscape is fine except for some hazy draw-in distance and the same death red/pink look for infected areas of the city. Animations are good; there's something oddly funny about the way people run from Alex in terror that planted a permanent smirk on my face while playing. The cinema screens are well directed and great a genuine sense of survival horror style dread.

Despite all the negative points I've laid out about the game, then, which such a high score? Because every time the game would throw something at me I dind't like, I would find something to throw back, be it a bus (I forgot-Alex is super-strong), a challenge, or a mission that's just well laid out and suspenseful. The game is a thrill to play, even as you're on the verge of breaking your controller in frustration. I suppose I'm being hard on the game because there are so many elements that are awesome, yet they don't cohere into the awesome experience that it so desperately wants to be.

Or maybe Gabriel was right- Prototype lets me karate kick a helicopter. Do I really need more?