[Prototype] Critique | Lost But Not Forgotten

I just noticed that Mercer's sword arm are shaped as scalpel while Heller's are shaped as a combat knife this is brilliant

Disagree on the movement being the same in 2. You can't hold the jump button to perform super jumps. Adding a timing element to the traversal to gain the maximum height, distance and momentum. You're not able to slide down buildings and perform back jumps, the backflip is removed, James has less "flashly" animations compared to Alex. You can't cancel your climbing or dropping when on a building. Lastly, the air dash forces you into a glide, this makes it harder to land and move accurately in the air, and doesn't allow the player to use dashes to gain vertical height as well as the first game.

I get the vibe that Prototype 1 was originally planned to include a lot more dialogue & animated cutscenes (especially for the Web of Intrigue nodes), but the devs ended up having to scrap or condense most of them due to time/budget constraints.

Honestly, concerning Prototype 2's characterization of Mercer, I've always felt that he was conflicted with his entire plan. Towards the end of the first game he knows that he was never human to begin with, only a weapon who grew a consciousness; so I think he feels the need to "prove" his own agency by shaping the world in his own image. He knows he has the power to eradicate humanity, yet he almost wants to be stopped given the extreme lack of effort on his part. He even release the virus in exact same location that the first outbreak appeared. Why else wouldn't he just leave the city and start another outbreak elsewhere? A sense of nostalgia? Pettiness? I feel like he never really had any intention to destroy humanity. He didn't even have the stomach to kill Dana, when he knew she was never his sister. Mercer seems to me like he doesn't know what he wants, only that he has to do something, and he's too prideful to admit that. His final line even came off as if he never cared whether he won or lost. It's more likely that the writers didn't fully think through his character, but as a fan of the series, and of Mercer, I do love trying to justify his personality change.

Prototype is one of those games that screams "Made in a short deadline" to me. The game has a lot of cool stuff like great animations and sounds that make you feel absolutely powerful, individually interesting and fun powers and moves that all feel great on their own, shoved into the game with almost no thought into how this would work with the larger game. Like the devs were short on time so they decided to cram as much cool sh1t they could into the game and threw a very basic open world around it. This d explains the rather boring mission structure and a general lack of stuff to do in the open world.

I for one hate that the lore for Alex's turn isnt actually mentioned with in the second game, but in the comic for the second game. How he set out and traveled but only found corruption, (I mean he did go to probably the worst places, like he was looking for it "ehem") before finding an old man and his daughter he felt he fit with. He even discribes that he felt like he loved the daughter, feeling like she loved him back, but ofcorse with Alexs luck the old man was apart of some kinda mafia. He trys to take the daughter away but the daughter shoots him after finding his money, that back fires and Alex turns bad boy outta spite really. But honestly much prefer your idea for how prototype 2 should have gone. It feels more in charicter and actually thought out. One thing from the first game (that i hate was trapped in the web) was human mercer actually liked making the virus more deadly, and bragged about how he made it like 10x so. It was only when he heard about green he decided the virus was bad. It made a really cool twist that the virus openly hated human Alex, that the virus seemed to have a better moral compass then his human counterparts. Sorry I've recently returned to the prototype hyperfixation and just needed to put my 2 cents in 😂 Loved the video!

For the Elizabeth Greene Boss I Prototype 1, if you or anyone else plays again. Use the shield and not the armour, use muscle mass with max throw and grab cars and make sure you're locked onto the weakspots. You can use the whip fist charge attack to do long range attacks. Make sure you're high up to let gravity pull you down during the attacks to dodge her attacks passively. In the 2nd and 3rd phase of the Boss just use the tanks, they are absolutely broken on the Boss and took only 10 minutes to beat when I played it recently, compared to an hour when I last played in 2018. Hope this help anyone

I find it ironic in retrospect that - for all the folks who call Prototype an RE knockoff - RE Village recently did essentially the same thing as Prototype with the character of Ethan Winters and the Mold. If you’ve played that game to the end, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Funny how things work out sometimes.

I think the best way to handle Alex's behavior in Prototype 2 is to completely make him unaware of his actions originally. If you make Alex not realize that he's been leaving behind virus contaminations of every place he has been, only for him to realize what happened after the second outbreak occurs and him just doing what anyone would rightfully do in that situation and panic? You could have this brilliant scene of him playing up how in control he is only for at the end of the game. "You want to hear the funny thing about all of this? It was all an accident. It was only when I became the Host of a Hive-Mind that I realized what had occurred. It's truly a bitch, you go to sleep and the next day, you hear millions of voices screaming at you for what you did to them. Hundreds of thousands crying out for help, but you realize you are just what the government thought you were. A monster, something out of control that harms and kills innocent people. By the time I realize what happened, I had no idea what happened, I just started doing whatever made sense. It's not like I could say "I'm sorry I turned an entire island into a den of mutated people and accidentally evolved others into being like me" without being hit with a nuke anyways. So I just did what anyone would do in my situation and just made it up to make it look like I started with a plan. James, if you look at me, do you see the face of this egomaniacal maniac who planned on infecting the world from the start, or do you see the face of someone who was given the worst case scenario and realized that even with their best excuse, they were going to be the villain, so I played into it. Give the people someone to hate, even after I saved the city originally. I'm sorry Heller, but it can't be fixed." Making him not realize he has contaminated the entire city and going off the deep end because he's too deep into it now, he might as well go full villain? It sounds like something that a scared, confused, and guilty person would do. Him turning into a villain would be him hearing the hivemind he accidentally created and feeling both the guilt and regret of accidentally starting a new plague whilst also being plausible that he'd hear all these voices and start trying to figure out what to do and in a moment of sheer desperation and panic, he just goes "I can't fix this, I need a plan, I need to do something" before realizing he was connected to a hivemind and without him issuing orders, they'd be feral. So he starts off trying to fix it, recruiting Evolved to help him out, but each person is corrupted by the concept of the Blacklight Virus having Evolved them, each telling Mercer a different tale to get him to slowly become a sociopath who wants to take over the world from an outside perspective. Cliche, I know, but looking back at the game, wouldn't it be a massive shock that Alex Mercer wasn't actually trying to be an evil asshole but instead was just really scared by his own powers and what he accidentally became?

11:22 okay guys? This is officially the best variation of this meme

I recall Prototype had its own equivalent of the 'bio-bomb' called the 'patsy' (its a skill that you have to buy so I don't blame you for not mentioning it) Basically you point fingers at a soldier and everyone sets their focus on that soldier until they open fire. It makes a pretty good opening for stealth consuming. Though I do find it funny that you can use this ability repeatedly and no one ever suspects you for false accusations. Still prefer bio-bomb any day

My hypothesis is that Prototype 2 did a great job at being a balanced game, because it tried to make everything from the 1st game more concise through it's refinement. as a result (at least for me) while it did have less options than the 1st game, it ultimately made me feel far more empowered as a godlike killing machine because by learning it's mechanics, I became unstoppable. Rather than in prototype 1, I didn't ever truly feel like I was the center of attention because of things like high damage explosions, enemies everywhere, and the requirement of having to keep track of every mechanic while dealing with somewhat clunky controls. I still love prototype 1, though, and I do understand the multitude of things it does better than 2, but I never want to forget what 2 does better than 1.

There can be a lore justification to the fact that Heller is more of a bulky kinda guy, like a Heavyweight fighter while Alex is like a Featherweight fighter... That's why Alex is much more agile and has more fluid movement than Heller. Even the Armoured Heller skin in Prototype 2 is bulkier than Armoured Alex skin...

Yeah, this video is so in depth. Probably gonna come to this channel when im looking for an analysis vid, you've earned a sub.

I wish they would make another game like this. They were just fun. Sure it was edgy and it was a total teenage boys power fantasy but it also was just excellent gameplay and endless fun with the mobility the characters (Heller/Mercer) had.

The way Mercer pronounced Koenig is how a german would pronounce it (König).

it's always interesting seeing reviews of the first game and seeing what powers people consider useful vs useless, because it's almost always different. I say almost because the one constant is the blade arm being really good.

already told you how much I appreciate the production quality in this video but I still feel compelled to drop a comment for that extra engagement

Wow, it’s my first vid from you and it was great. This is literally like top tier games’ analysis. I’m so surprised you don’t have more subscribers. Great work keep it up!