I really wished I had played Prototype when it was first released in 2009 as I would have appreciated it a lot more back then. In 2024, at time of writing there have been other games which have accomplished much more and provide a much more enjoyable experience such as the Spider-Man games.

Prototype came out around the same time as Infamous on the PS3 and they competed with each other to see who was the best anti hero Cole MacGrath or Alex Mercer. The game does play like a Spider-Man villain spin off game. Alex can jump and glide around the city using super powers much like Spider-Man but traversal is limited with his gliding which requires the player to land and take off again.

Alex Mercer has special powers, fueled by a virus. He doesn’t remember his past and is out on a quest to find answers as to why he is the way he is. Not only are the infected after him but the military too, this can result in absolute chaos in the streets.

At all times the streets are FILLED with people, cars, the military and infected. It’s mad to see people just kicking about the streets despite being surrounded by so much danger. These unfortunate souls can be dispersed with either your powers or by stealing military tech and blowing them up with almost no consequences.

Completing missions, side quests and finding the landmark collectables gains experience points which can be spent on upgrades. There are plenty of experience points available to quickly upgrade Alex’s powers. I had nearly upgraded everything without doing a single side-quest and only picking up landmark collectables as I came across them. Some missions require you to have unlocked certain powers before undertaking the mission, yet, at no point in the mission are you required to use said powers which confused me.

One of the annoyances I found with the game is the on-screen text. Typically in a video game when you press the action button while text is scrolling across the screen, it will just show all the text rather than the player waiting for it to slowly reveal itself. In Prototype, hitting the action button while the text is scrolling will dismiss that screen of text meaning the player will miss out on what it was going to say. I was caught out by this every time.

There’s really not that much to the game, missions are a bit samey, the storyline isn’t that great and it’s around 11 hours long. I played on easy and I got about three quarters of the way through before I got stuck on a mission where I had to protect myself and a vehicle. Either Alex or the vehicle would die in seconds due to being pummelled by enemies and I couldn’t for the life of me get past it. I felt the game had nothing much else to offer me to make it worth continually trying to beat the mission.

One of my biggest issues with the game is how many enemies the game throws at you at one time. If you get discovered by the military, within seconds you’ll have soldiers, tanks and helicopters torpedoing your wee tadger. While it’s so much fun to be on the other end of the stick, flying a helicopter and raining down hell on those below or ploughing your way through the streets in a tank. Being on the receiving end isn’t fun.

Prototype is a fun, good looking game, there can be so much happening on screen at once and the framerate doesn’t tank (at least on the Xbox One). If you’re a better gamer than me and can get passed the mission “Things to Come” then it might be worth the while. I just didn’t have the motivation to push past this one to get to the end as I felt I had experienced everything the game had to offer. I am open to playing the sequel someday though.

I really wished I had played Prototype when it was first released in 2009 as I would have appreciated it a lot more back then. In 2024, at time of writing there have been other games which have accomplished much more and provide a much more enjoyable experience such as the Spider-Man games.

Prototype came out around the same time as Infamous on the PS3 and they competed with each other to see who was the best anti hero Cole MacGrath or Alex Mercer. The game does play like a Spider-Man villain spin off game. Alex can jump and glide around the city using super powers much like Spider-Man but traversal is limited with his gliding which requires the player to land and take off again.

Alex Mercer has special powers, fueled by a virus. He doesn’t remember his past and is out on a quest to find answers as to why he is the way he is. Not only are the infected after him but the military too, this can result in absolute chaos in the streets.

At all times the streets are FILLED with people, cars, the military and infected. It’s mad to see people just kicking about the streets despite being surrounded by so much danger. These unfortunate souls can be dispersed with either your powers or by stealing military tech and blowing them up with almost no consequences.

Completing missions, side quests and finding the landmark collectables gains experience points which can be spent on upgrades. There are plenty of experience points available to quickly upgrade Alex’s powers. I had nearly upgraded everything without doing a single side-quest and only picking up landmark collectables as I came across them. Some missions require you to have unlocked certain powers before undertaking the mission, yet, at no point in the mission are you required to use said powers which confused me.

One of the annoyances I found with the game is the on-screen text. Typically in a video game when you press the action button while text is scrolling across the screen, it will just show all the text rather than the player waiting for it to slowly reveal itself. In Prototype, hitting the action button while the text is scrolling will dismiss that screen of text meaning the player will miss out on what it was going to say. I was caught out by this every time.

There’s really not that much to the game, missions are a bit samey, the storyline isn’t that great and it’s around 11 hours long. I played on easy and I got about three quarters of the way through before I got stuck on a mission where I had to protect myself and a vehicle. Either Alex or the vehicle would die in seconds due to being pummelled by enemies and I couldn’t for the life of me get past it. I felt the game had nothing much else to offer me to make it worth continually trying to beat the mission.

One of my biggest issues with the game is how many enemies the game throws at you at one time. If you get discovered by the military, within seconds you’ll have soldiers, tanks and helicopters torpedoing your wee tadger. While it’s so much fun to be on the other end of the stick, flying a helicopter and raining down hell on those below or ploughing your way through the streets in a tank. Being on the receiving end isn’t fun.

Prototype is a fun, good looking game, there can be so much happening on screen at once and the framerate doesn’t tank (at least on the Xbox One). If you’re a better gamer than me and can get passed the mission “Things to Come” then it might be worth the while. I just didn’t have the motivation to push past this one to get to the end as I felt I had experienced everything the game had to offer. I am open to playing the sequel someday though.

I’ve wanted to play through the Mario RPG games for a while and what pushed me over the edge was the remake of Mario RPG and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. I adored Mario RPG having played the original and the remake. The remake really helped bring it up to modern day standards with some quality of life changes. I played Paper Mario on Nintendo’s Online service emulating the original game on the Switch. This was also finally my opportunity to use my N64 controller with the 8bitdo wireless mod.

The game started off well for me, everything is simplified with tutorials. With no over complicated systems that a lot of games nowadays have. I wasn’t able to master the button timings for increasing attack and defence. I brushed this off as just an aid in battles and it wouldn’t matter too much as was the case in the remake of Mario RPG. Little did I know this would come back and bite me later…

On the Nintendo Switch, the 3D sprites have been scaled up and given anti-aliasing which make them look good but unfortunately the character spikes are a bit blocky and blurry still. Playing on handheld mode helps blend this in better. Paper Mario’s graphics have aged well though for a game as old as it is.

Despite following on from Mario RPG, Paper Mario takes things in a different direction after Nintendo and Squaresoft had a falling out due to their move to Sony’s PlayStation. Therefore Intelligent Systems took over with the development. While a lot of the mechanics are the same, the game feels quite different. I felt as though Paper Mario didn’t have as much life and spring in its step as Mario RPG did. While the world is fun to explore, it just didn’t have that magic like the previous game.

For the most part, Mario and his partners only do 1-3 damage in battles, as do the enemies. I’m not used to this and it would often make me feel weak and pitiful as I’m used to other RPG games where characters do at least 3 figures of damage. Mario’s HP and Flower Power are also relatively low as well making it a bit more challenging as you will die in a few hits. You will run out of attack power and HP if you’re not careful. The most available healing item is a mushroom which gives you 5 HP, roughly a 10th of Mario’s health by the end of the game. If you use this in one turn, the enemies could probably chip that if not more HP off you in their turn. Same for the flower power. There are healing points and beds provided by Toad dotted around which bring you to full health but it's the battles in between which I found challenging.

As well as hit points and flower power Mario can gain Badge points too. With these Badge Points, Mario can equip badges to give him additional powers, boost stats or provide benefits in battle. Mario has multiple partners who will aid him in battle and on the field, they provide special abilities to help traverse the world or reach hard to get items. If you go into battle with the wrong partner you will need to swap them for the right one but this can waste a turn. You can get a badge to fix this but even if I got this it wouldn’t have changed my mind on the game unfortunately.

People cite this game as being ridiculously easy and that is true for the sections of the game outside of battle which I was enjoying. It’s the battles which I found frustratingly unforgiving as I just couldn’t get the timings right with the button pressing, not to mention the attacks that require rapid button mashing which is never fun. After a while I swapped my modded N64 controller for the Switch Pro controller and that helped with the timings a bit but I still found it frustrating and was finding myself dying constantly. With this reliance on timed button pressing during battles, it doesn’t serve a 2024 audience very well due to diminished attention spans thanks to social media. If you lose concentration for a second you’re taking heavy damage, even if you go to take a drink or something you’ll pay the price for not having your hands glued to the controller and your eyes on the screen.

I listened to the Cane and Rinse podcast episode on this game as I often do after playing a game, while they loved it as a whole and were very passionate about it, they mentioned and agreed with all my complaints above. I gave the game three chances but I was getting more frustrated with the game than I was having fun so decided to shelf it for now.

I’ve wanted to play through the Mario RPG games for a while and what pushed me over the edge was the remake of Mario RPG and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. I adored Mario RPG having played the original and the remake. The remake really helped bring it up to modern day standards with some quality of life changes. I played Paper Mario on Nintendo’s Online service emulating the original game on the Switch. This was also finally my opportunity to use my N64 controller with the 8bitdo wireless mod.

The game started off well for me, everything is simplified with tutorials. With no over complicated systems that a lot of games nowadays have. I wasn’t able to master the button timings for increasing attack and defence. I brushed this off as just an aid in battles and it wouldn’t matter too much as was the case in the remake of Mario RPG. Little did I know this would come back and bite me later…

On the Nintendo Switch, the 3D sprites have been scaled up and given anti-aliasing which make them look good but unfortunately the character spikes are a bit blocky and blurry still. Playing on handheld mode helps blend this in better. Paper Mario’s graphics have aged well though for a game as old as it is.

Despite following on from Mario RPG, Paper Mario takes things in a different direction after Nintendo and Squaresoft had a falling out due to their move to Sony’s PlayStation. Therefore Intelligent Systems took over with the development. While a lot of the mechanics are the same, the game feels quite different. I felt as though Paper Mario didn’t have as much life and spring in its step as Mario RPG did. While the world is fun to explore, it just didn’t have that magic like the previous game.

For the most part, Mario and his partners only do 1-3 damage in battles, as do the enemies. I’m not used to this and it would often make me feel weak and pitiful as I’m used to other RPG games where characters do at least 3 figures of damage. Mario’s HP and Flower Power are also relatively low as well making it a bit more challenging as you will die in a few hits. You will run out of attack power and HP if you’re not careful. The most available healing item is a mushroom which gives you 5 HP, roughly a 10th of Mario’s health by the end of the game. If you use this in one turn, the enemies could probably chip that if not more HP off you in their turn. Same for the flower power. There are healing points and beds provided by Toad dotted around which bring you to full health but it's the battles in between which I found challenging.

As well as hit points and flower power Mario can gain Badge points too. With these Badge Points, Mario can equip badges to give him additional powers, boost stats or provide benefits in battle. Mario has multiple partners who will aid him in battle and on the field, they provide special abilities to help traverse the world or reach hard to get items. If you go into battle with the wrong partner you will need to swap them for the right one but this can waste a turn. You can get a badge to fix this but even if I got this it wouldn’t have changed my mind on the game unfortunately.

People cite this game as being ridiculously easy and that is true for the sections of the game outside of battle which I was enjoying. It’s the battles which I found frustratingly unforgiving as I just couldn’t get the timings right with the button pressing, not to mention the attacks that require rapid button mashing which is never fun. After a while I swapped my modded N64 controller for the Switch Pro controller and that helped with the timings a bit but I still found it frustrating and was finding myself dying constantly. With this reliance on timed button pressing during battles, it doesn’t serve a 2024 audience very well due to diminished attention spans thanks to social media. If you lose concentration for a second you’re taking heavy damage, even if you go to take a drink or something you’ll pay the price for not having your hands glued to the controller and your eyes on the screen.

I listened to the Cane and Rinse podcast episode on this game as I often do after playing a game, while they loved it as a whole and were very passionate about it, they mentioned and agreed with all my complaints above. I gave the game three chances but I was getting more frustrated with the game than I was having fun so decided to shelf it for now.