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Shakesbeard

[PROTOTYPE] In Stores Today!

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Maybe I should just admit I was being unreasonable ;(

You opinion is bad and you should feel bad!

Just kidding. No worries ol' bean, I've been playing the game a lot and the ultraviolence might be making me a bit confrontational, but all the infestation purification through use of bodily transformation is no justification for my aggravation and damnation of your estimation without hesitation.

god i need sleep...

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I recently finished this and I must say it became quite boring after the novelty of ripping people apart wore out. I had a blast for the three or so days I played it though. One thing I really enjoyed was the interactions between the military and the mutants. Sometimes you can see tanks rolling about the streets and killing mutants and civilians with an extreme disregard for innocent people... I'll see if I have any screenshots to show you what I'm talking about. Oh, and the game is extremely violent with great sound for the gore.

I'd suggest you rent the game or just play the demo (if there is one).

Edit: The guy in the GB QL was pretty awful, it's possible to kill those choppers in quite a few attacks.

Edited by Dion.

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Question for people who have actually played both Prototype and inFamous: which did you prefer and why? It's a pretty common debate these days and I'm curious to see what fellow Thumbs come up with.

I enjoyed Prototype more.

  • Most games give you comic-book style superpowers, then immediately find a way to alter the gameplay so you still feel like a weakling. Prototype understands why their concept is so appealing.
  • I find Prototype's missions more inviting. If I'm not a perfectionist, I can just be happy getting the bronze in some missions. Plus, they are open to more tactical approaches sometimes. I find the side missions in inFamous almost always trial-and-error in a very binary sense, which make them frustrating. For example, the stealth missions, where I can't tell you how many times moving a literal inch on the screen changes my status from almost failing to the mission because I was apparently too far away from the person I was following to instantly failing because I was too close.
  • While InFamous clearly is the better looking game, it also is yet another sandbox game that puts out a barely playable framerate the second my character does anything. As stale and low-detail the world of Prototype is, there's something to be said for the fact that I can run up the side of a wall, drop kick a helicopter, crash twenty stories to the ground and then unleash tentacles that kill everything left alive on the screen and never see the framerate hitch or screen tear. Animations are nice too.
  • Both stories are generic and forgettable, but Prototype delivers it very quickly and in a neat and completely optional "collectable" way, while Infamous throws it in your face constantly, clearly unaware of how uninteresting it is.
  • While I agree that the difficulty spike in Prototype towards the end is really cheap, I feel like Infamous is cheap right out of the get go. For instance, being on a rooftop and having your health rapidly depleted by an enemy getting a perfect shot at your head every time, even though he's so far away that your reticule doesn't even recognize him as a viable target.
  • This is less Infamous's fault, but I just can't for the life of me get used to the PS3 controller. The loosy-goosy thumbsticks are just flat out terrible. That said, I don't understand why PS3-exclusive developers don't acknowledge this. While I still prefer a 360 pad or a mouse, I can handle multi-platform shooters just fine on the PS3, but it seems like the PS3 exclusive titles demand precision from a controller just not willing to provide it.
  • Also, I had the same problem with Killzone 2 that I have in this one. I understand and appreciate the desire to minimize the HUD as much as possible. But for the love of Christ, when you're trying to alert me that I'm about to die and need to find safe haven immediately, nothing helps me less in that situation - where I need as much awareness of my surrounding as possible - then making the screen go black and muffling the audio. Jesus.

If I buy it will the lawsuit against double fine be dropped? No? Pesonal boycott continues.

I'm sorry but I hear this a lot and to me it just comes off as ridiculous.

  • The boycott isn't going to make anywhere near a noticeable dent, and therefore Activision isn't going to know or care about anyone boycotting them.
  • Even if it did hurt their bottom line, there's no way to attach it to such a broad action. If the only original IP Activision has released in almost two years undersells, is that going to make them drop their lawsuit, or think they need to stop making greedy business decisions? Quite the opposite. So even if boycotting them was successful, it would still actually be a horrible failure.

Instead of boycotting, just be a reasonable customer, and the result will be pretty much the same. I don't need to boycott Activision. By being a company more interested in making generic titles and boring franchise retreads, I've naturally become disinterested in the majority of their titles anyways. All a full out boycott will do is cut yourself off of potentially fun games, will punish developers who make quality ones, and will inform the publisher that they're right to stop making them because the people who care about quality games aren't buying them anyways.

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[*]The boycott isn't going to make anywhere near a noticeable dent, and therefore Activision isn't going to know or care about anyone boycotting them.

[*]Even if it did hurt their bottom line, there's no way to attach it to such a broad action. If the only original IP Activision has released in almost two years undersells, is that going to make them drop their lawsuit, or think they need to stop making greedy business decisions? Quite the opposite. So even if boycotting them was successful, it would still actually be a horrible failure.

Instead of boycotting, just be a reasonable customer, and the result will be pretty much the same. I don't need to boycott Activision. By being a company more interested in making generic titles and boring franchise retreads, I've naturally become disinterested in the majority of their titles anyways. All a full out boycott will do is cut yourself off of potentially fun games, will punish developers who make quality ones, and will inform the publisher that they're right to stop making them because the people who care about quality games aren't buying them anyways.

It's more that I don't want a penny of my money going towards Activision suing one of the developers that I respect the most, it isn't a permanent boycott, just until they stop being a bunch of dicks to the smaller company, by using bully tactics. I want to stress that Activision used to be one of my favourite publishers. Releasing genuinely good games fairly often, however have recently lost my respect. This being the straw that pissed me off the most. I don't mind yearly updates, I don't mind shit Movie games, I do however hate the common (stereotypical?) American tactic of being unhappy with something that is entirely your fault... then asking yourself what to do, then you sue; it is disgusting.

This is for the same reason I went to a university with a strong student union, which has a large influence in the actual university, so my money doesn't go into arms dealings, etc; which some universities support and contribute to.

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Fair enough. I still don't agree with it, but at least you have a clear reasoning behind it. I unfairly judged you as one of the kneejerk angry man that seem to make up the majority of internet forums. Plus, I'll admit this is a little less trivial then usual. If they win, it would set a horrible precedent involving developer's rights. Not to mention that if Brutal Legend is delayed yet again and hung up in legal courts, the game will eventually look too dated and hype for it would dissipate, resulting in Tim Shafer's best chance of actually having a sales success being squandered, which would make me cry a thousand tears.

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While InFamous clearly is the better looking game, it also is yet another sandbox game that puts out a barely playable framerate the second my character does anything.

Oh come on. The framerate might not be great, but "barely playable"? That's completely absurd. Pretty much the only time I noticed that the framerate wasn't usually so hot was when it suddenly picked up if I turned the camera so that all it could see was sky or water (like a less extreme version of what happened in Shadow of the Colossus). I'll admit that I'm a lot less concerned about constant 60 fps or whatever, and my eyes are probably shit, but in no way was it bad enough to influence gameplay. I had far more trouble with Cole getting stuck for several seconds trying to line himself up to heal or leech a downed person while getting shot at, or having that thing where on landing on a surface (particular surfaces seemed prone to this), instead of walking forwards he kind of hops diagonally backwards, or on a couple of occasions falling through the world.

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I was really excited about Prototype, it looked like a really cool Hulk: Ultimate Destruction spin. Then I played Red Faction and my desire to play another open world game waned.

I mean, seriously, three games in the space of 4 weeks all with open world arenas? Only one of them is going to get my money. As a reaction to the FPS comment, yes, this would happen if three closely themed FPSs came out at the same time (timeshift got booted to the curb in favour of Bioshock)

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I was really excited about Prototype, it looked like a really cool Hulk: Ultimate Destruction spin. Then I played Red Faction and my desire to play another open world game waned.

I mean, seriously, three games in the space of 4 weeks all with open world arenas? Only one of them is going to get my money. As a reaction to the FPS comment, yes, this would happen if three closely themed FPSs came out at the same time (timeshift got booted to the curb in favour of Bioshock)

That's fair, but I totally disagree. I mean, I don't own a PS3 so the choice was between Red Faction and Prototype and I ended up getting them both. Looking at them as only open-world games is pretty silly, Red faction has more of a Gears style camera and control system with a wide variety of weapons, engaging multiplayer and a really cool destruction mechanic.

Prototype has more of a Prince of Persia/Spider-man third person camera, a huge focus on crazy transformation powers and ease of movement, and the gameplay is handled completely differently.

Those are just surface differences (camera, controls, etc.) but the games are so completely different I'm honestly kinda shocked whenever someone complains about open world games being released in the same month or two. A good game is a good game regardless of how they choose to give you missions. Would you buy both games if Prototype was the same as it is now, only linear with a constant stream of missions? Where do you draw the line?

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Oh come on. The framerate might not be great, but "barely playable"? That's completely absurd. Pretty much the only time I noticed that the framerate wasn't usually so hot was when it suddenly picked up if I turned the camera so that all it could see was sky or water (like a less extreme version of what happened in Shadow of the Colossus). I'll admit that I'm a lot less concerned about constant 60 fps or whatever, and my eyes are probably shit, but in no way was it bad enough to influence gameplay. I had far more trouble with Cole getting stuck for several seconds trying to line himself up to heal or leech a downed person while getting shot at, or having that thing where on landing on a surface (particular surfaces seemed prone to this), instead of walking forwards he kind of hops diagonally backwards, or on a couple of occasions falling through the world.

OK, after going crazy with fully upgraded Infamous Megawatt Hammers (with all the little secondary explosions) with that karma burst thing on, things did slow down pretty unpleasantly. Still, in getting that number of explosions on the screen I'd pretty much put myself in a situation in which I would not be moving anyway, and I don't think it was unplayable slow, just unattractively so.

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I just played a little less than one hour of Prototype On my 360 and I found myself surprised that I'm completely underwhelmed.:blink:

The mains problem isn' t the aesthetic(big failure in terms of technical feature and art design) or the dull story, it's that the gameplay fail to offer me any kind of interesting situations or challenges. The Radical team decided to make the controls incredibly accessible - and that's fine by me - but where Spiderman added another layer of challenge by having an environment that stressed the limitation of Spidey, Prototype offers nothing. The consequence is that I'm running full speed on glass buildings but it doesn't come close to play as awesome as the in-game video looked.

Plus, everything feels gamey and artificial - the blue columns for objectives , the ridiculous disguise gameplay, the crowds reaction, the insane number of cabs..:fart:

I've got a little more time this week-end, so I'll give it a go once more, but my hopes are pretty much shattered at the end of this first station.

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I've played maybe 6 hours into prototype over the last few days & it's seriously the most fun i've had in a Video game in ages. As a game, overall it's pretty meh, but the one thing they got right is the insane over the top mayhem, and hot damn they nailed it.

I don't mind flawed or otherwise mediocre games, so long as i feel they do one thing really well, and not screw up the other things so badly that it undercuts my enjoyment of that one thing (i'm looking at you, assassins creed).

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Plus, everything feels gamey and artificial - the blue columns for objectives , the ridiculous disguise gameplay, the crowds reaction, the insane number of cabs..:fart:

You do like video games, right? :P These are all video game mainstays...

I mean, quest markers are rather an obvious requirement, people bitch like crazy when they're not there. If anything, I would say the ones in Prototype are just unimaginitive, as it looks like they just lifted them from GTA3.

The disguise gameplay is rather hilarious, but no more ridiculous than MGS's cardboard box or Thief's "you're in shadow, you don't exist" sort of stealth.

Yeah, they could have tweaked the cab ratio, but so could most other open city games (inFAMOUS, GTA, looking at you). More interestingly, have you ever been to NYC? That cab ratio is damn near accurate. If you're begging for more realism, there it is.

The game absolutely has its issues, but it seems like you're just calling it out for basically being a video game...

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So, I've given the game another short go, like for 8 hours during the week end :shifty:

... which in turn, means that I've obviously enjoyed the game far more during these hours than I did in the first two. Weird how after Oblivion and STALKER, here's another open world game which doesn't seem to know how to properly introduce the player to its universe and gameplay mechanisms.

Anyway, I've enjoyed Prototype for good reasons since, like someone said, Radical has a gift for portraying chaos in a fun and understandable way; which gives Prototype several awesome and truly epic moments. In fact, this is the first game I think I can call Epic. Epic, there. Like a boss fight that seems to be lasting for an hour and a half, and still remains tensed and challenging. Or a high speed foot chase in a city in which infected and non infected get engaged by tanks while you're consuming people on the go. Really impressive.

The thing is that Prototype never manages to raise above this moment to moment awesomeness, which is a shame, considering how stellar a pair of these are ... too bad the game doesn't feel like a sandbox/open world game, more like a linear game set in a huge level. There isn't a lot of room to experiment the craziest moves, since I expect everybody will rely on a handful of moves, despite the fact they might be 30 of them.

Now, I'm not done with the game yet, but for the first time a sequence seems to difficult for me, the one in which

you need to catch the helicopters before they leave the town

and I don't know if there's much I can take for this game; so I might just give up.

Felt good to be wrong though!:yep:

Edited by vimes

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here's another open world game which doesn't seem to know how to properly introduce the player to its universe and gameplay mechanisms.

I'm not sure it's fair to call this an open world game. The setting is basically just there to provide skyscrapers...it's more of a "backdrop" than a "world"...or perhaps a "sandbox" if you prefer. It seems if you call this open world, you'd have to say the same about the latest "Prince of Persia" game. Also, I think since a huge percentage of the games released are non-linear and/or free-roaming in one way or another, the term "open world game" is losing its validity as a clear category. If we start to treat openness as the common mode of gameplay it has become and not something fresh that deserves back-o'-the-box bullet-point status then we can move on to things games have not yet explored.

It's like: After the first couple Mario games...nobody was freaking out, going all "This game is sidescrollin' yo!"

I don't know why this post seems so negative...it isn't meant to be...

My point is just that the open-world thing is so ubiquitous now as to have become just a mode of basic interaction with a game rather than a particularly salient feature. And, so, having openness doesn't necessarily mean that a game the open world factor is important to the general gameplay. Such is the case with Prototype, I think. The main game consists of "follow these arrows and destroy what/who we tell you to"...so the open world element there just provides you with more square-footage when you need to make an escape. Besides...as far as mechanisms...isn't it cool when, if the environment is broad enough to allow it (as it is in most non-linear games) the player gets to learn the game just by farting around?

I think that's better than "PRESS THE 'A' BUTTON TO SWIM...WHATEVER THAT MEANS..."

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It seems if you call this open world, you'd have to say the same about the latest "Prince of Persia" game.

I'm going to go right ahead and say that i think the first and most important thing you need to have to be considered an open world game is an actual open world to explore at your own discretion. PoP, barring its extremely rudimentary hub system, is pretty much on rails with its environment design.

I agree with you, otherwise. Prototype is often very light on making use of the world with it's mission structure.

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I'm going to go right ahead and say that i think the first and most important thing you need to have to be considered an open world game is an actual open world to explore at your own discretion. PoP, barring its extremely rudimentary hub system, is pretty much on rails with its environment design.

Yeah, I guess you're right. I was trying to come up with an unlikely example in order to emphasize my point. I settled on the first game that occurred to me.

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Yeah, Prince of Persia is more like a network of nodes, which plays like a branching linear game, although the branches do rejoin, unlike in an actual tree.

I kind of think of the term "sandbox" as referring to a specific game type (secondary genre, perhaps?) in which varied and unrestricted action is permitted and, indeed, encouraged. There's usually some kind of structure should you choose to follow it, but there's very much a "we're dumping you in this world where you can do whatever the hell you want" kind of vibe. The emphasis is probably not on the story.* "Open world", on the other hand, is, to me, a less specific term that refers simply to the characteristic of having largely non-linear world design. It's also probably relevant how closely the area available to you is tied to your progression in the game.

I'd agree that "open world" is on the way to becoming as widely applicable a descriptor as "3D" or "action" are (not that those are particularly commonly used, since they can be applied to nearly everything). Well, not quite as universal as them, perhaps, but in the same league. However, I don't think that makes it inaccurate; just less of a selling-point, as you suggest. It will still be a differentiator, though, just as futuristic games are distinct from modern day ones, without any suggestion that either is inherently preferable. I don't think the degree to which a game's environment is narratively fleshed out really influences the applicability of the term "open world", at least in my eyes. I've always thought of the word "world" being used in a very general and fairly abstract sense, like "level" or "map" (only bigger). Then again, perhaps I'd change my judgement on actually playing the game.

Either way, perhaps we could do with a way of distinguishing between games that have a rich environment full of unique content and back-story that you can freely explore and investigate, and games that dump you in a large ultimately arbitrary arena and let you blow a load of stuff up. I guess "large arena game" doesn't really have enough of a ring to it, though. How about "open-world RPG game" and "any other open-world game"?

That's probably inaccurate.

* I'm actually not very happy with this definition, largely because of games like Oblivion and Fallout 3. While you could argue that the emphasis is on the story, in the case of the former I pretty much ignored it, and didn't feel like I was playing the game "wrong" or particularly deviating from its intended use (it's wasn't like making up my own objectives in Mario 64 and so on). Yet I wouldn't call it a sandbox game. I suppose it may be because, even if you don't follow the main story, you're probably following some sort of story, be it guild progression or a one-off quest from some villager or whatever.

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I like your points, James. There's definitely a distinction to be made between games that try to create a vast environment for you to explore and those that make a vast but faceless environment for you to destroy.

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Don't wanna be too picky here but Sandbox was at the beginning only designating games who generated levels as in the Kriegspiel (the first strategy game in history 1811 if I remember correctly) where they litteraly played in a wharhammer figurine style in sand boxes that you would shake to generate a random landscape.

Now for the Prince of Persia 2k8 it's like a lot of new games an Odysseus game. Ulysses goes from island to island but the order in which he visits them is pretty random or a least could be to some extent because some islands have an precise influence on some parts of the story.

So in pop2k8 you just go to an island, make a fucking QTE sequence through the platforms and then go back to picking your next destination.

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Don't wanna be too picky here but Sandbox was at the beginning only designating games who generated levels as in the Kriegspiel (the first strategy game in history 1811 if I remember correctly) where they litteraly played in a wharhammer figurine style in sand boxes that you would shake to generate a random landscape.

Interesting. I'd always taken it to mean "this is an open environment for you to muck about in". I guess the actual original definition makes more sense.

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Don't wanna be too picky here but Sandbox was at the beginning only designating games who generated levels as in the Kriegspiel (the first strategy game in history 1811 if I remember correctly) where they litteraly played in a wharhammer figurine style in sand boxes that you would shake to generate a random landscape.

That's cool, but I think the term is re-contextualized when applied to video games.

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I'd like to play it. I played the inFamous demo at my friend's place and it was a lot of fun.

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I'd like to play it. I played the inFamous demo at my friend's place and it was a lot of fun.

"If you like the demo of inFamous, you'll love Prototype!" (IGN.com)

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That's cool, but I think the term is re-contextualized when applied to video games.

In video games it became "a world you can modify" as in "a world you can have a influence on". Probably because the random-level generating games were at first RPGs in which you could have an influence :

Oblivion for instance would be in the third-generation term a sandbox.

Dungeon siege is an example of a second-generation sandbox

And Sins of a Solar Empire would be first-generation.

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So I'm currently eating my hat having already eaten it and shat it out.

Got Prototype off D2D when it was discounted because I had a minor operation the other day and decided I deserved a wee present. About three hours in and it's bloody great fun so far. It's not an 8 or 9 by any means, but there's a surprising amount of variety behind that bland exterior.

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