With their previous effort on The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, Radical Entertainment established themselves as capable hands at transposing an established superhero franchise to videogame form. Therefore it's no surprise that for their latest venture, Prototype, they've gone a step further and taken on the task of molding their own super-powered protagonist in Alex Mercer. I was careful to not refer to Mercer as a superhero because he's really not. Imagine if Peter Parker never got the power-versus-responsibility speech from Uncle Ben, and was taken over by the symbiote and was a bit of a self-serving asshat - that's Alex Mercer in a nutshell.

Not that Alex doesn't have good reason to be pissed. At the start of the game, he wakes up in the morgue of a experimental facility with no memory of who he is, and is hunted relentlessly as he escapes from the facility. Enough to furrow anyone's brows for sure. Fortunately for Alex, and not so much for everyone else, he soon discovers that whatever was done to him also gave him shape shifting abilities - a very broad term that basically means he is now capable of transforming into all manners of destructive instruments. And for the duration of the game, Alex uses his array of grotesque and terrifying powers to find out his origin and to take down anyone that dares to get in his way - including the hapless citizens of New York City.

To be frank, there isn't much to the plot that can't be deduced after an hour or two with the game, and it is obvious that the development team is more concerned with imbuing Mercer with super powers rather than a personality or plausible story arc. This makes the fact that Alex is a genocidal maniac tougher to swallow as it's never justified why he casually eviscerates hundreds of thousands of innocents. Also disappointing is that what started as an interesting way of storytelling by allowing Alex to absorb people's memories and piece together fragments about his past quickly devolves into repetitive vignettes that bring nothing to the table.

For all the deficiencies in the character and plot though, a lot of work has obviously been put into making Alex Mercer one of the most formidable super powered characters ever to grace a game. For starters, he can leap over tall buildings, run up the side of skyscrapers, jump off and proceed to glide along for miles. It takes a while to come to grips with the somewhat finicky movement controls, especially when the action calls for a degree of finesse. But once you do, you'll be rewarded with an extremely agile and maneuverable character that can outrun any pursuer. The same goes for the various combat powers that Alex possess - it takes some practice to be able to fully utilise all of his powers and swap between them in the heat of battle, but the pay-off is certainly worth the effort.

Most of Alex's combat powers revolve around the ability to turn his arms into various instruments, from giant twin-blades that can cut through armored tanks, to extendable tentacles that can bring down helicopters with ease. The game features a very functional system for designing a character that suits your style of play by allowing you to place points into powers that you find most useful, which advances those abilities as well as unlock extra powers. For example, placing points into the claw power may unlock a range ability that allows Alex to skewer enemies with spikes that erupt from the ground. Most of the combat powers are satisfying to pull off and useful for different situations, with many overlaps to ensure that you can't upgrade yourself into a useless character. For the completist that wishes to unlock and upgrade every single power, you'll be happy to know that it is very much possible to do so on a single play through. Upgrade points are easily racked up by completing missions and side missions, as well as just committing random acts of atrocity.

Speaking of missions, in comparison to your awesome destructive powers, what you do with them in the game proper actually feels disproportionately underwhelming. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of heated battles to be had, it's just that they mostly play out the same way, and with the exception of a handful of boss encounters, strictly adhere to a small number of templates. Most of the main missions have you travelling across the city to kill a bunch of people either through brute force or stealth, and a few require you to parade yourself along the streets of New York while defending an objective. Optional side missions are even more bare-boned, as they are often just timed races scattered throughout the city that provide little more than a fun arcade-like distraction. On the plus side, stealth in Prototype bucks the trend of games that attempt to incorporate stealth to frustrating ends, and provides a fun and entirely viable way to accomplish many objectives. Alex can take on the form of any citizens or enemies that he ingests, allowing him to blend into his surroundings. The key to its success is that it isn't taken very seriously, so that as long as you position your character at the right place, it's easy to pull off cool stealth shape-shifts that allow you to infiltrate enemy bases or escape pursuers by rounding a corner and shape-shifting in midair.

To stop Alex from his objectives are basically two types of enemies: the military in the form of infantry soldiers, tanks and attack helicopters; and the infected, which can take the form of rabid humanoids to hulking monstrosities. None of them are too all that difficult to dispatch provided you learn their weaknesses and routines. The enemy AI is rather basic in Prototype, and to compensate, you'll often be overwhelmed with combinations of enemies, making many of the missions quite challenging, especially when you're still getting used to the controls early on. While the endless army of soldiers and mutated humans do a good job of slowing Alex down, there's a dearth of encounters that actually pit Alex against adversaries of equal strength. This further compounds the problem of the repetitive missions, making Alex Mercer a devastating weapon that somehow got tasked to eradicate ants.

The presentation of Prototype is perhaps best described as adequate. It's obvious that Radical Entertainment did not have the luxury of a huge budget in making this game, and the studio certainly does its best to build the sense of scale and the destruction required for the game to work. The protagonist moves smoothly most of the time, pulling off spectacular combat moves and the resulting devastation can be impressive. In contrast, the environment and enemies fare much worse, with limited character models and animation on almost every other character in the game, as well as one of the most generic renditions of The Big Apple I can recall. This is a New York City stripped of most of its characteristics, save for an area that sort of looks like Times Square and a big park in the centre of the city. However, this is no reason to pass up on the game, as what detail is sacrificed is made up for in the size of the city, and the fluidity with which you can travel from one end to the other, as well as the number of enemies and innocent bystanders on screen at once.