It’s a shame that the only way sandbox games — which promise unparalleled freedom in gameplay — can offer any challenge is by taking away the freedom that made you want to play the game in the first place. In one particular game, that comes in the form of the police, who ruthlessly chase you down if you so much as kill one innocent pedestrian. In Prototype, the authorities are not quite so quick to pounce, but when they do, they pounce hard.

Nevertheless, Prototype does offer an impressive amount of freedom. As Alex Mercer, a New Yorker infected with a virus that grants him superpowers, you can run straight up a skyscraper, glide through the air, pick up and chuck cars with ease, and any number of things you’d only see Superman do on a bad day.

But of course, running through Manhattan simply tearing things up isn’t enough for a complete game, so here come those pesky story missions. Alex finds himself trapped inside a genetic research facility, bereft of memory but sporting fearful new powers, including the ability to absorb people’s bodies to disguise himself and inherit their memories. And thus, Alex sets off to find people who know something about his past, the virus infecting New York and the military faction Blackwatch intent on either containing or destroying it.

The story itself is rather bland, and the missions usually serve as nothing more than an excuse for Alex to wreak more havoc on Manhattan. The problem arises when you realize that you’re quite capable of doing that on your own and don’t need the game shepherding you from point A to point B in order to do it some more. The only incentive to progress the story is to unlock certain abilities that you only get for revealing certain plot points.

Generally, I’m a big fan of both sandbox games and story. What makes some games so great is that it does both those things exceedingly well. It gives you freedom to go anywhere and do anything while also telling a story that will have you empathizing with the characters and wanting to know what happens next. With Prototype, the emphasis has been shifted more to the side of freestyle gameplay, and as a result, the story has suffered.

The amount of freedom Prototype gives you is no small matter. I would find myself ditching the story missions in favor of picking up a random pedestrian from the street, then running to the top of the nearest skyscraper and throwing the unlucky pedestrian into the sky. Then I’d jump-kick a helicopter to make it explode and rocket myself back to the ground, landing with a huge shockwave that caused all nearby vehicles to explode simultaneously in a beautiful ring of fire and metal. Believe me, I had a huge grin on my face for the majority of the time I was playing.

The story missions range from insultingly easy to maddeningly hard. As I mentioned, the only way the game can think of to give you any sort of challenge is to take away the massive amount of freedom you’ve been enjoying. Enemies swarm you by the dozens, making it difficult to fly or run away. Sometimes missions take place in a small, enclosed area, which almost seems like a slap in the face to the huge expanse of Manhattan that you usually get to play around in. There are even a few escort missions in the mix, because we apparently still have not learned in 2009 that escort missions need to be taken behind the shed and put down forever.

Alex has several powers at his disposal, such as the ability to turn his hands into giant claws or his entire arm into a giant blade. The game seems to think that you’re supposed to pick the one most suited to the situation at hand, but you’re much more likely to pick your favorite and stick with it until the end of the game. For me, it was the Whipfist ability, which turns Alex’s arms into two black anacondas of death. It has range and strength and can even be used to hijack helicopters and tanks from a distance. How is a mere giant blade supposed to compete with that?

Even though the story falls short, Prototype is a ton of fun while it lasts. The upgrade system, in which experience points are traded for new powers and abilities, provides a much better incentive to keep playing than the shoddy story does, and it will definitely keep you entertained for a good 20 hours or so. I’d definitely recommend Prototype for anyone who ever dreamed of being Superman but with less people-saving and a lot more helicopter-smashing.