Does Prototype Promote STDs?

First you were Alex Mercer, then you were Helen Keller James Heller in each of the Prototype games, but in each your superhuman abilities were granted to you after exposure to a virus called Blacklight.

But what exactly is the Blacklight virus?

Fans of the first game might think they know the answer to this. Everyone knows the origin story of Alex Mercer by now, right? If not, spoilers follow. But seriously who cares about the first Prototype’s storyline now?

Sexual intercourse is the act of [insert birds and bees speech here] with the inevitable result, assuming conception, being a little amalgamation of creation (think polymerisation in Yu-Gi-Oh) popping out of a vagina, hopefully while leaving the cervix and surrounding areas intact. Sorry for that mental image. Basically: A baby.

Alex Mercer is the result of a scientific experiment that creates a virus which gives him his powers. But essentially he is the virus. He is its creation. He is, in fact, a baby.

Further to this, the virus offers him certain abilities over and above the usual story of nausea, headaches and a sore throat (also: discharge) by allowing Mercer to manipulate his body into various shapes easily utilised as weaponry. Such things as the Hammer Fist, Muscle Mass, Freddy Kruger styled Claws, a large blade and more. An implicit reference to growths if I ever saw one. So it’s not a tumour or warts on your penis… It’s still the same sort of thing. Totally.

Then when he consumes enough organic material, he can go into a Critical Mass state which allows him to do devastating, large-scale attacks that shoot tendrils everywhere. Hentai implications aside — story for another day — the basic similarity here is pus. And blood. And more pus mixed with blood. It’s not a great sight, is it? Neither is anything borne of Critical Mass. Alex has had so much that he just explodes in an eruption of… things. Come to think of it, maybe it’s another bodily fluid. Bukkake, anyone?

The final and most easily related piece of this little puzzle is the Infected Vision. How much more blatant and obvious can it get? Suddenly you can see who else is infected with the virus in the world and then ‘consume’ them too. Essentially you are a walking, talking, infection machine who now knows who isn’t affected and can do something about that.

What more do I need to say? Prototype is the most explicitly obvious example of a game that not only promotes sexually transmitted diseases, but is itself a sexually transmitted disease. Like Bono in that episode of South Park.

Wear a condom.