Prototype
PC/PS3/X360
Activision

Illness isn't very exciting. What normally happens when you get a cold is that you sniffle a bit, feel sorry for yourself and spend a day or two under a duvet on the sofa watching horrible cow people undergo traumatic paternity battles on Jeremy Kyle. Videogame illness is far more enjoyable. When someone gets ill in a videogame, they morph their hands into massive hammers, pick up a businessman then run up a skyscraper and fling him at a helicopter. That's why games are better than real life.

To be fair to Prototype, its ludicrous portrayal of the brilliant effects of a deadly virus are largely limited to its protagonist, Alex Mercer. Everyone else who catches it turns into a zombie. There's a ton of them, too, a whole Manhattan full of normal people trudging through their daily existence who are gradually converted into a groaning mass of hideous, semi-humans who shuffle around breaking things and fighting each other as the last traces of humanity collapse around them. We're back to Jeremy Kyle again.

This city, which gradually shifts from digital normality to a writhing, infected hell - complete with explosive military intervention - is as much of the star of the show as young Alex. It's the distant relative of the playground Grand Theft Auto 3 planted into the consciousness of games developers a decade ago, a big, breathing urban landscape to explore and decimate at your leisure.

It's the decimating bit that Prototype likes best. Alex is blessed (or cursed, or, perhaps most accurately, injected) with a growing array of insanely destructive abilities, the high-flying free movement of Spider-Man combined with the aggressive force of Crackdown and multiplied by a factor of stupid. It's done brilliantly, and the upshot is that this open world superhero romp is now at the peak of its genre. And a genre it certainly is, germinated from Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, built upon by aforementioned Spider-Man and Crackdown and likely to climb ever higher with the upcoming Crackdown 2.

Some day, the format will see its structure escape from the "go to spot x, complete task Y in spot Z then repeat" format. Complete missions, watch cutscenes, unlock abilities - for the moment, Prototype and its brethren all follow this well worn guideline to add a sense of progress to the epic freeform violence. The changing city is a certainly a step towards something more organic, and the hammy plot is slickly delivered, but these are the icing on the cake.

The joy of this genre is in the way you move through the landscape and break the things in it, and for that, Prototype is unparalleled.

8/10