It appears that Amazon is slashing and absorbing the extra cost of Prototype, as the action-packed, vertical sandbox gorefest has been reduced by $20 on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC for today only.

The game was certainly well-received, so nobody is going to spit on you for deciding to take Amazon's offer. Well, inFamous' Cole might spit on you, which would be shocking. But not as shocking as these photos of him and Alex Mercer when they aren't saving/destroying the world!

[Thanks, Lesek]

In the celebration of all things great and American, we're proud to present the characters of inFamous and Prototype cross-dressing. YAY! (See inFamous' Cole after the break.)

Okay, so you're probably wondering where these images came from. Yahtzee presented a challenge to the development teams of these two games after he couldn't decide which game was better in a recent episode of Zero Punctuation. So, he jokingly said the "winner" would be whichever team sends in an image of the other game's protagonist cross-dressing.

And now the world is a much better place.

According to Chart Track's UK software sales figures from last week, we know the Barry Pepper-voiced free-roamer, Prototype, has managed to secure the top spot. It wasn't an easy battle, as Radical Entertainment's title had some stiff competition in Terminal Reality's Ghostbusters, which made its debut in the UK last week.

The ghost bustin' reunion was not enough to topple the "go anywhere, kill everything" game, and managed to secure the bronze with a third place showing. It should be noted that this is the all-format charts, and with it being a PS3 exclusive in the territory (Xbox 360 owners do have options, though), third is pretty impressive for a game on just one platform (excluding Wii Fit). As for second place, The Sims 3 dropped down from its cushy throne last week thanks to a 49% decline in sales. Don't feel too bad for the game, though -- it did have the best PC launch in EA's history, you know.

[Update: We've picked a winner! Congratulations, mahunoy! Everyone else: thanks for the best wishes. Here's to five (hundred?) more! Now, enough playtime. We've got some news to report on!]

Earlier this week, Joystiq turned five. Five! That's half a decade of daily video game reporting. That's over 38,000 posts and over 1.5 million of your comments. That's up from over 27,000 posts last year, and less than a million comments! Let's put that in perspective: even lowballing the average word count per post at 100 words (for example, this post is 339 words) that's nearly four million words! How does that stack up? If Joystiq had been a monthly magazine, and if you consider a standard printed page to be 250 words per page (spoiler: game magazines aren't 250 words per page), each issue would have been over 250 pages, with no images and no ads. And we're lowballing here! And that doesn't include comments.

So what? This is all to say, "Thanks!" Thanks for reading the site today; this week; this year; or this half-decade. Thanks for supporting our unique flavor of game journalism. Thanks for taking us to task when we get it wrong and for sharing when we get it right. Thanks for being interested enough in video games to read about them every day, multiple times a day, and for staying engaged.

So, what better way to say "thanks" than to give you free stuff. Introducing Swag Saturdays – every Saturday, we'll be donating something from our pile of free stuff to you, the Reader. Slow week, it may be a shirt for an iPhone game. This week: A superhero c-c-c-combo pack for your PS3, featuring both inFamous and Prototype.

Again, thanks!

-Love, Team Joystiq

Rules after the break!

Hitting retailers just two weeks after the PlayStation 3 exclusive (and highly regarded) inFamous, we were a bit worried about the fate of Radical Entertainment's Prototype. It seems from the response that most game reviewers are having to it, our worries were somewhat unfounded.

• 1UP (B-): "Making Alex [the main character] such a badass also proves to be Prototype's undoing. It becomes a fight to follow and control Alex in the midst of the action. This problem mounts the further you get into the game, leading to more frustration than fun ... Alex can essentially fly around the city. With his jump, air dash, and glide abilities fully powered up, and the basic ability to run on any surface, the buildings become like a giant jungle gym."
• Eurogamer (7/10): "Fans of serious hero fiction will find Prototype a bit of a turn-off. You're infected with some sort of virus ... and the story of why, told through snatches of video obtained by absorbing key characters (basically, weakening and eating them) and in moody cut-scenes, is basic and yet difficult to follow ... Mission design isn't very open-ended, usually boiling down to doing something violently or stealthily, but with such a vast array of attacking options you often have the luxury of trying something different."
• IGN (7.5/10): "How long can you do flying elbow drops onto tanks or throw people off of rooftops before it gets boring? The world itself here is far from the most engaging ... Since repetition is oftentimes the name of the game here, you can be sure you'll be doing uninspired tasks over and over again."
• Giant Bomb (4/5): "Radical almost went too far with its kitchen-sink approach to combat design, but the gameplay here is satisfying and broad enough that you can have plenty of fun with it even without mastering the nuances of every last combo and attack ... Prepare to be frustrated from time to time when the mission difficulty amps up to insane levels and you feel it's you against the entire world all of a sudden."

Did you just pick up the PS3 version of Prototype only to discover you can't, um, play it? You are not alone! If your PS3 tells you that you don't have enough hard disk space for the installation -- and you know that it's LYING to you -- then you'll have to use this workaround, provided by Activision support: change the amount of free hard disk space on your system by 700MB. This can be done by either installing another PS3 game (like Infamous), downloading game demos (like the Infamous demo), or downloading and removing videos from the hard drive (like videos of Infamous).

The Activision support site notes the team is working on a better solution: "We take this issue very seriously and are working to resolve this issue as soon as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause." We're sure PS3 owners will patiently wait for a patch.

[Thanks, Patrick!]

So, Prototype, we're a little worried about you, not gonna lie. Considering the recent wave of positive inFamous reviews, talk of Crackdown 2, and APB's E3 reveal, a game we once looked forward to greatly could quite possibly fall by the wayside.

Luckily, the developer walkthrough of "mission #7" (found after the break) helps to assuage our concerns and brings back some fire into our lonely, cold hearts. Unfortunately for the person piloting Prototype's main man Alex Mercer, things don't go so well and the video ends in tragedy (spoilerz! omg!). Hopefully we'll do better when we get our hands on the retail copy June 9.

Soon, Prototype will be shipping to stores for its June 9 launch, exactly one week after E3 kicks off. So how did Activision and Radical Entertainment decide to spend the intervening weeks between finishing and launching the game? By having a press event at the New York, New York hotel in Las Vegas, where one of the bars was done over in Prototype fashion: think New York covered in trash (including rats and crows), faux battle damage, zombie-fied go-go girls, dense fog, and even a model helicopter overhead.

Amidst all this (and some pulse-pounding techno music) there were game stations set up to distract us from the theme park environment. We managed to ignore the actual bizarre sights long enough to dive in and enjoy the virtual ones. Head past the break for our thoughts on the two hours spent with the upcoming action-adventure title (spoiler alert: it's fun).

Also be sure and check out the new images from the game and the event below, along with the new "Boss Battles" video at the end of the post.

Radical Entertainment president Kelly Zmak donned zombie makeup (and cowboy duds?) at the last-hurrah-before-launch event for Prototype (besides E3, of course) in Las Vegas on Tuesday night. Surprisingly, it's the first time we've ever seen the head of a company appear as a member of the undead -- or whatever it is that's happening to folks in the game.

We took our chances, closing in on Zmak with a microphone -- well within range of his open sores -- to get his answers on all things Prototype. Continue on after the break for the full interview, and then join us in petitioning Radical to release "Tank Battle" (not to be confused with Battle Tanks). As for us, we've got to go rinse off ...

With Factor 5 closing its doors in the US, it's uncertain whether the games that were in development there will be moved to its German studio, or if the titles will be scrapped entirely. Courtesy of Unseen64, we have some concept art from a flight game the company was working on for Wii.

Supposedly, these are images created using the Wii version of Factor 5's Lair Engine, though that is unconfirmed. Based on the images, however, we can glean that the game would have had players visiting several different parts of the world, as there's a few images striking an amazing resemblance to Big Ben.

We've put in word to Factor 5 for comment, but we're hoping the employees have already set sail toward a brighter future, much like the Crimson Permanent Assurance. Sadly, real life isn't as fun ...

We're doing our best not to let our imaginations run away with this, so here are the facts: As superannuation recently noticed, Radical Entertainment is looking for a Wii designer with an "affinity for 3rd Person 'Open-World' Camera Design/Functionality" and a Wii programmer to "take game features from concept to execution for a port of a 360/PS3 game to the Wii."

Now, we'd like to think that this is an indication that Radical's bringing upcoming open-world action game, Prototype, to the Wii. Considering the company's track record, however, there's every chance that this is for another Crash game. Less depressingly, the listing could also be recruiting for an unconfirmed Spider-Man game. Not as juicy as Prototype, but hey, at least it's not Crash. What are you hoping for?

Source -- Senior Wii Programmer (Systems & Rendering)
Source -- Wii Gameplay Designer

Ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys, freaks and mutants, right here, right now, we have the full CG intro to Prototype for your viewing pleasure. The first half may look awfully familiar to some readers, as a shorter version was released earlier this year. Still, the full introduction is definitely worth watching and it sets up the story and atmosphere of the game quite nicely. Oh, and it's really, really violent. Enjoy.

Prototype releases on June 5 in Europe and June 9 in North America.

Activision has officially announced the pre-order bonuses for Prototype and, as has become custom, they will depend on where you place your order. Those who pre-order from GameStop will get an action figure of Alex Mercer, the game's main character, complete with jacket-over-a-hoodie style! GameStop pre-orders will also receive a double-sided map / poster.

GameCrazy pre-orders will get a hardcover art book, which contains illustrations of the game's characters, enemies and locations. Amazon orders will receive a Prototype comic from Wild Storm. The comic actually sounds fairly interesting, as it looks at the game's events from the perspective of two police detectives on Alex's trail. As we've reported before, Alex makes a habit of killing or destroying everything around him, so we imagine the cops have their hands full.

Check out hi-res images of the action figure and comic in the gallery below. For now, you'll just have to imagine how sweet the art book looks. Activision sent us an image of the art book. We've added it to the gallery.

With only two short months until its North American release, over the top action game Prototype got a new trailer today. Before you read any further, you must know this: Yes, you are able to mow down "infected" enemies (read as: zombies) using the (pilotable) helicopters. Finally!

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, in the trailer above, Prototype's executive producer Tim Bennison explains the various mission types you'll be playing. Between "shank dude then appear as him" and "chase giant monster through the city" (clearly the official names), we're hoping the game has enough variation to keep us interested. But, then again, we could always just run up a building and then glide down to the ground off the side of it, killing helicopter pilots on the way down, in mid-air.

Yeah, maybe we'll do that instead.

Well, it's been a long time coming, but Radical Games' open-world action title, Prototype, is almost ready to hit store shelves. While many of us chalked up the title's year-long delay to the grand game of musical chairs that occurred around the time of the Activision Blizzard merger (and the accompanying culling of a number of Sierra titles), we recently heard a different reason for the game's belatedness: It's super freaking big.

In a recent interview with VG247, Prototype executive producer Tim Bennison explained, "the original vision for the game was huge, perhaps a little too huge, so the extra time in development has let us realize that vision." Sure, Activision could have dropped the game in its original launch window last fall, but at what cost? The cancellation of the game's massive go-kart racing minigame? Or worse, the removal of the protagonist's smart-mouthed feline sidekick, Professor Whiskers?