Geek Review: Teen Angst

"Prototype" is the goth kid in the back of English Lit class, who only becomes animated when its time to read "Hamlet" -- a play notable for (spoiler!) killing every single main character at the end.

It rides a wave of teen angst and wish-fullfilling empowerment. It puts us in the middle of a vast city, gives us great super powers and says, "Everyone is out to get you. So, let's kill them."

The main character is Alex Mercer, a pale man who always wears the hood up on his sweater. He wakes up on an autopsy table about to be dissected by GENTEK scientists. Suddenly, his body changes! His hands turn into bladed weapons! He slaughters everyone in the room and stumbles out into a busy Manhattan street.

But who is Alex Mercer? Why does he have these powers? And why was he about to get sliced and diced by men in HAZMAT suits? We don't know, but the way to find out is: Kill everyone involved. Everyone involved with the conspiracy!

We think that sounds a little melodramatic. And probably it is. The crux of the game is to murder each member of the far-reaching conspiracy that involves GENTEK (the evil corporation), the United States military (the evil government) and even people on the street (the evil peers). Also, there's a girlfriend that betrays Alex's trust (the evil b@#$!) and disappears soon after.

Teenagers can relate. We were all teenagers once. We felt the crushing weight of society, like a giant factory that stamps out cogs to fuel its inner machinery.

Mercer is an outsider. A stranger. The only one of his kind. A strange virus breaks out, soon after his escape, and starts turning people into the Infected: Mindless zombies controlled by a single entity which exists only to absorb, to grow, to proliferate indefinitely.

War breaks out between the Infected and the military, with us caught in the middle. Do we side with either group? Or do we continue to rebel against this conformity and unleash our rage on the world and the people who made us this way?

Man, this is getting deep! And we haven't even talked about the gameplay yet!

"Prototype" is all about empowerment. As we slaughter soldiers in the street and "consume" members of the conspiracy! we gain experience points. These points can be used to buy better skills, which make us run faster, punch harder, kill more effectively. It's a game that always wants the player to feel good, so it constantly doles out power-ups to overcompensate us.

It sounds morbid, but it's fair to say that we got some enjoyment out of this. Sometimes, we'd grab an unsuspecting bystander, sprint up the side of a skyscraper and hurl them off the roof. That was kind of funny, the first dozen times. Really, if Superman ever had angst, this is the kind of stuff he'd pull.

After a while, though, it becomes kind of a drain. Speaking of Superman, we like to call this "Superman Syndrome." It's the idea that Superman, as a superhero, is incredibly boring. No one can beat him. He never loses. We recall him dying once, but then he came back, and we were not surprised.

The counter-argument is that, well, Batman is a superhero too -- though he doesn't have super powers -- and he never loses either. Aha! But Batman sometimes gets beat up! He's just a guy in a funny costume using his ninja skills. Surely, someday, he will be defeated, or at the very least, get kicked in the head.

Alex Mercer is like Superman. He fights tanks and helicopters and monsters and never breaks a sweat. The player doesn't either, because the game is pretty easy.

It's also pretty repetitive. A key element of good game design is escalation. By constantly increasing the stakes, the player must develop winning strategies to combat new and evolving threats. In "Prototype," the threats never change. They just increase in number. So, sometimes, we fight 20 tanks at once and a helicopter. The next time, well, we do the same thing, and it's not so interesting.

To close, "Prototype" is all the fun of being 16 years old and jump-kicking a helicopter.

10,000 times.

(Oct. 9, 2009)