So I've been anxiously awaiting Prototype for quite some time now... actually ever since I saw a YouTube video that claimed to be Assassin's Creed 2, but was in fact a teaser-trailer for this game. I watched the teaser and was blown away by the concept, the gameplay video, and even the music. As the months went by I started to keep an eye out for an actual release date, and then low and behold about 6 months ago they announced. I couldn't wait.

Well I just got the game last night, and it's a little ironic that this game would debut around the same time as Bionic Commando because they both feature a protagonist who is able to somewhat defy gravity and spend a considerable amount of time in the air to get from point A to point B and everywhere in between. Sadly I think that Prototype may have fallen a bit short in the "wow" factor, whereas Bionic Commando really shined with it's unique implementations.

Mind you I'm only a couple of hours into Prototype at this time, I can still make a few observations:

1. The cut scenes are fantastic, and the game starts out by throwing you right into the fray with all powers and upgrades for a brief stint. This is reminiscent of Metroid Prime a bit, where you start out right in the thick of battle with all your tools only to have them taken away.

2. After only a few minutes of play I began to feel a nagging neuscense that I distinctly remembered from playing the Spider man games; More specifically, Spiderman 2. Everything in the world was bustling and moving, but the character models were poor (at least the normal people... the army and infected models are much better) which I believe is in an effort to cut down on CPU cycles - considering at any time there are literally hundreds of random people walking around. The more I looked around, and the more I moved, the more I realized that I was basically playing Spiderman. The combat system is the same, the cutscenes are of similar quality and length, the camera angles are the same obnoxiously incoherant and inattentive angles, and moreover even the checkpoints, side quests, and world itself are almost identical in every way to Spiderman.

Now don't get me wrong... the game has a definite fun factor, but I'm a little irritated at how similar this game is to the Spiderman series. Right down to the minimap and world layout - even to rooftop designs and again checkpoints to "start missions".

I AM curious as time goes on to see what else Alex Mercer is capable of, but I guess I just hoped after such a long development cycle that it would be a much more polished and unique game - like Bionic Commando - built on it's own engine with next-gen graphics and animations.

Time will tell if the story and gameplay make up for it.