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A new trailer has surfaced for Prototype and it's three and a half minutes of beautiful, unbridled carnage. Enumerating ten reasons to play the game, the list runs through its bloody catalog of mayhem, all in the name of whetting our appetites for an open-world experience we haven't seen the likes of since Crackdown. Elbow-dropping tanks, tossing soldiers from and at gunships and tearing a busy street intersection asunder with explosive, shape-shifting powers... it's all here, folks.
Not surprisingly, the trailer has already generated some healthy Internet buzz. My own assessment of the video flutters between dumbfounded amazement and cautious optimism. The amount of action being displayed on-screen is astounding. If the game can render all the wanton destruction while keeping at a steady framerate, Prototype is sure to go down as the technical showcase of 2009.
But then we have the worry, shared already by many a video commenter, that the game is all flash. Great power with no discernible limits is all well and good, but how will it translate into a compelling game play experience? By now most gamers realize that creating an open-world sandbox alone is no substitute for clever game design. Is the marketing team just showing us the most exciting bits or are these videos an accurate preview of how bombastic, and ultimately superficial, the final game will be? This summer will tell how well-rounded of a title Prototype actually is. For now, it's abundantly clear that, if nothing else, this game knows how to rock n' roll like no other action adventure before it.
For the uninitiated, Prototype is an open-world action adventure game being developed by Vancouver-based Radical Entertainment and published by Activision. The game has been in development for quite some time. It is slated for a summer release of this year. When I interviewed Radical president, Kelly Zmak, in February, he all but confirmed a June 2009 release but did not go into any details on a specific date. Prototype will be available for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.
Source: YouTube