Protoype is an alright game to play but I don't think it is a must buy.
Unlike Red Faction the story is very interesting. You play as Alex Mercer a man who woke up in a morgue who has lost his memories. He also somehow has these powers. Now he is on the hunt to find who did this to him and make him pay. And then somehow there are infected creatures everywhere. The story has a lot of twist in turns and very interesting characters which it makes playing through it quite fun. The story is also told through by one of Alex's powers consuming which he gains the memories of the person that he consumes. Which are like a slide show described by the person you consume.
Consuming people for memories is one of its uses. You can consume people for health or for their skill they have in artillery and vehicles or use their body as a disguise. Alex's also has some offensive powers like a sword, claws and a whipfist. Most of these powers can be upgraded using EP points that you get from defeating enemies, completing main and side missions. You can upgrade the claws so that spikes come up from the ground as an example. You can also get devastators that can kill people in a wide radius. Most of these powers are fun but you usually just using one of the moves of one powers all of the time and really not much else there isn't that much variety.
The one thing that annoyed me throughout the whole game, which is strange because it never annoyed me before in a game, is the graphics. The animations look awful the buildings look awful, the infected look awful. To me it is a very ugly game. Nothing in that game impressed me because looked horrible. This game though is a gore fest. When you play this game you are bound to see a lot of blood splattered everywhere. Although the landscape isn't really interesting it is really fun to travel around New York. Like I said in my impressions first thing to do is get the glide upgrade. It is the best way to travel. The sound effects feel right though. They sound like you slicing up a guy in half, you feel like you fell from a million metres from the air.
The main campaign took me about 12 hours to complete. You could also play the campaign again on the same difficulty with all your powers from the beginning or play it from the beginning with none of your powers in the hard difficulty. You can also play a lot of side missions. These will involve foot races which will give you a break from the gore of the game. There are kill missions for people who can't get enough of it. These will give you bonus EP points and they will give you a bronze, silver, gold, medal. There are also platinum events if you beat all side missions in gold. I didn't get to a platinum event but I hear it's really hard. Plus there are also a lot of collectibles and fun achievements to keep you entertained.
Prototype is a good game not a great game. The graphics may be ugly but you can look the other way with it. It has a deep interesting story fun game play and lots of stuff to do that I think is still worthwhile experience.
+ Good story
+ Fun gameplay
+ Lots of stuff to do
- very very ugly
- not much variety in combat