Full ReleasePC

Prototype 2

Radical Entertainment · Action, Open World, Adventure

Overview

Become the ultimate shape-shifting weapon!

Welcome to New York Zero.

The sequel to Radical Entertainment’s best-selling open-world action game of 2009, Prototype® 2 takes the unsurpassed carnage of the original Prototype and continues the experience of becoming the ultimate shape-shifting weapon. You are Sgt James Heller, husband to a deceased wife and child and a soldier left simply to die.

As the game’s all-new infected protagonist, players will experience Sgt James Heller cutting a bloody swathe through the wastelands of post-viral New York Zero. Equipped with unparalleled new shapeshifting powers,players will gradually build a vast genetic arsenal of deadly new biological weapons and abilities as they hunt, kill and consume their way toward the ultimate goal – to kill…Alex…Mercer!

Are you ready to murder your maker?

Key Features:

The Power of Tendrils: Prepare to unleash the ultimate form of shape-shifting devastation. Sgt James Heller’s incredible new Tendril power lets you lift and tear apart cars and military vehicles, ensnare powerful infected beasts and even rip large groups of enemies to shreds. Get ready to unleash hell!
Customize Your Killer: Prototype 2 delivers the raw power of character customization back into your hands, allowing players to creatively mix-n-match a devastating range of new Mutation perks into their ultimate Prototype. Faster and bigger locomotion abilities, sharper claws or even enhanced disguise abilities – the choice is yours!
Hunt – Kill – Become: Imagine having the power to track down any enemy by unleashing a powerful sonar-pulse from your body! Sgt James Heller brings an all-new dimension to the Prototype experience by letting you Hunt, Kill and Become anyone standing in your way. Disguise yourself as a soldier, scientist or anyone at all whilst absorbing their memories and acquiring new abilities. It doesn’t get any better than this!
Bring Down the Devil: Gamers will experience the epic story of Sgt James Heller attempting to take down the devil himself… Alex Mercer. Unraveled against the explosive backdrop of New York Zero and it’s vicious factions warring for control over the infection, Prototype 2 sets the stage for the ultimate showdown “event” videogame of 2012.
Size Does Matter: Utilizing the unparalleled technology of Radical’s proprietary ‘Titanium 2.0’ engine, Prototype 2 will redefine gamer’s expectations of over-the-top open world action. Witness building-sized Infected behemoths bullrushing entire city streets, whilst gliding and parkouring across swarms of highly trained Blackwatch soldiers. Prototype 2 = Bigger, Badder, Better!
New York Zero: An All New Open-World Hunting Ground! The New York that humanity has come to know and love over the years no longer exists…it is now New York Zero, or more simply, NYZ.

PROTOTYPE 2’s NYZ open-world sandbox is broken up into three completely distinct zones. From the heavily militarized “Green Zone”, to the overcrowded refugee shanty town camps of the quarantined “Yellow Zone”, all the way to the war-ravaged nightmare known as the “Red Zone” – this is a city unlike anything gamer’s have experienced before. The home of Alex Mercer, the Red Zone portrays a nightmarish vision where the Blacklight virus has completely overrun the city’s shattered skyscrapers and population, with infection and the risk of death at every corner.

From the game's Steam store page.

THE GAMEQ VERDICT5,853 reviews analyzed

What players are actually saying

1. Summary

Prototype 2 puts you in the boots of Sergeant James Heller, a soldier infected by Alex Mercer, the first game's protagonist, and turned loose in a quarantined New York split into three zones. The sense of power is what players praise most. Heller sprints up skyscrapers, glides between rooftops, rips the guns off tanks and helicopters, eats anyone on the street to heal or wear their face, and fights with claws, a blade arm, hammerfists, a whipfist and new tendrils, two of them bound at once. Many reviewers who played the first game say the fighting, controls and side content are better here, and pleas for a Prototype 3 or a remaster turn up nearly every year.

Most negative reviews are about the PC port. 79% of them describe technical problems: crashes at launch, infinite loading screens, single-digit frame rates on AMD cards, a memory leak, and a soft-lock in an early mission that stopped players minutes into the campaign. For a decade, players traded workarounds, from limiting the game to a few CPU cores to unplugging the keyboard, and from 2024 many pointed to a community mod, Prototype2Fix. Reviewers say a September 2025 patch fixed much of this, and reviews from the year after it are more positive: 86% recommend the game, up from 79% in the year before. On the design, players are divided. Many who compare the two games say the sequel plays better than Prototype, but fans of the first game miss its movement and wider move set and dislike what the story does to Alex Mercer. Heller's constant swearing, an easy difficulty, repetitive missions and a price many reviewers call too high for a 2012 game are the other recurring caveats.

2. What keeps coming up

What players praise

Being an unstoppable bioweaponHigh

The powers and the movement draw more praise in the positive reviews than anything else. Heller starts strong and ends near-invincible: claws, a blade arm, hammerfists, a whipfist and tendrils that pin enemies and tear vehicles apart, plus a shield that blocks and reflects rockets, a dodge, bio-bombs that turn people into living grenades, and a summoned pack of Brawlers. Players describe sprinting up buildings, gliding across districts, kicking helicopters out of the sky and ripping the guns off tanks to turn on the soldiers. "Few games make you feel as overpowered and unstoppable as this one does," wrote one player in 2026. Reviewers who played the first game often say the fighting is smoother here, with a useful dodge, two powers ready at once and less stun-locking. Some also name the cost: the power fantasy leaves little challenge, and the controls can fight you on keyboard and mouse (both covered below).

Side missions and collectibles that pay offMedium

Some reviewers who compare the extras with the first game's prefer these. Blacknet side missions come as short story arcs, black boxes carry audio logs about Blackwatch's atrocities, and lairs and field ops reward you with mutations, so clearing the map makes Heller stronger. The collectibles menu marks the rough area of anything you missed; one player said "the collectibles map has a ping/general location for all the collectibles" and wished every open-world game did it. A few reviewers say it was the first game they ever completed to 100%. Weapon upgrades come from consuming marked targets, and level-ups go into health, speed and similar stats. Others found the first game's shop of moves more satisfying, or say the side missions repeat the same few tasks.

Nothing else plays like itMedium

Much of the affection is about the kind of game this is. Reviewers compare it to Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, inFamous, Spider-Man and Venom, and some say nothing like it gets made any more: "They genuinely don't make open-world games like this anymore." Many first played it on Xbox 360 or PS3 as kids or teenagers and bought it again on Steam, and a number of reviews from 2025 and 2026, from returning players and a few newcomers, say it still holds up. Some of the most upvoted reviews are nothing more than pleas for a Prototype 3.

Disguise and stealth infiltrationLow

Consuming a commander and walking into a Blackwatch base wearing his face is a favourite trick. Players like the stealth tools, including a hunting pulse that tracks targets and a view that shows which enemies are being watched before you consume one. A few reviewers call the stealth a joke because the soldiers notice so little, even a man sprinting up a wall in front of them.

Where players are split

A better game than Prototype 1, a weaker sequelHigh

The first game is the yardstick for many reviewers, and those who compare the two disagree about what matters. Those who prefer the sequel point to the combat, controls, graphics, a livelier city and side content worth doing; one summed it up as "vastly improved over the previous prototype in nearly all ways except story." Fans of the first game answer that much of what they loved was cut: the armor form (now a cosmetic skin), muscle mass, the charged jump, wall grabs and slides, several devastators and many combo moves. They say Heller moves slower than Mercer, that upgrades arrive on a fixed track, and that New York is now three islands with loading screens between them. Even some who prefer the sequel land in the middle: it is "the better Prototype, but still just pretty ok in the end."

The story, Heller and Mercer's turnHigh

Opinion on the story splits. Many short positive reviews list a good story among the reasons to play, and a few prefer Heller's revenge plot to the first game's amnesia mystery. Much of the criticism concerns Alex Mercer, the first game's protagonist, who returns as a villain bent on infecting the world with little explanation inside the game. Several reviewers say you need the tie-in comics to understand his motives, and one notes that the first game's Pariah setup is dropped; a 2018 reviewer wrote that "it genuinely feels like they character assassinated Alex Mercer." Heller divides players too. Some find him a funny, blunt antihero ("Play it for Heller. He's one of the coolest protagonists i've had in a videogame."). Others find him angry and one-note, and a few say the cast swears every other sentence; even a player who recommended the game warned, "Everyone swears a little too much. You'll see what I mean." Some treat the writing as so over the top that it becomes funny, and the shortest version of the complaint is "Fun gameplay, terrible writing."

Too easy, or happily overpoweredLow

Many reviewers find the game easy and disagree on whether that is a flaw. Those who mind say the shield and hammerfists carry you through and that even the higher difficulties are not very punishing: "Once you get your shield, you will never die in this game." Some recommend starting on Hard. Others welcome a game that is less frustrating than the first, with less stun-locking, and say ease is the point of a power fantasy.

Boss fights and the final showdownLow

Some players call the final battle against Mercer a highlight that tests everything they have learned. Others find the Goliath fights frantic and the finale a letdown: "The final boss fight was a big let down, has quick time events, strips the player of many of their abilities and is confined to a small rooftop." A few reviewers also complain that the Evolved mini-boss fights are copies of one another, with the same weapon and attack pattern each time.

The September 2025 patchLow

Reviews from September 29, 2025 onward describe a patch for a port many reviewers had written off as abandoned. Returning players report that after the patch it runs on Windows 11 with all CPU cores active and no mods: "as of Sept 2025, the game is playable on modern hardware and no longer requires external patches or limiting CPU cores in Task manager." Another wrote, "ACTIVISION FINALLY, FINALLY LISTENED." In the year after the patch, 20% of reviews mentioned technical problems, down from 38% in the year before. Not everyone was helped. Some players still report crashes, poor frame rates or a 1080p ceiling, and one says the update broke the community fix they had relied on: "Prior to the 2025 update, the Protototype2Fix worked just fine... Now, I can't even start missions with and without that fix."

What frustrates players

A PC port that often would not startHigh

Technical trouble dominates the negative reviews: 79% of them describe it, and 21% of positive reviews bring it up as well, often alongside the fix that worked. Many negative reviews never got past launch, a black screen or a loading screen. For years the standard advice was a ritual of workarounds: limit Steam or the game to four cores, or one; unplug the keyboard or disable the HID-compliant consumer control devices in Device Manager; run it in Windows 7 or even Windows 98 compatibility mode; download missing files or a German audio pack; or switch the game to Russian. From 2024, reviewers increasingly point to a community mod on Nexus Mods, Prototype2Fix. Many negative reviews praise the game in the same breath ("abysmal port, great game"); others object to paying for something that will not run without outside help, and some ask Steam to stop selling it. A recommending reviewer who needed the mod wrote, "Frankly I think the mod creator should be getting your money".

Crashes, frame-rate collapse and AMD cardsMedium

Even when it started, the port often degraded. Reviewers describe a memory leak that makes frame rates sink over minutes to half an hour until the game crawls or crashes, and say alt-tabbing out and back resets it; "There's a terrible memory leak problem," wrote a reviewer in 2013. From 2014 to 2016, owners of AMD and ATI Radeon cards reported single-digit frame rates, some of them on the menu. 2015 was the game's worst year in the reviews, at 55% positive, and AMD, ATI or Radeon cards come up in 57 of that year's 208 negative reviews. "If you are running an AMD graphics card i would strongly advise against buying this game," reads one of the most upvoted warnings. Others report infinite loading screens after cutscenes, crashes when a cutscene starts and corrupted saves.

The Operation Flytrap soft-lockMedium

Shortly after Heller gains his claws, the game asks for a claw pounce on a Blackwatch trooper, and reviewers report that on fast multi-core PCs the objective often never registers, which freezes the campaign. The fix passed around for a decade was to drop the game to a single CPU core or cap it at 30 fps for that moment. One player who still recommended the game wrote that "this is the first time I've had to force Windows to use fewer CPU cores to get past one stupid mission at the very start of he game". Another got stuck there and refunded the game. Only 2 of the 426 reviews written after the September 2025 patch mention the bug.

Keyboard, mouse, camera and lock-onMedium

Keyboard and mouse players report a string of control problems. Mouse acceleration is tied to the frame rate, they say, so the camera speeds up and slows down as performance swings; one player put it in capitals: "IS TIED TO THE FRAMERATE OF THE GAME". The lock-on and the context button grab the nearest bench, car or barrel instead of the enemy you meant, which can blow a stealth consume: "The lock on is useless and will select everything except what you want." The camera struggles indoors, and some players needed a Steam Big Picture layout before the game recognised their controller. Reviewers often advise playing with a controller. Steam Deck owners report mixed results, from "Runs flawlessly on steam deck at 60 fps." to controls that do nothing until remapped and a game that never ran.

Repetitive missionsMedium

Even fans admit the missions repeat: consume a target, infiltrate a base, escort a convoy, clear a lair, chase someone across rooftops. "Go here, kill this guy, go there, kill that guy," as one reviewer put it. Reviewers single out the side missions, the timed collection runs and the repeated Evolved fights. In many positive reviews repetition is a passing con listed next to the fun of the fighting, and one notes that each mission ramps things up a little, from one infected Brawler to two at once.

Old game, full price, paid extrasMedium

When reviewers bring up price, it is often as advice to buy on sale. They quote around $40, plus €30, £20 and higher regional prices, and call that too much for a 2012 game, and more so for one that may not run: "+10 years old game can not be $40." A few reviews from mid-October 2023 complain about a new, higher price tag. Reviewers describe the RADNET Access Pack as about $10 for challenge events, mutations and skins, including an Alex Mercer skin, and some say it belonged in the base game; one called it "a $10 cashgrab DLC". A few others report that DLC packs released on consoles are locked or missing in the PC version.

Short, with little to do afterwardsLow

Reviewers report finishing the campaign and side content in roughly 12 to 20 hours, and some say you can beat it in a weekend: "Really short game, to 100% it takes you 15-16 hours (hard difficulty), that's how short it is." After the story there is free roam but little reason to stay, and a few note that reaching Heller's maximum level takes a New Game+ run. Some like the length, while a few others call the game a big DLC for the first one.

Germany's cut versionLow

German reviewers report a censored, low-violence version that several say is also less stable, and their usual advice is an uncut patch: "Don't buy the german Version of this game under any circumstances." One German player played the cut version and did not miss anything.

3. The player conversation

Many reviews are one-liners ("peak", "goated", pleas for a third game), and a common refrain among the negative ones is a great game held back by its port. Negative reviews rarely attack the game itself: only 10% of them raise design complaints without mentioning any technical problem.

Who raises what follows how far people got. Among negative reviews from players with under two hours on record, 88% describe technical problems and 3% raise only design points; many of these players could not get the game running properly. Negative reviews from players with 10 or more hours still mostly describe technical trouble (67%), but design criticism shows up more here: 19% of them raise design points with no technical complaint, and most of the lengthy negative reviews that make no technical complaint measure the game against the first one.

Year by year, the share of positive reviews moves with the state of the port. Reviews from the 2012 launch were 94% positive with few technical complaints. From 2014 to 2016, AMD and Radeon owners reported single-digit frame rates, Windows 10 crashes followed, and the positive share fell to 55% in 2015. Between 2016 and 2023, while players passed around the familiar fixes (core affinity, HID devices, missing files), the yearly share stayed between 59% and 79%. From 2024 reviewers pointed to the Prototype2Fix mod, and after the September 29, 2025 patch the share rose to 86%, its best stretch since launch. Requests for a Prototype 3 or a remake appear nearly every year.

4. What the developers could do

Make the Steam version start and run on modern PCs without workarounds. 79% of negative reviews describe technical problems, and the fixes players pass around (core affinity, disabling HID devices, missing files, the Prototype2Fix mod) point to what the official build needs.
Finish what the September 2025 patch started. Reviews after it are more positive, but some players still hit crashes, poor frame rates or a 1080p ceiling, and one found that the update broke the community fix they depended on.
Fix the memory leak and test on AMD hardware. In 2015, the game's worst year in the reviews at 55% positive, Radeon owners reported single-digit frame rates, and players describe slowdowns that only alt-tabbing cleared.
Keep story progress independent of frame rate and core count. The Operation Flytrap claw-pounce soft-lock and hangs after cutscenes stopped players minutes into the campaign for years.
Decouple the mouse from the frame rate, fix the lock-on and support controllers out of the box. Players describe a camera that speeds up and slows down with performance, a lock-on that grabs the wrong object, and controllers that sometimes need a Big Picture layout before they work.
Price it like a 2012 game and include RADNET. Reviewers call around $40 too much for a 2012 game and often advise waiting for a sale, and some say the separate RADNET pack, about $10, held content that belonged in the base game.
If the series returns, keep this game's combat and bring back what fans of the first game miss. Pleas for a Prototype 3 or a remaster appear nearly every year, and detailed critiques from fans of the first game ask for its movement, armor form and larger move sets, plus a story that explains Mercer's turn.