The storyline of Prototype is rather simplistic though the cut scenes and flashbacks tend to make it unnecessarily difficult to follow. You’re dropped into the shoes of Alex Mercer just as he’s about to get sliced and dice on the autopsy table. You wake up, scare the pants off the shady biohazard-suited monkeys about to fillet you, and discover that you been given some seriously cool powers: absorbing bullets, running up the sides of buildings, and leaping 30 feet in the air without breaking a sweat. Unfortunately, you’ve lost your memory (how convenient) and don’t know who you are or how you got there. As the story unfolds you learn Mercer was infected with a new virus that is turning the rest of the city into mutant freaks and there’s a shady Blackwater-style organization trying to crush you under its boot with the help of the U.S. Marines.

Gameplay & Graphics

As you play, you earn points with which you can choose to use in order to evolve Alex into a more efficient killing machine. Want to grow sword blades out of your arms? How about turning your fists into giant tank-slaying hammers? Or maybe you want to coat your entire body in bulletproof armor Spawn-style. You can do all of that and much more. You’ll also develop the ability to heal yourself by consuming others, an ability you eventually use to acquire new skills and access to previously inaccessible areas. Also, once you’ve consumed someone, you can use their likeness as a disguise which is great when you’re being perused by half an armored battalion. Just slip around a corner and morph into an overweight policeman or a suited Wall Street type and the heat is off, instantly.

All of those abilities come in handy as you discover new and more gruesome ways to turn your enemies into paste. Not only will you have military units to deal with (which grow progressively more difficult to defeat as the commanders order out the big guns – tanks, attack helicopters, and super-soldiers — but you’ll also have to wade through hordes of infected which hide their own monstrosities – huge hunters and super-hunters determined to turn you into lunch. Slice and dice, pound and smash, or grab and toss all of your foes around like rag dolls and you’ll find yourself chuckling even as you feel bad about it. It’s great fun. You’ll also earn the ability to control those tanks and helicopters yourself but doing so feels boring compared to using your own super human mutant powers.

Some of those powers can be upgraded to near god-like levels including Mercer’s critical mass attacks. These attacks require you to consume enough people to overfill your health bar. Mercer can then convert that excess life energy into amazingly devastating area attacks including a tentacle spike attack and tentacle swarm attacks that destroy most everything within a large radius around him. These work great when you find yourself in a tight spot, unfortunately, to launch the attacks you need a small amount of “preparation” time and during this you’re vulnerable.
Chances are, for the first few hours of gameplay you’ll be so engrossed in gaining new abilities and discovering just how many pieces you can chop that grenade launcher toting spec-ops soldier into to see the flaws in Prototype. That’s a good thing because once you notice them the game gets old quick.

Chief among my complaints about the game are the graphics. Granted, you would need a serious machine running some heavy duty hardware to render the vast amounts of NPCs, vehicles, and buildings in Prototype’s version of New York City but the character models are all bland with almost no variation among them, and even the cut scenes are sort of last-gen. In that respect, the game very much reminds me of Crackdown but in this case the vanilla visuals feel less like a stylistic choice and more like a product of undisclosed limitations.

The other huge issue is the inconsistent AI. Sometimes you can pluck an enemy soldier out of a crowd and consume him with only one or two people noticing. At other times, if you merely bump into a soldier while walking past him, he’ll raise an alarm and call for backup. This is also reflected on a large scale in the city itself. As the infectious outbreak rages on, parts of Manhattan become festering pits of decay and disease clouded by thousands of zombie-like walking corpses yet just down the street a ways life goes on as if nothing at all is out of place.

Also, as the game progresses Alex must combat more and more types of enemies, each more deadly than the last, but none of them ever get any smarter (in fact, the military super soldiers are really some of the dumbest of the bunch.) To compensate, in the latter missions of the single player story, Prototype throws increasing numbers of enemies at you leaving you overwhelmed. It’s a cheap way to increase the level of difficulty and can really get to be annoying as four tanks, six helicopters, two dozen soldiers, and a handful of hunters are all coming at you at once and you don’t even have to pull yourself off the ground before getting slammed by the next rocket or pummeled by a super-hunter’s lightning fast attack.

Sound

The soundtrack and voice work mimic the graphics and are quite poor and really don’t add much of anything to the game. Alex’s voice in particular sounds cheesy and over-the-top in his cut scenes and the bad guys are so cartoony it’s not even funny.

Value

Taking a cue from (and stealing the map system of) Spiderman, the playable area is huge. In that area you find a ton of collectibles (200 “geography” nodes plus 50 tutorial nodes) as well as a host of mini-game type challenges. Some of these challenges are fun, requiring you glide through the air and land at the center of a bull’s-eye. Some are frustratingly difficult (many of the checkpoint races require precision navigation that Alex’s parkour system just can’t manage.) However, there is no multiplayer version of the game. In this instance, it actually makes sense not to include multiplayer. Competing against similarly powerful mutants wouldn’t be as much fun as cutting paths through weaker enemies.

Final Verdict

In the end, Prototype feels like two separate games smashed into one. You have the excellent freedom and killer destructive abilities of a first-class sandbox title combined with the mediocre graphics and poor scripting and abysmal dialog of a third-rate action title. However, the fun you’ll have totally destroying New York City as a big, brutish jerk with a bad attitude makes Prototype at least worth a play through.

Pros: Incredibly fun superpowers, freedom to create tons of chaos, massive playable area.

Cons: Poor graphics, Annoying AI, clunky storyline and script.

Overall Score: 7/10

Masthead Studios, a leading independent developer of MMOs, announced today that the highly anticipated MMORPG Earthrise will be available through digital distribution on February 4, 2011.

“The Masthead team is thrilled for the fans who have been following Earthrise closely to now be able to play the game that they have been so eagerly awaiting,” said Atanas Atanasov, producer of Earthrise and director of Masthead Studios. “We have worked incredibly hard to make Earthrise the best sandbox MMORPG on the market, and we can’t wait for players to fully experience all of our hard work and become immersed in Enterra.”

Earthrise is a post-apocalyptic, sci-fi MMORPG set in the distant future. Featuring a unique skill-based advancement system and player-driven economy, as well as extensive, meaningful player-vs.-player combat, Earthrise gives players countless options to forge their destiny through its sandbox-style game mechanics. Whether a noble soldier in the raging conflict between the Continoma and the Noir, a criminal hiding from the law, or a world-renowned engineer whose power extends into intricate trade and politics, players’ actions will echo throughout the game world. Visit www.play-earthrise.com to learn more.

Top Earthrise features include :
• Unique sandbox environment, allowing players’ actions to influence the entire game world.
• Distinctive, high-tech post-apocalyptic setting.
• Sophisticated Player vs. Player (PvP) mechanics.
• Dynamic third-person combat featuring dynamic targeting, customizable power armor and hundreds of high-tech weapons.
• Deep crafting mechanics that allow players to design and manufacture unique items from blueprints and raw resources.
• Friendly to casual players, with challenges designed for the hardcore audience.
• Single, massive world. Earthrise will run on one server for players in all regions.

Minimum Requirements:

OS: Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista SP1, Windows 7
Free hard drive space: 20 GB
CPU: 2.4+ GHz Single Core Processor
RAM: 2 GB
Video Card: NVIDIA 7800GT+ or ATI Radeon 9800 SE 256-bit
High bandwidth internet connection (DSL, Cable)

The simple answer is yes. Gran Turismo 5 for the PS3 has stunning visuals, an extremely realistic driving feel, and overall is very smooth. GT5 offers many different racing styles for players. The NASCAR simulation is probably one of the most notable race types.
Players can indulge themselves in 300 lap races just like the pro’s, but for you guys that don’t enjoy just turning left there are plenty of other options for you. Racing gokarts is another very intuitive race type that Sony put into the game. The karts feel realistic and the tracks were clearly thought out.

Licensing is yet another main part of the game and is required to get into certain races. In order to get different licenses the player must complete a set of twelve tests per license. These tests range from timed stopping distances to overtaking and drafting.
Aside from the licensing, these are all side pieces to the main game which is absolutely massive. There are tons of races for players to choose from. These have different vehicle requirements to enter such as weight, body style, horsepower, drive train, year of production, country of production and many more. This is just a touch on Gran Turismo 5, but because it’s such a massive game, we think you should just check it out for yourself.

The Intel Core i5 750 quad core is an excellent choice. Pair it with a nice H55 motherboard and a 2x4GB kit of DDR3 1600MHz RAM and you should be sitting at about $350, leaving you with about $150 for a graphics card which is very respectable.

The above point is very important when building your own system. There is no point what so ever in blowing all your mid-range budget on an amazing processor if you are only going to under-spend on your graphics card. This will only result in a poorer performance than if you spent half as much on both your processor and graphics card put together.

When it comes to PC gaming, most people only think of graphics cards when a game is running slow, but the graphics card can only run a game as fast as the processor powering it. When a computer has a fast graphics card but a slow processor, the graphics card is bottlenecked by it essentially making it pointless to have a fast graphics card. So, what are some good CPU options for the different levels of gamers out there today?

We will be addressing three different budget levels of processing power for PC gamers in this series. At the same time, it’s vitally important to keep in mind the platform costs as well. This means you must be thinking about the cost of motherboards, RAM, and even graphics cards. Graphics cards only need to be kept in mind if you are looking for a multi-GPU solution because some platforms don’t natively support having more than one graphics card of a certain brand. AMD and Nvidia are the two brands in the graphics world at the moment. AMD platforms don’t support SLI, more than one Nvidia card on one motherboard, unless the motherboard has an Nvidia chipset. Recently, however, people have found a work around that allows you to enable SLI on motherboards with AMD chipsets. Intel’s newer offerings support both SLI and CrossfireX, AMD’s version of having two AMD cards on one motherboard.

The three levels being addressed today are going to be budget, mid-level, and enthusiast. Prices are based off of Newegg.com in Jan 2011 and are subject to change at any time.

Budget Gaming Solution:

The budget gamer is someone who has a limited amount of money to spend but doesn’t want to lack in performance. We’re going to say the budget gamer has a limit of $250 to spend on upgrading the main components; the motherboard, processor, RAM, and graphics card. The best choice for this person is going to be an AMD Athlon x2 240. The chip can be found for around $50 and will have the possibility of being unlocked to a full quad core. A decent motherboard and a 4GB kit of DDR2 RAM can be bought for right around $100 leaving the budget gamer with right around $100 for a pretty decent graphics card.

AMD Athlon x2 240:

This question is something that should be asked before you even start the planning process of a build because it determines the other main components you should choose to build with such as the motherboard, RAM, graphics card(s), and even cooling.

AMD and Intel both have many, many options for you to choose from that are excellent choices for different situations. AMD, at the moment, is most likely going to give you the best bang for your buck and provide a nice a price to performance ratio while still giving the budget gamer plenty of power and up to six cores.

Intel on the other hand, in the high end area, will give you the most performance and provide you with a higher chance of being able to overclock higher. In the mid range area, AMD is a clear winner due to the low prices and almost all of the dual and triple core chips on the market have the capability of being unlocked to quad cores with the full amount of cache being unlocked too. Intel does have offerings in this area, but they do perform fairly close to the high-end offerings they have and come with a similar price tag. The bottom line is if you are an enthusiast you should go with Intel for the overclocking side of things and budget gaming builders should choose to build off either an AMD x4 or x6 CPU because they perform very well at a much lower price.

Now, you may be asking yourself, “What graphics card should I get in order to play this game?” There are multiple answers to this question. In order to pick the right graphics card for you, you need to first take a look at a few things. The first thing you need to look at is your monitor’s native resolution, which can be found in Windows if you don’t know it. The second is, how high would you like the quality settings turned up? And finally, how much money are you willing to spend, or what is your budget.

For those of you that are on a tight budget or lower resolution, read #1. If you want something budget friendly and capable of handling itself at all resolutions in a decent fashion, read #2. And finally, if you are a person that has no budget and is simply wanting the best of the best to run everything maxed out at high resolutions, continue to #3.

First, here are the system requirements as published by the developer:

• 12GB Hard Drive Space
• Windows Operating System(XP or newer)
• Socket 775 Dual core or newer CPU
• 2GB RAM
• 256MB 8600GT/X1950Pro or better graphics card

1. Those of us on a tight budget probably still have the urge to play the game with the settings jacked up, so I’m going to recommend that you get a GTS250. These cards can be found in the sub $100 price margin, new in box. This means that you could probably find a used card for somewhere around $75 if you know where you’re looking. This card, paired with a dual core processor, is perfectly capable of running most games even in the 1920×1200 resolution, but you do have to sacrifice some eye candy to achieve an even remotely desirable result.

2. Now, there are a lot of cards better than the above-mentioned GTS250, but which one is that I recommend? It is the AMD HD5770. The HD5770 is a very popular card because of its sub $150 price mark. These cards use up a little less power on idle and load than the GTS250, outperform it by a lot, boasts DX11 support, and it’s reference designed coolers even run quieter.

3. The final card recommendation I have for you is the enthusiast level. Now, I could just tell you to get the most expensive card on the market, but that won’t be necessary for this game to run at 60+ frames per second even at a 2560×1600 resolution. The card I’m going to suggest for this category is the AMD HD6870. These cards can be found for around $240 online. This card pumps out enough performance to run with all the settings on high without showing so much as a hiccup. Another nice thing about this card is that it was designed with a low power bill in mind. It does use more power than the two cards mentioned above, but it doesn’t use as much power as cards in the same performance class as it is.

Well, there you have it! Now you can be prepared, graphics-wise that is, to play countless rounds of zombies through the night when this long-anticipated title is finally put out on shelves next Tuesday at 12AM!

For those that struggle installing a new graphics card, be sure to check out our article on Installing a Graphics Card

Especially in multiplayer mode, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 requires a lot of system power. This can cause less powerful PC’s to run the game at a slower rate, often making the game unplayable as there is so much lag.

Removing background programs whilst modern warfare 2 is running will reduce lag dramatically, for a guide on how to do this, read our article on removing programs from startup. However, the quickest and simplest way of tweaking the settings to speed up your game play experience and stop Modern Warfare 2 lag is via the ‘Advanced Video’ settings. These settings basically determine the amount of visual detail you see when playing Modern Warfare 2.

The higher the detail, the higher the amount of processes your PC has to carry out, often resulting in lag. Therefore, less detail means your PC has less jobs to do which enables it to perform at a faster rate.

• First off, open Modern Warfare 2
• Click on either Special Ops, Campaign or Multi player. Depending on which you would like to speed up.
• Click Options > Video > Advanced Video
• 

  Modern Warfare 2 Advanced Graphic Settings

  • Aspect Ratio: Leave this at Auto, it will decide what is best.
  • Anti Aliasing: AA softens the edges of your surroundings, try taking this down a notch, from 4x to 2x for example. I have found from personal experience that this is the biggest culprit for causing modern warfare 2 lag.

   

  • Screen Refresh Rate: Leave this at 60hz unless you have an expensive monitor and know what you are doing.
  • Sync Every Frame: No.
  • Shadows: This is self explanatory. The enhance the graphics a lot but use a lot of system energy. I would recommend turning shadows OFF.
  • Specular Map: Spec Map shows a reflection of your surroundings on your gun, as well as showing shadows on your gun and hand. For the amount of power this requires, it is unnecessary. Turn it OFF
  • Depth Of Field: Lots of people have said that when this is turned OFF, the game runs much faster. Try it.
  • Soften Smoke Edges. For the amount of time you see this effect and the drop in FPS it gives, leave it OFF.
  • Ragdoll: The Ragdoll effect is basically animations of corpses being flung around when they die/their body gets hit with a grenade. It might be cool for a bit, but not when it makes you lag like crazy. Turn it OFF

   

  • Bullet Impacts: I find this pretty helpful for my gameplay as it helps to determine where the enemy are firing from. It barely uses up any resources so I suggest keep it ON

   

  • Texture Quality: All this really means is the amount of detail that is placed on your surroundings. Keeping this set to Automatic is a good idea, or you can experiment with low/medium/high.

  Editing modern warfare 2 settings to reduce lag is just a matter of trial and error to see what you can get away with, without losing out too much on graphical effects. Alternatively, you may also want to consider turning off firewalls to speed up gameplay. However, there are obvious risks in doing so.