A Tale of Two Douches: Infamous 2 and Prototype 2 (PS3 & 360)

I never finished Prototype 2. In fact, I only got about 4 hours into it before I quietly but firmly said “Enough.” and even more firmly stood and strode not walked to the xbox, whilst commanding it to eject the disc like a pile of Bieber vomit.

I never finished Infamous The First either but I did finish Protoype the prototypical Prototype game AND I finished Infamous 2:More Infamous’r, so it all evens out.

Prototype 2 introduces Heller, a man give’n’er’ Hell so to speak. Apparently Alex Mercer, the sentient virus-that-walks-like-douche from the prototype Prototype caused the death of Heller’s wife and child. Heller sets out for revenge in an Uncharted inspired entirely linear sequence, only to find that he, not unlike every other soldier in the world, does not have enough bang-bang to annoy much less kill Mercer. So Mercer does what every creature annoyed by a gnat does: he gives Heller super powers. The same powers Mercer himself has, only more particley and prettified if you can call stringing the guts of a severed corpse between two buildings pretty.

Prototype the Second suffers from two major issues: Heller is an unrelenting stereotypical angry black man that fails to maintain the slight empathy generated by the setup and his gameplay centers entirely around doing horrible things to innocent people. As much as a cipher as Alex Mercer is there is no question he is not a GOOD DUDE. Heller is presented as a man seeking revenge for the death of his innocent family by killing lots of innocent families which is oxymoronic at best.

The greater crime is that P2:Judgement Day is a carbon copy of P1 with a shiny coat of paint. The UI is still brutally complex, though simplified from the first, and the jank is untouched but looks better. Players still have the ability to run straight up a building until something juts out from the building to cause them do a mid-air backflip and try to run up the building again. Lock-on is still mired with a hopeless camera that sways like a drunken cheerleader who strips on weekends on a party cruise during a tsunami. Everything troublesome and wrong about the first attempt is presented in its unvarnished glory, only with colors outside of red, pink and grey.

Infamous 2:The Messenger is a different shade of douche entirely. Cole the literal Messenger boy returns from the first game in time to see the city he and you worked so hard to save burn to the ground under the fiery fingers of The Beast. Weakened, he takes a slow boat, literally, to a post-Katrina New Orleans knock-off. Gifted with a new voice and some markedly better writing, Cole awakens into a whole new world, where super-powers are a new religion and bad people abuse that religion.

Unlike Prototype 2, Infamous 2 resolves many of the mechanical issues that plagued the first game as well as resolved many of the character issues that plagued the first game. Zeke, the annoying sidekick from the original is tolerably less annoying and there are even love interests that play into Cole’s gained (in)famy towards the end.

Cole still remains a gruff snarky douche, less a man chasing his destiny than a dog chasing its tail. Events happen around him as he follows endless radio directions guiding him through the ostensibly open world but hopelessly linear story. Both franchises draw from the strengths of each other, with Prototype 2 creating a populated and lived in New York under military quarantine, while Infamous 2 has a broader leveling system and some borrowed EFX from other Sony developers.

Heller’s master class in douche kept me from playing more than a couple hours of Prototype. Cole’s understated douche wasn’t enough to keep me from finishing Infamous 2.

Your taste for douche may vary.

The Importance of discovery: Why my kid ruins games for me

Infamous 2 looks like a great game. It looks like an improved version of Infamous, with beautiful graphics, a spectacular particle and smoke engine (borrowed from Killzone 3, I suspect) and better, more subtle voice acting. I experience these things in snippets and glances as I move through the living room. I know when the game is being played because it has impressive and responsive bass rumbling through my sub-woofer.

I have no interest in playing Infamous 2 but that is no fault of the game. It is because of my step-son.

A 15 year old with no interest in anything but yapping on Skype, online gaming in steam, and gaming on the PS3/360, he dives deep into new games. Genetically unable to not find the most efficient path to maximize return in an upgrade path he grinds games relentlessly. RELENTLESSLY.

He will ignore critical path and story missions until he has leveled up enough to breeze through. He returns to Oblivion constantly in search of exploits to allow his character to grow and change but has never beaten the game.

Like the first game, Infamous 2 has both a morality system and upgrades that are discovered during missions. I know this from watching him play.

I feel like I have come to know everything from the short moments I have watched him play. I have wandered in during pivotal story-moments, I have seen morality choices play out, and I have stumbled across both endings.

I do not begrudge my stepson doing what he digs but I have started enforcing rules about when he gets to play. As a teen with virtually unlimited time, he can tear through a game in a couple of days, and as an adult, I can’t, which is not a bad thing.

It seems petty, but I forbade him from playing Arkham City until I had beaten the story. I will do the same with Uncharted 3.

Infamous has taught me that a game experienced second hand is a game often not worth playing.