One of the most enjoyable preview builds I got to play so far at Comic Con was Prototype at an Activision party on Thursday night. You take control of a character with special powers after New York City is infected and becomes quarantined. During the demo level I played, three of those powers were available: claws, hammer fists, and a sword-like arm. More will be playable in the full game, such as having your hands become whips. You’ll be able to switch powers on the fly through a radial selection menu.

Activision stated that they tried more-so to duplicate the density of New York City instead of going for photo-realism in the environment. They definitely succeeded in that respect. While running around, there were easily a hundred pedestrians, enemies, tanks, and helicopters on screen all either running for their lives or just plain trying to kill me. To have that much going on with the AI at any given time is impressive. What didn’t impress me, however, were many of the game’s textures. Cars looked boxy and almost last-gen and some of the buildings just didn’t look right.

The controls for Prototype are simple, yet effective. The preview build I played was on the Xbox 360, so the controls described are relative to that console. Basic attacks are performed with the X button with special attacks being mapped to Y, while the A button allows you to jump. Any of these moves can be charged by holding the button down to allow for either a more devastating attack or a higher jump. You can use the Right Trigger to sprint, run up walls, or to do a long jump, which almost makes you look like a flying squirrel.

The coolest parts of Prototype are how you can kill people. My personal favorite is Body Surfing, where you target someone with the Left Trigger while jumping and hitting X. You’ll shoot down at them with a Liu Kang style kick and surf their body across the ground, leaving a trail of blood and guts behind you; you can never go wrong with that. A second option is to Consume someone by hitting Y after you grab a hold of them with the B button. You’ll literally ingest them through various animations to gain health and insight into the world. Filling your health bar all the way allows you to use a Devastator attack, which pretty much will kill anything in your path. The action is very fast and frenzied, which makes for a good time.

I played through the preview build demo with Garnett Lee of 1UP and we both had a good time car-jacking helicopters. If you target one then jump at it, you can grab ahold to hijack the vehicle, killing everyone inside. It’s then yours to do whatever you please. I went after other helicopters because, well, it was damn fun to do so.

I’d been on the fence about Prototype based on the videos I’d seen previously, but after getting my hands on with the game, I think it’s safe to say Activision has a winner here. The game is like almost like Crackdown on steroids. Definitely check it out when it hits this Spring on the Xbox 360 and PS3.