Line #4 YMMV/Prototype2


1	* AntiClimaxBoss: Most bosses aren't difficult. Even the final boss is pretty easy, just so long as you don't use the exact same power he's using.
2	* BaseBreakingCharacter: Fan attitude towards Heller seems to fall into three camps. Those who like him just fine. Those who [[ReplacementScrappy resent him for replacing]] Mercer. And the one's who flat out hate him, seeing him as [[{{Jerkass}} unlikable]], and [[FlatCharacter one dimensional]], with a grating angry black man shtick that borders on EthnicScrappy territory. There's no real in-between with these three camps. The only thing everyone seems to agree on, is that He isn’t as memorable of a character as Mercer.
3	* BrokenBase: Since the earliest trailer the base was split between the people who were ''very'' upset at Alex being the villain and those who just wanted more VideoGameCrueltyPotential. This continued on well past the game's release.
4	* ContestedSequel: Did the changes to the gameplay make up for the story? Was replacing Mercer as protagonist and giving him a face heel turn a wise decision? It's spawned quite a bit of debate.
5	* CrossesTheLineTwice: Blackwatch is full of psychos, but Starnes, the guy who makes jokes about celebrity-lookalike infected 'celebrity headshots' and claims infected females look "pretty hot if you put a bag on their heads," goes all the way around the block and to pure comedy.
6	* EpilepticTree: Many (if not all) fans have come up with multiple reasons as to why Alex became the RogueProtagonist. Most have come up with ideas that suggest that this was a separate version of Alex from the explosion that survived, with the chance of TheAtoner Alex returning in a later game.
7	* EvenBetterSequel: Even if the story was more contested, many, if not all critics agreed that the gameplay was vastly improved from the original.
8	* FanDislikedExplanation: The tie-in comics are considered to do a poor job as to explaining why Alex is a RogueProtagonist, and thus people [[FanonDiscontinuity prefer to ignore it]] and come up with their own ideas for why.
9	* FanonDiscontinuity: Not just the comics (as mentioned above), but the game itself, in some circles. Those who hate the story, Alex's characterization, or both prefer to just pretend there was never a sequel at all.
10	* GameBreaker: Immunity to bullets and the shield. The shield in particular has an incredibly generous window for countering attacks, and if you pop it out too early the counter will fail but you still won't take damage. And since only a vanishingly small handful of enemies can hit you through the shield it's basically god mode on demand.
11	* {{Narm}}: The redesigned uniforms of the standard Blackwatch troops look rather silly.
12	** The writer's attempts to make Blackwatch seem evil are so over the top that they almost seem like parodies at first, made more extreme due to the fact that they are supposed to be taken seriously. Yahtzee puts it best: "If you take the time to track down the collectible audio logs, you'll find that approximately one hundred percent of the things record someone at Blackwatch talking about how much he loves throwing schoolchildren into jet turbines and rubbing the greasy remnants into his prostate...you have to wonder where Blackwatch could possibly be finding this seemingly inexhaustible supply of emotionless psychopaths".
13	* NarmCharm: Besides the Blackwatch evil seeming hilarious (possibly intentional), there's also Heller's side of the dialogue during the final encounter with Mercer.
14	--> '''Heller''': [[ClusterFBomb Enough of your]] ''[[ClusterFBomb fucking]]'' [[ClusterFBomb weird,]] ''[[ClusterFBomb fucking]]'' [[ClusterFBomb rambling,]] ''[[ClusterFBomb shit!]]'' [[spoiler: ''[[PapaWolf Give me my daughter!]]'']]
15	* PlayerPunch: You may or may not feel anything about the eventual fate of [[spoiler:Luis Guerra]] since all [[spoiler:he]] does is just feed Heller information and provide off-screen assistance, just that [[spoiler:he]] and Heller knew each other for a considerable time by the start of the game.
16	** Mercer's status, as well. [[spoiler: When Heller finally kills him, the player gets to look out of Mercer's eyes while being eviscerated!]]
17	** [[spoiler: When [[ChildrenAreInnocent Maya]] is kidnapped by [[HeelFaceRevolvingDoor Galloway.]] James was SO CLOSE to saving his daughter, only for her to be [[YankTheDogsChain snatched away from him.]]]]
18	* PlayTheGameSkipTheStory: Several reviews have reach this conclusion - the plot is simplistic and overwrought (and ditches the conspiracy plot from the original), but the combat, graphics and other gameplay are tighter and more polished than in the first game. Some fans of the first game feel this way too, believing the gameplay to be as good or better as the first, but resenting the story developments.
19	* PortingDisaster: The PC version has problems with AMD graphics cards, more specifically, it has an incompatibility with AMD's Catalyst AI that triggers memory leaks that cause the game's performance to degrade over time, eventually freezing the game and sometimes, the computer itself. However, turning Catalyst AI off (which can be a bit difficult if one doesn't know how to do so beforehand) fixes it.
20	** Attempting to run it on anything newer than Windows 7 introduces progressively more difficulty the newer the OS, in general. The game seemingly wasn't designed with large numbers of CPU cores in mind, and between that and other modern hardware advancements it can be an absolute chore to get it to run at all. There are guides on Steam for how to try and fix this, generally boiling down to "only give it access to one/four/eight cores in Task Manager's Details screen, set the executable to run as admin without fullscreen optimizations in Win7 compatibility mode, and pray."
21	** The Platform/PlayStation4 and Xbox One ports of the game actually run ''worse'' than their prior-generation predecessors.
22	* RealismInducedHorror: While most of the Blackwatch troop's audio logs come off as cartoonishly evil, there is one that hits closer to reality. A Blackwatch soldier confronts a mother and her young son. The Soldier takes the son's silence as a sign of infection, but the mother pleads that he's autistic and doesn't talk. The soldier ignores her and guns the kid down, to the mother's horror. This becomes deeply uncomfortable given the number of autistic kids killed by the police who take the children's mannerisms as a threat.
23	* ReplacementScrappy: A subset of the fanbase does ''not'' like James Heller, more or less because he replaces Mercer as the player character, but also because his [[SirSwearsALot personality]] leaves a lot to be desired.
24	* ThatOneSidequest: The divebombing Radnet events can be this, depending on how they're set up. In particular, one in the yellow zone is set up in such a way that you need pixel-perfect aim to take out an 'X' formation of targets in one hit. The corners are just far enough apart that you'll only hit two out of four unless you hit the target dead center, forcing a second dive to hit the stragglers. This makes it nigh-impossible to pass the third round, meaning you'll just barely reach gold. Thankfully, if you're only interested in the Mercer Skin, you only need a bronze medal.
25	* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: A lot of fans were disappointed that they were not playing as Alex.
26	** A lot of complaints from fans of the first game revolve around [[RogueProtagonist Alex's]] [[spoiler: ZombieApocalypse TakeOverTheWorld AssimilationPlot]] and [[AGodAmI personality]] as being completely different from his [[TheAtoner personality]] in the first game - with no explanation for his FaceHeelTurn being [[AllThereInTheManual given in the game]]. Oh, and the ending, where [[spoiler: Alex is torn limb from limb and consumed after being mocked and humiliated in battle, with the memory received just further hammering home his complete about-face in personality]] was also negatively received. Most of the fans were hoping that this was actually a TrailersAlwaysLie situation.
27	** While for the most part the gameplay is an improvement over the first game, the reworked controls and new abilities meant ditching numerous old ones, including multiple kinds of Devastators (only the Tendril Barrage can be used), Musclemass, Armor (hinted to be DLC later on, though this turned out to merely be cosmetic so it does nothing but make the character look different), Patsy and numerous AwesomeButImpractical moves that were either superfluous or not strong enough to bother using against their intended targets.
28	** The vehicle designs have taken a step back; gone is the awesome Apache gunship from the first game, replaced with a fictional helicopter design. The Blackhawk helicopter is weirdly proportioned and the tank (while still an M1 Abrams like in the first game) is now fitted with a large minigun and plows on the front and back. Vehicle targeting has also been reworked and there is no option to manually target enemies when in a vehicle.
29	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: No mention is made of two somewhat important plot points from the first game -- PARIAH (who is reduced to a single FreezeFrameBonus namedrop), and that Alex [[spoiler:is not Alex, just BLACKLIGHT in the form of Alex]]. Everyone, including him, acts as though he's just a human who gained powers and the Evolved are similar, rather than exploring the existential questions raised in the first installment.

Context YMMV / Prototype2