Prototype 2/YMMV


 * Anticlimax Boss: 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.
 * Cool Versus Awesome: Heller vs. Mercer, two Humanoid Abominations, as is probably obvious.
 * Complete Monster:
 * Crosses the Line Twice: Blackwatch. From the guy who gives celebrity-lookalike infected 'celebrity headshots', to the one who says infected females look "pretty hot if you put a bag on their heads," the unit comes off as a collection of humorously over-the-top psychos.
 * Game Breaker: Played straight with the military. You can get immunity from being shot fairly early in the game, and unlock vehicle finishers fairly quickly. Once you have the shields, as long as you've got decent timing and pick off the rocket launcher troops first, the military is pretty much just walking snack food. Averted as you run into more Infected.
 * Narm: The redesigned uniforms of the standard Blackwatch troops look rather silly.
 * 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".
 * Lighter and Fluffier: Compared to the first one, that is. The shades of good and bad are more clear-cut, making it so that Heller is more of a Superhero than Mercer. Despite the saddest trailer since Dead Island, Heller seems to embrace his power without being hung up on his past and have fun with it to the point where it looks like he's legitimately enjoying it, as opposed to Alex's constant (though not unjustified) Wangst. And finally, the game
 * Though the details of the game leading up the ending are in many ways Darker and Edgier.
 * Player Punch: You may or may not feel anything about the eventual fate of since all  does is just feed Heller information and provide off-screen assistance, just that  and Heller knew each other for a considerable time by the start of the game.
 * Mercer's status, as well.
 * Play the Game, Skip the Story: Several reviews have reach this conclusion - the plot is simplistic and overwrought, but the combat and other gameplay is tighter and more polished than in the first game. Some fans of the first game feel this way too.
 * Replacement Scrappy: James Heller to some.
 * A lot of complaints on Youtube revolve around Radical promising an engaging story and sympathetic protagonist, and then making Heller a vulgar, stereotyped Scary Black Man (though it's not like the game was ever clean, Heller gets...extremely creative). In one of his more extreme moments, Heller threatens to skullfuck his enemy while his memories flood out the hole.
 * What makes this worse is that Alex Mercer has apparently shed his worst character traits inbetween games and by the time this one starts he's much more the character any given player who picked up a game which selling point is "you get to karate kick a helicopter" would want to play. So by the time Alex actually becomes the kind of dude who would make the perfect player character for the type of game Prototype is, they hand over the reins to a comparatively much more generic and flat protagonist who has to be handed a sympathetic backstory and motivation to make him come off as the slightest bit less evil then those he fights, which considering he'll end up eating half the population of New York before he's reaches the Green Zone, betrays major Gameplay and Story Segregation.
 * Heller is in many ways better than he sounds. He's intelligent and witty, at least, and a bit more independent than Mercer was in the first installment. These in particular have helped distinguish him as a protagonist in the eyes of many. Unfortunately, it's not at all readily apparent that there is that much depth to Heller, and Heller doesn't help his case by purposefully acting the part of Scary Black Man to a T.
 * Sequel Escalation: At least compared to the first game, this one has concepts from the Hulk game not available in the first. Also, the ways in which powers can cause massive havoc has gone up despite several moves from the original being trimmed if only because they didn't take things over the top even higher.
 * At the same time, it seems to be deescalation as well. In the original, it was hinted that if the virus ever got off Manhattan Island, the world (or at least North America), would be a lost cause. In P2, the virus spreads to the Yellow and Green zones (Manhattan is the Red Zone)... but its hardly game over. Additionally, Blackwatch's plan to destroy Manhattan in the original involved a nuke, while in P2, they're plan involves slow moving, poorly armored helicopters armed with thermobaric weapons.
 * They Changed It, Now It Sucks: A lot of fans were disappointed that they were not playing as Alex. However, James Heller may have been Rescued from the Scrappy Heap as the developers started revealing his powers.
 * A lot of complaints from fans of the first game revolve around Alex's  and personality as being completely different from his personality in the first game - with no explanation for his Face Heel Turn being given in the game. Oh, and the ending, where   was also negatively received.
 * While for the most part the gameplay is an improvement over the first game, the reworked controls and new abilities meant ditching a few old ones, including the Bullet Dive, multiple kinds of Devastators (only the Tendril Barrage can be used), Musclemass, Armor (hinted to be DLC later on), and Patsy.
 * The Bullet Dive is actually one of the rewards unlocked for completing the Radnet content.
 * They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Ben Croshaw wrote an article discussing a plot point from the first game that was dropped in the sequel. He basically argues it would've made the plot less of a generic revenge story had they kept it in.
 * Villain Decay: Blackwatch. In the original, they were portrayed as a fanatical unit of utterly ruthless killers. While they still engage in dog-kicking left and right, perhaps to an even greater degree than in the original, they're harder to take seriously after a few Blacknet missions, such as the one where you're picking up radio transmissions from a trooper referring to everyone as "Brah". One can assume they've had to lower their hiring standards due to the high...turnover.
 * At one point it's mentioned that there are 10,000 Blackwatch personel in the city. In fact, while playing the game you see more Blackwatch than regular Marines, which is an inversion of the situation in the first game. Although it's partially explained that Marines are still supposedly treated as Infected-fodder by being deployed mainly in the Red Zone while Blackwatch personnel try to keep their(and Gentek's) mischief under wraps by enforcing a regime in areas under dominant military control.