Prototype's incredibly fun gameplay helps overcome it's shortcomings
In Prototype you play as Alex Mercer. Alex Mercer wakes up in a hospital, and discovers he has in-human abilities. But he doesn't know who, or what he is. You quickly discover the military is taking over the city, and some kind of virus outbreak is infecting the city with zombie creatures and monsters roaming around. After a few interesting scenes, Alex goes to try and find out what he is, and who did this to him.
Although the story isn't the main focus of Prototype, it's pretty good. The game tells a dark tale that fits Prototype nicely. The main missions aren't the only way to get the story. As Alex Mercer you have many abilities, one of your first powers you get is the power to consume someone. When you consume someone, you get health. But there are special people all around the city you can consume. When you consume one of these people, you gain their memories. These memories add more insight on the story, and really make things more interesting.
The number of special abilities Alex Mercer has is impressive. As Alex Mercer you can easily run up walls, and glide across rooftops. Alex has the ability to morph, he uses this to change his hands into claws, turn his arms into whips, and when you consume someone, and you can disguise yourself as them. These are only a few of the abilities you will be able to do in your play through of Prototype. But Alex uses more than just his powers to fight off his enemies. Not too far in the game you gain the ability to hijack tanks. A bit further in the game you gain the ability to fly helicopters. You can even pick up the guns that are dropped by the military.
Each power you get can be upgraded from experience you gain through killing enemies. There are even a greater number of upgrades than there are of the abilities themselves. For example, the whip arm is upgraded for a longer whip attack, which can be used to hijack helicopters in mid-air. But this great verity in attacks leads to one of the game's problems. Controlling Alex Mercer at the beginning of the game is pretty simple, but the more moves you learn, the harder it is to control him. Which is a pretty significant problem considering that Prototype is no easy game. The game's difficulty curve isn't very good at all.
Prototype doesn't force you to use every ability you earn, but a lot of these powers are almost required to get past a lot of the games missions. An example of this is during one mission where it's pretty much required to high-jack helicopters in mid-air, but the game never directly tells you how to. The game also has a lock-on aiming system, which can be helpful, but it's also really problematic. As I said before, Prototype is a difficult game, you go down pretty easily. Many missions have you fighting a lot of enemies at once. But you might need to kill one particular enemy to continue the mission, so you'll probably end up using the lock-on feature. But the game usually ends up locking on random enemies, or an object for that matter. This makes the game even more difficult, and you'll probably end up starting objectives over a lot, especially on the higher difficulties.
Like I said before, Prototype is an open world game, it takes place in Manhattan. But Prototype's Manhattan doesn't look very impressive. Since moving around is so much fun, you'll probably end up exploring much of the city, but except for a couple of different locations, the city looks really boring. So this might end your exploration a bit early, but moving around the city is still a blast.
The main missions in Prototype are pretty fun. Each mission gives you plenty of ways to use your powers. You'll end up having to use your powers pretty creatively. But there are also a lot of side missions. These side missions have you doing things like guiding from one building to another, or kill every enemy disguised as part of the military, and you can only use guns. These aren't as varied as the main missions, and they feel more like a distraction from the main story line then something you'll end up spending a lot of time with.
Prototype is a really good game. The combat is probably some of the most satisfying combat ever seen a game. Not every addition feels welcome, and the game might be a little to difficult, but most of this probably won't even concern you. The story is so mysterious, and the game is so much fun you'll probably end up playing this game for hours. If you're a fan of over-the-top action, Prototype is game you should consider playing.