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Population control is not a concept that the games industry is familiar with. There are several genres that are beginning to look more overcrowded than a Mumbai shanty town. In theory this means that any new release in one of these genres has to work that much harder to single itself out from the rest. In the impressively overpopulated sandbox genre there are precious few solid gold titles floating in a sea of dross. With that in mind, Activision have, once more thrown their hat into the ring with the Sierra/Vivendi leftover title Prototype.

Prototype is a very dark and bloody affair that encourages you to wreak havoc all over Manhattan Island in search of the truth. You play Alex Mercer and amnesiac endowed with superpowers by some clandestine government agency. You escape from said agency out into a quarantined Manhattan that is experiencing a viral outbreak that makes Racoon City look like a wee sniffle. Your task – regain your memories and stop the outbreak that is destroying the city that never sleeps.

Activision have already been here before in the last six months with Spiderman: Web of Shadows with the Venom symbiote trying to take over Manhattan so evidently their story writers are running a bit thin on material at the minute. The similarities to the latest Spiderman title don’t stop there though. Alex’s powers are caused by a virus that infects his body and the powers manifest themselves in a way that is very reminiscent of Venom right down to Alex’s whiplash power – a black web-like whip that shoots from his right arm and can be used to grab enemies and swing from helicopters and so on.

His powers can actually morph depending on what sort of damage you want to cause. He has Wolverine-like claws for shredding multiple enemies to pieces, huge rock-had fists for those ‘Hulk smash’ moments and his right arm can turn into a massive and exceptionally sharp blade which is useful for carving up the odd M1 Abrams battle tank.

Morphing is actually a very important part of Prototype though. Alex can, by absorbing any character in the game, disguise himself to sneak past soldiers and large virus-based monsters. This also allows him to absorb their memories of the current incident. This helps him to uncover a little bit more about what happened to him.

Alex also has access to the standard defensive and visual powers like heat vision, armour and a shield. These all improve your ability to fight but you can only ever select one defensive, on offensive and one vision power at a time. Also, when you morph into a disguise you all other powers are de-activated and you will only ever morph into the last person you absorbed. He can also run up and over buildings, jump farther and he can even glide in the air to extend his jumps which can be useful.

The powers Alex has at his disposal lend themselves very well to being excruciatingly bloody and violent and every attack and absorbing is accompanied by a sanguine explosion something on a par with the lawnmower scene in Peter Jackson’s excellent horror movie, Brain Dead.

Far from being trashy and tiresome, the amount of blood actually adds to the visceral and sinister air of the game. Alex himself is exceptionally amoral and the game requires you to kill a whole lot of innocent people in order to solve the mystery behind what happened on Manhattan Island.

The gameplay itself is pretty smooth. The controls are pretty typical of a sandbox superhero game with the only real problem being the slightly awkward way you switch between powers. It just involves holding down the right bumper and highlighting the power you want with the left thumbstick. It never really felt like a smooth transition plus, it only kicked the game into slow motion rather than pausing it so it is always best to seek cover if you were planning on selecting more than one power to change.

Prototype’s story would actually be pretty short and insanely difficult to complete was it not for the side-missions that are available. These range from a selection of seek and destroy missions on varying targets to destroy as many enemies as you can using the given power to rooftop point-to-point time trials and, my favourite, glide from a roof top to hit a particular spot on the ground. There are also find and absorb missions that will add to Alex’s memories of the incident. Each of these also allow you to collect experience points to spend on improving Alex’s powers, allowing him to copy with the larger monsters the virus throws at him and the increasingly heavy firepower that the army deploy as the game progresses.

Playing the side missions does end up being a necessary part of the game and, although they’re not quite as fun as the original GTA III side-missions, they add a bit more flavour to the game and do push you to learn how to use your powers more accurately and effectively. Prototype would have been overly difficult without the opportunity to gain extra experience and level-up in between story missions so the extra thought that has been put into the added missions is a very welcome bonus.

Playing Prototype does feel like somebody has bunged their favourite Marvel characters in a blender, seasoned with a pinch of X-Files government conspiracy and a dash of Resident Evil-style biological disaster and whizzed it up into a fine mush. The result is surprisingly playable. Despite being such a mish-mash of different characters, Alex does hold his own as a protagonist and you do sympathise with him. You do end up wanting to find out what happened to him and that feeling does drive you to play the game through to the end.

Prototype, does not live up to its name in terms of giving gamers something new. This doesn’t mean that it’s a bad game though. The combination of comic book influences and extremely bloody violence is exceptionally compelling. We may have seen it all before but there are few superhero games that do it this well.