Prototype is a game of the open world type in which you play Alex Mercer, a misanthrope determined to find out why instead of suffering a sucking chest wound and being generally dead, he is able to leap and fly and eat the populace of New York City.
Batman: Arkham Asylum tells the story of Batman’s bad evening, having escorted the Joker to the titular Arkham Asylum. It’s sort of like an episode of 24, except instead of Jack Bauer demanding to know the location of explosive devices, it’s Batman demanding to know where the Clown Prince is so that he can get back to being a big business bollock by day.
There is a reason for writing this; I played both games recently, and while I completed Batman a few hours ago, I uninstalled Prototype out of sheer frustration. This is all linked to the combat systems of each respective game, in that they’re almost identical.
In both Prototype and Batman, you play the anti-hero/hero up against swarms and swarms of enemies of varying levels of lethality. Prototype’s hunters are Batman’s Titan henchmen for example. In Prototype you eventually have access to various power-sets which you can swap on the fly, anything from a massive knife to a knife on a whip or huge fists. In Batman you have Batarangs, the Bat cape, the Batboot and the Batfist.
Prototype’s combat is not very good. Batman’s is excellent. In Prototype you’re expected to know what the enemies are doing against a muddy sea of reds and browns in the background, while fighting a sea of enemies coloured in red and brown tones. It’s like fighting in a swimming pool filled with blood and shit, you’re not sure if your punches are going to land but everyone will end up in pain, coughing up blood. The impetus for me uninstalling was not too dissimilar from that description, it was a late-game boss fight with multiple regenerating parts on the boss itself, and an infinite supply of monsters and military attacking you and only you.
Batman’s combat however makes you feel like a badass. Without the myriad power-sets – being Batman is a power-set unto itself – combat flows freely, with one button for “hurt dude,” another for “hurt dude who’s about to attack you,” and one for “flick your cape at that dude with a knife.” Combat is easy to do and requires an almost balletical timing, one misstep and a counter that you could have done becomes a punch on Batman’s forever scowling face.
Both games ended up resorting to an easy trick; “We can’t possibly add to or innovate the combat any more, let’s throw everything at the player in the hope that that provides some semblance of entertainment.” In Prototype’s case, it failed spectacularly. It didn’t provide entertainment, it provided me an excellent excuse to reclaim some disk space. With Batman: AA, the combat was still fun because old tactics gave way to new ones. Titan henchmen turned into weapons once sufficiently weakened, the skills learned and used up until that point were actually useful.
In Batman you were badass throughout the experience, you were never outgunned because you always have the ability and toolset to deal with any obstacle. In Prototype, you are weak. You are never truly powerful because the game invents new ways to make you weak.