New York will never be the same again after what happened to Alex Mercer. A virus spread through the city, warping and twisting it while mutating its populace. In the first Prototype you played Alex Mercer as he tried to find out what happened to him, even as his body mutated to give you the weapons and tools to do it. His quest was not without consequences and many innocent people died along the way, including the wife and daughter of Sergeant James Heller.
In Prototype 2 you will play as Heller who discovers New York in shambles after returning from a tour of duty in Afghanistan. Alex Mercer takes interest in Heller for some unknown reason and infects him with the Blacklight Virus. This gives Heller similar abilities to Mercer, and Heller has no problem with using them to avenge the death of his family.
New York is divided into three color coded districts. The red districts is a quarantined hell where Alex Mercer and the virus run rampant. The yellow district is a slum filled to the brim with refugees, quarantined themselves and killed at the smallest signs of infection. The green district resembles a normal New York, but has turned into a militarized dictatorship. Showing any sign of infection or getting in the way of a soldier and you can expect to be executed immediately.
The E3 demo of Prototype 2 showed off some of the new mechanics Radical Entertainment built after getting feedback from their fans about the first game. Instead of tracking down his past, Heller will be trying to track down Mercer. This gives players a much clearer objective compared to Prototype. To do this he will need information from Blacknet, the military database holding information about the Blacklight Virus. This information is obtained by hunting down certain people and stealing their memories.
To show how this is done, we were given a demonstration of the all new hunting mechanic. When in hunting mode, the screen turns yellow and a sonar-like wave is send out from Heller. If it hits an important NPC they will briefly light up and the wave will bounce off of them and back towards Heller. Once you track them down you can swipe their memories and find a side quest.
In the demo our side quest involved destroying a couple of APCs nearby. For the first APC, Heller jumped off of a building and in mid air launched a dozen or so tentacle like appendages, ripping the APC apart in seconds. It would suffice to say that it got their attention. After landing, Heller ran to the second APC and ripped off the attached missile launcher, using it to destroy the APC and every other military asset in the area. Fun times. Completing these operations will give you additional mutations used to upgrade Heller.
In addition to hunting down people, New York is also plagued with underground lairs where the virus has spread and begun mutating people. These lairs are dangerous and are filled with powerful enemies, but cleaning them out will yield collectibles and powerful upgrades. In our demo Heller cut down a mutant and received an upgrade for his blade arm. His blade became more visually menacing an caused far more damage to the remaining mutants. On the final fleshy bad guy, they showed off another new combat ability: Dismemberment. You will be able to rip the limbs off of your opponents and even use them as weapons.
The demo showed off once last creature roaming around New York. Named “Tiny”, this behemoth was several stories tall and took up an entire street. It was recommended that we don’t piss Tiny off.
Prototype 2 will be available on the XBox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC sometime in 2012.
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