Prototype

Prototype cast the player as Alex Mercer, a man with the ability to change shape and consume the bodies of his enemies, who wakes up in the middle of a New York gripped by a deadly epidemic and military martial law. A story told partly through flashbacks gradually reveals who Mercer really is and what connection he has to the outbreak known as Blacklight, while the player roams freely through an open city full of soldiers, infected civilians, and giant mutated creatures. The main draw was the consumption system - Mercer can instantly copy the appearance and abilities of a killed victim, which opened up room for both infiltration and extremely violent combat combos using claws, blades, and improvised weapons picked up from the environment, such as cars, lampposts, or pieces of wrecked vehicles torn from the ground.

On Xbox 360 the game offered a vast, vertically designed city that could be traversed parkour-style across building facades, jumping between rooftops and moving seamlessly between exploration and massive battles involving dozens of soldiers and armored vehicles at once. Technically it was an ambitious open-world title for its generation, albeit with some compromises in texture detail and repetitive city architecture, and the dark, industrial music underscored the apocalyptic atmosphere of the infected city well.

At the time, Prototype was often compared to a rival superhero open-world game released in the same period and received mixed-to-positive reviews, mainly thanks to its brutal, freeform gameplay that let players experiment with different abilities. Today it stands as an interesting reminder of an era when publishers dared to make dark, morally ambiguous open-world games with abilities bordering on superhero fantasy, without aiming for an outright heroic tone, and Mercer's morally ambiguous character remains one of the most striking antihero roles of its generation.

Why play it: For fans of dark, morally ambiguous open worlds with brutal, freeform gameplay, it offers one of the most striking antihero characters of its generation.