You eat people and gain powers from them by tearing them to pieces.

So it's basically hard-core Kirby

Destroyed a helicopter by throwing an old lady into it
20/10

If you get a boner while dismembering innocent people, this game suits your needs.

Prototype is what happens when you combine the urbanized open worldness of GTA4 with the plot of Crysis 2 (except the virus is a Left 4 Dead / Resident Evil-esque virus instead of aliens) with a protagonist that is essentially a cross between a biological human T-1000 and DC comic's Parasite (he consumes people to gain abilities, knowledge, skills, etc). The superpowered gameplay is definitely my favorite part, there are many ways to win the major story battles and sidemissions with the various moves at your command. As Alex Mercer, you can either pick up guns and rocket launchers or become a weapon yourself by shape shifting your body into claws, blades, bludgeons, whips and even a cannon ball move that launches you toward your target with enough force to blow up armored vehicles later in the game. Speaking of armored vehicles, you can hijack tanks and skyjack helicopter gunships (and this even looks exactly like that scene in T2 where the T-1000 gets on that chopper and tells the guy to get out LOL). When on foot and exploring Manhatten you use your augmented abilities to parkour the landscape, at full upgrades you can leap over 5 story buildings easily and glide / airdash through the air very similiarly to how mario from Super Mario World glides with the super cape. There is an element of Metal Gear Solid in this game too since you can shape shift into other people that you consume, ie soldiers or pedestrians in the street in order to blend in since the military is constantly looking for you. The story mode is pretty unique: your character wakes up having exactly the same knowledge the player does as to what is going on, and through a mechanic known as the web of intrigue you eventually come to understand the game's story and background on everything that is going on around you. As you explore Manhatten you will find people with the Web of Intrigue icon over their head indicating that they can be consumed by you to learn what they know in connection to everything that happened. This game features sidemissions that show up on the game's minimap that will showcase your skills with the various abilities you acquire and see how fast you can be parkouring from place to place and get bronze/silver/gold/platinum medals depending on your 1337ness.

I started playing this and finished it in about a week, making sure to get every sidemission completed on platinum. Because the plot is advanced through Web of Intrigue it is possible to finish the game without getting every bit of story out of it so I did a new game+ to find the remaining consume targets to get the whole story. For the most part the main story missions are easy with some tricky boss fights that really make you use all of your abilities to some degree, the most challenging aspect of this game is definitely getting platinum in every sidemission (think classic NES game level challenging). Overall I give this game a solid recommendation for its fluid gameplay (I love the parkour!) :)

I like the concept of the anti-hero. You play as Alex Mercer, an infected, who unlike other infected people turned to a superhuman with extraordinary abilities. You can run, jump at high speed. I almost said you can also climb but that is not true as you simply run on the side of multi-storey buildings. Everything is easily accessible.

You have the usual action-adventure free roaming concept here: beacons indicate the starting points of missions so once you approach them a cutscene continues the story and your mission begins. Other than that you go wherever you want and whenever you want. And where? In New York. There are recognisable landmarks and as you can guess the map is quite huge - in fact, certain parts are only accessible at a later stage in the story.

There are many collectibles and you also gather experience points for everything you pick up. This enables you to purchase further upgrades and the stronger you get the more exciting each battle is. Upgrades usually mean a new method of transformation - your arms become tentacles and you can smash or slice everything up. Certain enemy types can only be defeated by certain melee methods so there's variety here and the game is challenging as requires your attention.

The only issue with Prototype is the places where you are indoors. The ceiling is high up as they want you to be able to jump equally high as outdoors but due to the limited space in the rooms / halls fights are usually difficult in these places. Other than this Prototype is a very interesting, action-driven TPS game that delivers an excellent shape-shifting combat and your protagonist's agility makes free-roaming very exciting.

Truly epic game, the free-roam mode is what makes it best, you really feel badass jumping skyscrapers and watching entire US Army trying to stop you and fail miserably. RPGish progress where you spent evolution points on power upgrades and new tricks is well done. Surprisingly the story is pretty good as well, and there is a decent plot twiss. The graphics were dated when this game was released now they are pretty crappy but that does not take the awesomeness of the game. Flaws? Well the graphic for one, bad side-missions, repetitive NPC models making you feel like in clone wars. Nothing major.The combat can get a bit repetitive if you don't mix things up. Great game.

Yet another gem in my Steam Library.

In case you should have a god complex, this game is made for you -
If you don't.. it still is!

Basically you slip into the role of the more or less anti-hero Alex Mercer in the city of Manhattan that was infected by some kind of Virus and is now being controlled by Elite Soldiers called "Blackwatch".

Once you hit the button "Start new campaign" you get thrown right into the Open World with just a few background infos concerning the upcoming story. All you know is that you are Alex Mercer, who has been shot down and fatally wounded and later on got infected by a virus that somehow revived you and gave you shapeshifting abilities and superpowers.

Now he is trying everything he can to find out how all this happened, where it will be going, and how he could possibly end all this by "interrogate" the ones responsible.
Making your way through the story you get sucked in by a good load of interesting twists, challenging bossfights and tons of upgrades for Alex that make him the toughest enemy "Blackwatch" will have to face during the whole infection.

There are plenty of Sidequests to be done - some of them nice and some of them just to keep you busy finishing the game 100%. But if you focus on the Story Quests alone its possible to finish it within ~12 hours on a medium difficulty.
It can be frustrating at times (not just because of the AI) but because of overpowered attacs or wrong set "Mission Failure" parts, but once you've beaten the game it feels really satisfying even without Steam Achievments or cool costume unlocks for Alex Mercer. The gameplay itself is (to me) almost flawless and the possibilities endless due to Alex' powers and the maybe best looking armor in 2009's video games.

With this being said I'd like to leave you the decision if you should get this game on a sale for 5 bucks or just let it be, all I can do is just highly recommend it to everyone who loves a good classic and a game by 'Activision' that is not "Fast and the Furious" nor "Call of Duty" but actually a GOOD game.
A point some people might find interesting- the graphics are not horribly bad but neither outstanding for 2009...something in between should describe it precisely. If graphics don't bother you its a perfect game for a casual afternoon when you are off work and just want to relax..in case you do love good graphics take a look at Prototype 2 ..it has all the features 1 has to offer and even more - will write a review to part 2 aswell once I finished it on Steam.

*Note* I wasn't experiencing any performance problems on my nvidia card but I know that there are massive problems with all AMD cards... and they wont ever fix it I believe so in case you don't have a Nvidia graphics card you might want to play this one on a console.

As always I hope that my review was helpful and written understandable and made it easier for you to decide to buy a game from 6 years ago that is still more foward than todays releases...

pretty good for a prototype, i hope it comes out of Early Access someday

Prototype is one of the best games to release in 2009. Outside of the lackluster stealth and disguising mechanic, the brutal combat, huge open-world, varied challenges, and utterly satisfying gameplay makes this a must-have title for any serious gamer's collection. Although it’s beset by blandish graphics and wickedly uneven difficulty, Prototype delivers a fast-paced, relentlessly amoral and wonderfully brutal sandbox adventure in a detailed city filled with cool things to see and do.This open-world action game set in Manhattan is proof that even viral outbreaks can be incredibly fun if they're done right. A dark and brutal superhero-comic come alive. Prototype offers more than enough room for criticism due to its simple mission-design, unlovely graphics and boneheaded AI. Nevertheless it also copes with creating the intensive atmosphere of a city on the brink of disaster and of the player being the ultimate superhero, therefore resulting in a gameplay experience that is by far greater than the sum of its parts.If you’re a fan of superhero games or just love gratuitous violence, you can’t go wrong with Prototype.I wholeheartedly recommend it, with a small caution sign reserved for the little ones, because the game is violent on quite a large scale.

Honestly, this is probably one of the best open world games made to date. Even though the graphics are slightly dated it doesn't detract from the experience at all. You play as Alex Mercer, a man who woke up in a morgue with little to no memory of who he is or what happened to him. The entire story isn't handed to you by playing through the main missions, in order to fully understand what's happening to you and New York, you will need to seek out certain key people marked as Web of Intrigue targets. Hunting these people down and consuming them will give you pieces of the story, this method of storytelling is pretty interesting and made me want to keep searching just to figure out what the hell happened. By consuming powerful enemies you add new powers and abilities to your arsenal. I don't think there are many other games that can make you feel like an unstoppable badass that leaves a trail of death and destruction wherever you go like Prototype does. Just to clarify, you won't be so overpowered that you'll never have a challenge. As you progress through the game, the military will adapt and start making things a bit more difficult for you. They have viral detectors that can see through your disguise, supersoldiers that can match your strength, and there are times when your cover is blown and you'll end up fighting multiple tanks and strike teams of apache helicopters, so it can get pretty hectic if you don't know what you're doing. However, if you manage your powers pretty well and know what situations to use them for, even if ♥♥♥♥ hits the fan and you're under attack from all directions you can still come out on top fairly easily. Especially with the use of devastator attacks that have a large area of effect and can quickly turn the tide in your favor.

TL;DR version: You're a badass with a lot of powers and you can do a lot of cool stuff.

Overall I give it a solid 9/10. I highly recommend you get it if you see it on sale.