
- 71/100
- Players258 ratings
- 77/100
- Critics10 reviews
More scores
- Metacritic12 critic reviews
- 76/100
- Metacritic usersuser score
- 72/100
- GameFAQsJust Right
- 3.53/5
- Player reviews
- 75% positive10,427 reviews
- Steam Deck
- Playable
- Runs on
- Windows
- Price
- US$39.99
Where to get it

2012 · Radical Entertainment · Action-adventure · Adventure
Prototype 2
Prototype 2 is an open-world action game published by Activision and developed by Radical Entertainment. It's a direct sequel to Prototype and was announced at the 2010 Spike Video Game Awards.
- Released
- 24 April 2012
- Platforms
- PlayStation 3PlayStation 4WindowsXbox 360Xbox One
- Genres
- Action-adventureAdventureBeat 'em upBiopunkPlatformerPost-apocalypticScience
- Developers
- Radical Entertainment
- Publishers
- —
- Series
- Prototype
- Modes
- Single-player
- Perspective
- Third person
- Themes
- ActionScience fictionHorrorSurvivalSandboxOpen world
- Engine
- Titanium
- Country
- Canada
- Age ratings
- ACB MA 15+PEGI 18CLASS_IND 16ESRB M
- Languages
- English, French, German, Italian, Spanish (Spain)
- Time to beat
- 10hmain story20hcompletionist
About
Prototype 2 (stylized as [PROTOTYPE2]) is a 2012 action-adventure video game developed by Radical Entertainment and published by Activision, and the sequel to 2009's Prototype. First announced at the 2010 Spike VGA Awards, it was released in April 2012 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and in July 2012 for Microsoft Windows. In July 2015, the game was re-released alongside its predecessor as the Prototype Biohazard Bundle for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Separate versions of the two games became available in August 2015.
Prototype 2 shifts the focus towards a new protagonist, former U.S. Marine Sergeant James Heller, who seeks revenge on Alex Mercer, the protagonist of the original Prototype, after the death of his family during a new outbreak of the Blacklight virus in Manhattan, which was started by Mercer. Heller is infected with a strain of the virus that allows him to keep his humanity while granting him powers similar to Mercer's, including shapeshifting and consuming people, which he uses in his mission to stop Mercer and the Blacklight outbreak.
›Story
Two years after the events of the original game, Sergeant James Heller, after returning from touring in Iraq, discovers his wife and daughter to be declared dead, causing him to rejoin the military in the fight for NYZ against the Blacklight virus. Heller is briefed on the previous outbreaks in Idaho in the '60s and in NYZ in the events of the first game. He later finds Mercer and begins chasing him.
Pursuing Mercer for vengeance, Heller is infected by Mercer with a strain that imbues him with similar superhuman abilities. After blacking out, Heller awakens in a Yellow Zone lab where Gentek scientist Dr. Anton Koenig and Blackwatch Col. Douglas Rooks are experimenting on him.
Heller escapes from the Gentek base, when Mercer confronts him and claims Gentek and Blackwatch are responsible for recreating and cultivating the Blacklight virus, making them responsible for the second infection and the deaths of Heller's family. Revealing his plans to take down Gentek and Blackwatch, Mercer offers a truce to Heller. Unsure of Mercer's intentions Heller goes to his local pastor, Father Luis Guerra, for advice and help.
Using information supplied by Guerra, Heller hacks into Blacknet Terminals to find out about and sabotage a number of their operations. Gradually consuming his way through Blackwatch, Heller eventually finds and confronts Koenig, who claims to be on his side and reveals Blackwatch's super-soldier program, codenamed "Orion". Heller prevents Project: Orion's progress by killing a super-soldier who was injected with his DNA. After consuming one of the head scientists, Heller discovers that Koenig was observing him in order to find his weaknesses.
Enraged at Koenig's betrayal, Heller tracks him down only to discover that he has powers similar to he and Mercer, and is one of several "Evolved" agents planted in Gentek and Blackwatch by Mercer. After defeating and consuming the doctor, Mercer reveals to Heller that he intends to recruit him in an attempt to control NYZ. His doubts growing, Guerra then shows Heller a video tape of Mercer releasing the virus for the second time in Penn Station, the same place Mercer originally released and contracted the virus.
Enraged at Mercer's deception, Heller sets off to the Green Zone to hunt down Mercer's henchmen, including an Evolved agent in Gentek named Sabrina Galloway; upon confronting Galloway, however, Heller reluctantly teams up with her when she reveals she can help him take down Mercer. With Galloway's help, Heller soon finds that Mercer plans to infect the entire world through "Whitelight", a contaminated vaccine released by Gentek that actually serves to accelerate infection and evolution rather than prevent it.
Frustrated with Heller sabotaging his plans, Mercer kills Father Guerra; upon finding his corpse, however, a grieving Heller uses Guerra's phone to reach Athena, Guerra's contact who is revealed to be Dana Mercer. Dana explains that Heller's daughter, Maya, is still alive, prompting Heller to head for the Red Zone to take down Mercer and save Maya. After preventing Blackwatch's second attempt to level Manhattan Island, Rooks helps Heller reach his daughter, only for Galloway to betray him and take Maya to Mercer. Upon confronting Mercer, he reveals that he plans to solve international conflicts and world problems by infecting the entire human race, effectively creating a Superorganism with Maya at the center. After Mercer absorbs Galloway and the remaining Evolved, the two engage in a bloody duel, only for James to emerge victorious and to kill and consume Mercer.
Subsequently, Heller wipes out the infected in NYZ along with most of the Blacklight Virus; then using Mercer's absorbed memories, Heller locates and frees Maya and Dana from a vault. The story then ends with the three overlooking New York before Dana questions what to do next.
Players say
Media
The articlegameplay, story, development, reception
Gameplay
Similarly to its predecessor, Prototype 2 is an action-adventure game played from a third-person perspective and set in an open world based on modern-day Manhattan. Like Alex Mercer in the first game, the player character, James Heller, can shapeshift and assume other people's identities and memories by consuming them, although in the sequel this has become more tactical. Due to Blackwatch's actions in the Yellow Zone, if the player assumes the role of a soldier, people will react to him in a way that shows that they want nothing to do with him. To make sure that enemies do not overwhelm the player, a dodging system and new, more realistic AI were introduced.
Heller is able to use weapons in the game, such as ripping the Gatling cannon off a tank and using it against enemies. He can also sneak up on unsuspecting human enemies and inject them with the Blacklight virus, turning them into a "BioBomb". Heller also possesses superhuman strength and agility, near-invulnerability to harm, near-flight leaping and gliding, infinite stamina, increased speed, and a sonar sense. The sonar includes a new pulse ability that highlights the key features of an environment to make it easier for the player to find someone, instead of looking in a large crowd for a person with an icon above their head.
Story
S. Marine Sergeant James Heller, returning from a tour in Iraq, discovers his wife and daughter to be declared dead, causing him to rejoin the military in the fight for NYZ against the Blacklight virus. Heller finds out that Alex Mercer, who stopped the original Blacklight infection in 2008, is behind the new outbreak, having lost his faith in humanity and wishing to wipe it out to usher in a new golden age. Heller pursues vengeance against Mercer for the death of his family, but during a confrontation between the two, Heller is infected with Mercer's strain of Blacklight that imbues him with superhuman abilities, and blacks out.
He later awakens in a Yellow Zone lab where Gentek scientist Dr. Anton Koenig and Blackwatch Col. Douglas Rooks are experimenting on him. Heller escapes and is confronted by Mercer, who claims that the former should take his revenge on Gentek and Blackwatch, since they are responsible for recreating and cultivating the Blacklight virus.
Development
Development of the game started soon after the success of the first game and was in development for three years. The game was first shown at the Spike 2010 VGA Awards in December. The game was revealed to be the main focus of the April 2011 EGM Issue. It was displayed in EGM and EGMI in 2011 revealing many new details about the game's plot, characters and gameplay.
The game's graphics have been completely updated with buildings being much more detailed and deformation of vehicles, mutants and humans being much more visual. The game was also partially written by Dan Jolley.
Reception
Out of all Activision's titles displayed at Comic Con, Prototype 2 was the most well received. Greg Miller of IGN awarded Prototype 2 as Activision's best game at Comic Con and did not mention anything negative in his preview for the game.
Prototype 2 received "generally favorable reviews" on all platforms except the Xbox 360 version, which received "average" reviews, according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. PlanetXbox360 called the game a "wonderful sequel that surpasses the original". At the time of his departure from the show, Community creator Dan Harmon considered Prototype 2 a great game.
Releases by platformdates and regions as published
Editions and related releases
- Included in
- Prototype: Biohazard BundlePrototype Franchise Pack
- Follows
- PrototypePrototype Biohazard Bundle
- Editions
- Prototype 2: Limited Edition
In the same series
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Collections6 collections
Platform libraries
Years
- Games released in 2012List › April–June
- Games released in 2012List › July–September
Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.

