Prototype

[whiteboyskim]

I'm still trying really, really hard to like this game and I'm just not. I've managed to get quite a few upgrades and enjoy flinging myself through the city but for some reason it just is not clicking. It isn't a bad game though, but it's not clicking for me. I don't know what point I'm at now but I've completed I think 9 of the 30 missions and I'm doing some side missions and stuff. I took out one of the major hives and ran around blowing up water towers (upgraded whipfist makes all the difference, thanks Tilt!) and collecting EP for more upgrades but there's something missing. Some spark. Maybe it's the hyper-AVID fart quickie clips when you eat a Web of Intrigue person, or maybe its the story I'm not caring about or maybe its the main character being Generic Dark Anti-Hero #242 but it's not working as a whole for me. Sure I like throwing stuff at helicopters and blowing them up but I've done that in other games before.

Overall, meh. But I'm still playing to see if it gets better and whether I like it more.

[metallicorphan]

I'm still trying really, really hard to like this game and I'm just not. I've managed to get quite a few upgrades and enjoy flinging myself through the city but for some reason it just is not clicking. It isn't a bad game though, but it's not clicking for me. I don't know what point I'm at now but I've completed I think 9 of the 30 missions and

yup,same here,i like the gliding and what have you,but the missions don't vary enough for me,its usually always break into this place,grab a tank get to this place etc

and 30 missions!!!..yeah well i can see this getting traded before i get that far

[Razgon]

Spoiler for Hiden:

  Arrrgghhh!  The mission in which you have to stop the helicopters from leaving the quarantine area is friggin' annoying.  I've tried hijacking them with whipfist, shooting them down with other helicopters, and simply hurling crap at them...but I always lose one of them eventually.  Is there a trick to this mission I'm missing?   

Spoiler for Hiden:

you'll need to move fast and get yourself a chopper from the get-go. I seem to remember a few of them when the guy takes off hovering around you. Get into chopper, shoot down the first one, and go back and go crazy on those already there. After I got a chopper, I didnt really have many issues since if I got show down, I just used my whip to get the one that shot me down

[Chaz]

I just got through the series of missions where your powers get taken, and man, did those suck.  Yes, you do get fun new toys afterward, but man, they're going to have to let me do some major carnage to get the taste of that out of my mouth. 

One thing that really bugs me is that you really can't see guns on the ground.  There was one mission where I was defending an area, and got creamed.  On the second try, I realized that the ground was covered with guns, but I hadn't seen them the first time.  They're damn small, and the flash they make doesn't contrast enough with a ground that's usually flying by at 100mph and is generally covered with carnage.

Has anyone else ever had the glide take several presses of the A button to kick in? I'm starting to think my controller is crapping out, because the game frequently misses glide activations, and pickup and throw commands.  I guess when I think about it, I've been using this controller almost exclusively for almost two years, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised if it's giving out.

[Razgon]

hmm, I have no issues seeing the guns? Perhaps upping the lightning on your tv?

As for missing the glide, I have actually a few times, but that was more due to the fact that I'd forgotten to hold in the other button neccesary to glide as well

[madpeon]

I just got through the series of missions where your powers get taken, and man, did those suck.  Yes, you do get fun new toys afterward, but man, they're going to have to let me do some major carnage to get the taste of that out of my mouth.  

One thing that really bugs me is that you really can't see guns on the ground.  There was one mission where I was defending an area, and got creamed.  On the second try, I realized that the ground was covered with guns, but I hadn't seen them the first time.  They're damn small, and the flash they make doesn't contrast enough with a ground that's usually flying by at 100mph and is generally covered with carnage.

Has anyone else ever had the glide take several presses of the A button to kick in? I'm starting to think my controller is crapping out, because the game frequently misses glide activations, and pickup and throw commands.  I guess when I think about it, I've been using this controller almost exclusively for almost two years, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised if it's giving out.

The trick with glide is that it only activates after you release 'A', not when you press it down.

I believe the ingame documentation actually says double-tap 'A' to activate with RT held in, but the game probably acknowledges a push and release as 2 presses.

Also, you can charge jump while you're gliding so double-tapping 'A' then holding it in on the second press lets you have a charged jump ready when you touch a wall/roof which can come in handy.

[metallicorphan]

played a lot more today,i am currently on mission 18/31(yes i found the stats page)..and because i found the stats page,i went on to try for some achievements



It's Him!
It's definitely not you. You've patsied 5 military personnel.

SME
You're now certified to drive and fly all vehicles.

Misconception
You've destroyed 25 Infected Water Towers before they hatched.
very easy in the helicopter..i just targeted and fired,i didnt have to be anywhere near them

The Cleaner
You've destroyed 10 Military Bases or Infected Hives in New York City.



Gunning
You've destroyed 20 Helicopters in a single Helicopter flight.
i just stayed in the air,when i saw a enemy helicopter,i targeted it and fired..very easy,took about 20 minutes,didn't take any damage


Threat Elevated
You've brought down your wrath on 25 strike teams, erasing them from existence.
this one just appeared when i was going for the Surface to air achievement

Repossession
You've seized 50 vehicles from enemy hands.

Surface-To-Air
You've shot down 50 helicopters while driving armor.

Wrecking Yard
You've destroyed 2,000 vehicles.
this took ages,LOL...i would do a mission then go on a tank rampage for an hour or so,then do another mission etc


not many more achievements i want to go out of my way to get,i will try for the remaining story ones...then i guess that will,be it

[Eco-Logic]

I'm so stuck, and I'm not even on the last boss battle yet.

Spoiler for Hiden:

I'm on the mission immediately following the Big Worm Boss, where you have to blow up 8 things (whatever they are) in the military base.  That red fog that kills you is all over the base.  I tried doing it with a helicopter but get shot down.  Thoughts?

[Autistic Angel]

I'm so stuck, and I'm not even on the last boss battle yet.

Spoiler for Hiden:

I'm on the mission immediately following the Big Worm Boss, where you have to blow up 8 things (whatever they are) in the military base.  That red fog that kills you is all over the base.  I tried doing it with a helicopter but get shot down.  Thoughts?

Nearly every mission in Prototype can be passed by making quick strikes on your target, pulling back out of the combat zone to eat a bunch of people, and then charging back into battle with full health.  The streets of New York City surge with an inexhaustible supply of free health packs.  Don't try to destroy all the targets in a single go; use Thermal Vision to knock out one or two and then retreat.

-Autistic Angel

[Chaz]

I think I'm pretty much done.  I don't think I've had very much fun with this one in the past five hours.  It seems like it's very easy to get locked down by strikes (even with the air recovery power), and telling where the hell the attacks are coming from is very difficult.  The targeting system only locks onto enemies you can see, and when the attacks are coming from behind, convincing the target lock to actually switch to the thing you want is incredibly difficult, especially in environments where there are tons of targets (which happens frequently).

Maybe I've been focusing on the timed side missions too much, and I should just focus on the story missions.  However, the story missions are very disjointed.  I get a mission, which usually consists of go here, smash this, sometimes follow that, and throw in a bit of kill all these things until they stop/the timer's up, and then I get a cut scene that doesn't seem to have much to do with what I just did.

I'm through 17 of 31 missions, and I hate to give up on it, as that would be the first game I've started and not finished for the year, but I've had a lot more frustration than fun with this.

EDIT: You know what really gets me? There's the makings of a good stealth game in there, yet the extent of the stealth that they use (so far) is for base infiltrations, and those are all exactly the same.  I really wish they'd have done more with that aspect.  I also think it's amusing that I bought Red Faction as kind of a tide-me-over until Prototype, and wound up playing that all the way through and loving every minute of it, while I'm sitting here thinking about dumping Prototype a bit over halfway through.

[disarm]

I'm so stuck, and I'm not even on the last boss battle yet.

Spoiler for Hiden:

I'm on the mission immediately following the Big Worm Boss, where you have to blow up 8 things (whatever they are) in the military base.  That red fog that kills you is all over the base.  I tried doing it with a helicopter but get shot down.  Thoughts?

update: forget this...just finished the game and now know that i was talking about a different mission...

Spoiler for Hiden:

if you're talking about the the things spraying out the red antivirus gas, it's actually pretty easy if you just avoid helicopters or going down on the ground into that gas in the first place.  if you try using a helcopter, the military will shoot you down almost immediately.  i tried getting right into the middle of things on the ground in my first attempt and got slaughtered pretty quickly by the super soldiers.  on my second try, i took out the targets by standing on top of the buildings and attacking from above, and it was actually very easy.  i think i took a few of them out by throwing objects from the rooftops, and the others i destroyed using an airborn 'hit & run' with the hammerfist elbow drop.  using the elbow drop from a decent height can take those things out in one hit, and you can run right back up a building and on to the next target quickly enough to lose any enemies that you attract in the process.  the real key is just to avoid getting tied up in all those enemies and the dangerous gas in the first place...

[metallicorphan]

well i'm gonna call it a day with this as well,on about mission 25 and its just getting fucking ridiculous,its the one where you have to 'protect' the blood pump thing and bring out that Elizabeth Greene out into the open(so the mission objective says)

wave after wave after wave of those monsters keep attacking the blood pump,then two of those tentacle things start throwing cars at it,while more waves keep on attacking,and to top to off the Blackwatch are shooting at you as well,after about 40 minutes of repeating and repeating i thought fuck it,i've had enough

[TiLT]

well i'm gonna call it a day with this as well,on about mission 25 and its just getting fucking ridiculous,its the one where you have to 'protect' the blood pump thing and bring out that Elizabeth Greene out into the open(so the mission objective says)

wave after wave after wave of those monsters keep attacking the blood pump,then two of those tentacle things start throwing cars at it,while more waves keep on attacking,and to top to off the Blackwatch are shooting at you as well,after about 40 minutes of repeating and repeating i thought fuck it,i've had enough

Spoiler for Hiden:

I found that one to be quite easy once I realized I could pull off my devastators with little to no negative effects on the vehicle I was protecting. When the final wave (two supreme hunters and two tentacles) attacked, I did two tendril devastators (can't remember its exact name right now) which killed the hunters and let me focus on the tentacles. At that point the battle was a breeze. The boss afterwards, on the other hand, is an exercise in patience.

[Space Herpes]

well i'm gonna call it a day with this as well,on about mission 25 and its just getting fucking ridiculous,its the one where you have to 'protect' the blood pump thing and bring out that Elizabeth Greene out into the open(so the mission objective says)

wave after wave after wave of those monsters keep attacking the blood pump,then two of those tentacle things start throwing cars at it,while more waves keep on attacking,and to top to off the Blackwatch are shooting at you as well,after about 40 minutes of repeating and repeating i thought fuck it,i've had enough

Spoiler for Hiden:

I kept an eye on the radar to see where they were coming from.  I also used a tank.  I would target a bad guy and attack holding both triggers.  Often, I would back up while doing so.  I found tanks will take down hunters really fast.  If my tank was destroyed (pretty typical) I would just get a new one and start again.

[Space Herpes]

EDIT: You know what really gets me? There's the makings of a good stealth game in there, yet the extent of the stealth that they use (so far) is for base infiltrations, and those are all exactly the same.  I really wish they'd have done more with that aspect.  I also think it's amusing that I bought Red Faction as kind of a tide-me-over until Prototype, and wound up playing that all the way through and loving every minute of it, while I'm sitting here thinking about dumping Prototype a bit over halfway through.

I found the exact opposite.  I've played through RF, but the last part of the game just felt like work.  I wasn't doing anything new.  Everything starts looking the same.  The bad guys never change.  The story is boring (all IMHO).  I liked the sledge hammer for a while, but I got bored tearing down buildings.  The AI was pretty said, especially my "friends" (please don't walk into my hammer swing, moron).  Something about the physics of it never felt real.  I felt like I was tearing down cardboard houses.  That feeling kind of ruined it for me.

[whiteboyskim]

Alright, I'm through the "lose your powers except for your speed, flying, and run-up-buildings abilities" and holy crap is that sword arm thingie neat. But then I go back to whipfist because it's a) better for crowd control and b) better for long range attacks which are helpful when flanked by rocket soldiers on top of buildings. I think I'll hit another achievement or two then call it a day though because in spite of it being somewhat better, I'm still not that into it. RF: G here I come!

[Razgon]

Loved the game all the way through - its awesome! The boss battles are...something else. The strange thing is - once you get the hang of what to do, the boss mission is actually pretty damn easy! There's a trick to every one , more or less, you just have to figure out what it is, and that can be frustrating, because the rest of the game is pretty easy, making you NOT being used to work so hard to move on.

Anyways, I think with all the lessons learned from Prototype, and with the feedback the developers have had, a prototype 2 could be awesome!

[whiteboyskim]

I did have one fight last night that was monumentally awesome. It was the fight where you have to protect a doctor while infected charge in and pound on the glass. Basically you have to hold them off for X amount of time before the glass breaks. So naturally they throw in a few hunters and you don't have your "kill the holy shit out of everything that moves" powers - you're stuck with just your fists. Which I then used to kill the holy shit out of everything that moved. I don't know what happened but something clicked for me and I was dodging at the exact right moments, recovering from being knocked through the air, landing on my feet then punching through a guy's chest to absorb him and his friends, then pummeling the hell out of two hunters at once right before absorbing them too. When you do something cool the game goes into slo-mo, and since everything I was doing was a case study in Pure Awesome it was like watching a slide show.

Yeah, it was that great.

I again say this game has fun times and it certainly improves once a larger part of NYC is infected, but I think it's the fact that Prototype is more about the gameplay and less about the story that bugs me. That's not a slap against this or other games like that in general, but I think that's what's bugging me. Its also what bugged me about Ass Creed, but that was coupled with my unwillingness to fight battles inside the Matrix. I don't think I'm making a huge dent or affecting anything by taking out hives, but at least the game is consistent.

On the whole, it feels like "John Carpenter's The Thing" and you're The Thing, only you don't care if people see you or not. You'll just absorb them and their little dog, too.

[disarm]

finished the game tonight and really enjoyed it from beginning to end...not perfect, but still a hell of a lot of fun.  while there are a few annoying missions and boss battles, i never came across anything that took me so many tries that i really got frustrated.  in most cases, i was able to figure out what needed to be done pretty easily, and it was just me screwing up the plan that ended up being the biggest problem.  with a little practice and determination, i was even able to get gold on all the achievements along the way and fully upgraded my charcter a couple missions before the end.  without putting any real effort into the search, i finished with somewhere around 130 landmark orbs and 30 hint orbs, and only have about a half dozen web characters left to find...will probably go back and try to find the rest at some point because i still really enjoy running around the city just to raise hell and blow stuff up.

overall, i think Protoype is a great game and well worth playing for anyone interested in a ridiculously violent open-world action game.  the gameplay is an absolute blast, i really enjoyed the story, and there's more than enough to do to keep anyone occupied for quite a while

and for what it's worth, i stand by my initial impression of enjoying Prototype more than inFAMOUS.  both are great games in their own way, but i just had more fun with Prototype in the end.

[whiteboyskim]

Okay, a new video hit today that we're going to try to upload to the server and its a tips-and-tricks video. It is hilarious. There's one move for mid-air body surfing. Find a guy on top of a building, hit him into the air using Critical Pain, then target the body, jump up and then slide. The result is surfing the body all the way to the ground.

I have GOT to try that!