We'd love to tell you all about Prototype - but all we can tell you about are the bugs.
We sat down to get some quality time with Prototype last night - we 've been watching videos of manic jumping, gory fights and great character detail for the last six months, so we've been looking forward to actually playing the game.
Sadly, we're still looking forward to actually playing the game - at the moment, it's an unplayable mess.
For us, the frame rate is woeful, the controls are sluggish, and - wait for it - we have ZERO SOUND. You get odd things at launch, but this is... well, it's pretty damn terrible. We got into the official forums, and what's worse, we found we are very much not alone, and that there are a range of problems with this game on PC.
A lot of the problems seem to revolve around Windows XP and SP3 - which just happens to be what I run on my home machine. One problem in particular involved the game not being able to recognise your GPU - oddly enough, this resulted in some craptacular performance. A fix has been found by a brave forum mod (more on the heroic efforts of Rudy later); turn off any extraneous Human Interface Devices, leaving only mouse and keyboard. This seems to fix the performance for some, but others. We're yet to test this ourselves, but...
Another issue people are finding is that the game does not play nicely with a Sidewinder mouse. Guess what mouse we're using - yeah, lucky us. We're also yet to test this fix - more info when I get back to my home PC. A lot of people are in fact ditching their mouse altogether and reporting that playing with an Xbox controller is fine. Of course, I for one prefer playing on the PC because I find mouse and keyboard to be a far superior control schema.
But what would I know.
The sound issues, which range from low, crackly sound to no sound at all seem to be caused in part by machines having more than one sound device. Disable the devices you're not using, and it might work. Again, this works for some, not for others.
All of this is a crying shame, as what I can see of the game looks great - Prototype's New York is jam-packed with panicking civilians, trigger happy soldiers, and infected types all going hammer and tongs at one another. It looks good (when it runs properly), and the mix of powers available seem like they'll be a lot of fun.
But unless any of the listed fixes work, in our experience, the game is simply unplayable. And I'm not alone - there are hundreds of posts already from people having the same or different issues.
So, in the words of many on the official Activision forums - where is the dev team?
As of writing, the only person plugging the dyke is a lone mod, Rudy. He's in contact with the team, apparently, but he's so overwhelmed that he cannot keep up. A post like this is the very last thing you want to see on release day.
"...i'm not even a tech guy, but a moderator. I'm drowning in new threads at this very moment. Though it's just been released and therefore normal to get a lot of new threads, this is waaaaay too much for one person to handle, so I'm calling in some additional help. Hold on a bit longer. I'm calling the infantry."
Looks like the infantry is still coming. Anyone else out there in Atomic land having issues?
Issue: 133 | February, 2012