Prototype 2

By: Derek Yu

On: October 1st, 2007

Prototype 2 is a gorgeous shoot ‘em up that takes its inspiration from Irem’s famous R-Type series of games. The game was created for the SHMUP–DEV 2007 competition, where the theme was “Options.” And yes, the pre-game options in P2 certainly are various, with the player being able to change the flavor of his or her ship, pods, and power-ups.

And like R-Type, Prototype 2’s most interesting mechanic is the Force Pod, which is a detachable “option” that can be used to clear out hard-to-reach spots. In P2, the Force Pod can also be detonated at any time to clear out the screen. Skill with this thing is crucial if you want to survive in this game, which is punishing even at the easiest difficulty (it is for me, anyway).

Conclusion: the great presentation, numerous options, and overall polish make this a pretty awesome package. GET IT.

(Source: the one, the only, the Tim)

Posted in Competitions, Freeware, Highly Recommended, Shoot-em-ups, Windows | Tags: DarkCastleSoftware

Eudaimon

It’s very well produced. Unfortunately, well… either I woke up too early to be playing shooters, or this is game is balanced a little bit on the unfair side. That seems to be a bit of a hallmark of shooters, though, so probably some memorization is the key to victory.
someloser

It seems to be pretty faithful to the ARGGGHHH RRR TYPE CONTROLLER BREAK difficulty that we all know and loathe. At least in rookie mode they let you keep your powerups. That and checkpoints are really close together.

Some problems I guess is that the b button doesn’t automatically retract your bit after launching, you have to mash it and hope for the best. Also, it helped alot to turn off the scanlines and the bloom. Putting them on made things too dark and too cluttered for me to play well. I was never a fan of scanlines, and the game actually looks prettier without bloom.

Hope to MAN THE FUCK UP and beat this game one day.
Xander

Damn, I’ve only just gotten my internet and everything sorted at university and Derek snagged this one only 2 hours ago? Nuts!

It’s a fantastic game, the GFX options are a bit strange, for instance bloom just serves to make things look much too bright when there aren’t any scan-lines, which just seem to darken the whole thing anyway. But the fact that they are options just serves to suit everybody. The level of polish is staggering too, is this from the same guy who made the one-level demo for the Shmup Dev before? Great game, can’t wait to -not- get my ass handed to me!
Kairos

This is from the same guy who won the first shmup-dev compo, the Horizontal Shooter with Boss one. He did an excellent job.
PHeMoX

In any of you are into high-res shmups, be sure to check out DroneSwarm too. It’s difficult though, man … :)
Pragma

Overall this is a great shooter. I like how the “Options” theme is used to augment what could have been just another R-type shooter. I got my ass handed to me early on, yet I kept coming back for more thanks to the good music, graphics and sound effects. If that’s not the hallmark of a good action game, then I don’t know what is.

My only gripe is that there are multiple axes of options, all of which intersect to make a myriad (easily in the hundreds) of possible ship configurations. Overwhelming doesn’t even begin to describe it. It would be nice to see exactly what these various things do before jumping into combat – like having a test mode for shooting in the options screen for us rookie min/maxer types.
MisterX

Seems like a fun game with great visuals, yet I got the impression that the different “options” for the ship’s armament aren’t balanced well at all. Probably I just haven’t found out how to use each one well, but it seemed like for example only the standard orb is really useful while the other 2 are much harder to use or even useless.
As said before it’s also a little too frustrating to die because that can happen so quickly and unexpectedly, while at the same time on the rookie level you are able to restart from a checkpoint probably 10 or more times, which again isn’t for the better.

So from my short playtime I wouldn’t say it’s one of the best shmups (I know), but of course it’s definitely neat :)
Anonymous

Wow. This thing’s definitely well made, but *brutal*. How exactly do you even beat the first boss? Where exactly is its weak point?