Prey is a game whose full potential crept up on me, like a inter-dimensional alien monster. I played the 2006 FPS action title of the same name way back on my Xbox 360, and I sort of assumed this would be like that. I was very wrong. Prey 2017 is not an FPS, but rather a first person stealth action horror game. For me it was somewhere between a Deus Ex, Bioshock, and Dead Space. You get upgrades to make yourself more combat-oriented, but through the first half of the game you'll find that shooting enemies is often not the best way to go about things. Even the smallest monsters can take significant chunks off of your life bar. And no, there is no passive regeneration.

At first I was a bit disappointed. Here I was, hoping to play a run-n-gun alien blaster like Prey 2006, and now I'm stuck creeping through corridors and vents? But something strange happened. I shut the game off, went to bed, and while sitting at work the next day all I thought was “man, I want to get home and fire up Prey again.” It latched onto me like a facehugger. I was hooked. And why not? I LOVE sci-fi horror, especially one set on space stations or huge space ships, so it was a natural fit.

Yes, the game can be frustrating (especially early on) but once you get the swing of it, it is actually very rewarding and fun. You can also save as much as you'd like, so it helps the frustration. Also, once you realize that you can complete many objectives without killing, it gets better. In the later levels of the game I took some upgrades to my sprint speed and quite literally ran through some of the harder rooms.

At first you're going to get a very “Bioshock” vibe. The powers and weapons are very similar. Even the fonts used , and the stations wood-paneling can also be reminiscent of Bioshock. Your first weapon is even a wrench. While mechanically it plays a LOT like Bioshock, the layout of the levels and the difficulty of the enemies lends to a much more stealth game. Oh, and while I was able to complete the game on normal difficulty, don't fret for putting it on “easy” which can be swapped on the fly. It's about having fun. Also don't google “Prey 2017 difficulty” because all you'll see are edgy 16 year olds telling you how not hard the game is. They are wrong.

There is also some "jank" to be had, here, much like other Bethesda games. While not as insane as Skyrim, I found myself tooling around with the GLOO Cannon (a special weapon that lets you create bridges and platforms, or freeze enemies) to get to places I was definitely not supposed to be. I was also able to wiggle my way through the levels, sometimes, in ways that were not intended. I love doing stuff like this. I didn't "cheat" or break the game, but it was a lot of fun seeing if I could clip through a half-opened door to a spot I wasn't supposed to. These opportunities likely wont present themselves unless you're looking for them, so no worries about accidentally clipping through the floor.

Prey is an atmospheric wonder. The score is fantastic (I'm serious, it's REALLY good), the timing of the terror is spot on, the difficulty makes you cautious to open ever door, the lore is great, the voice acting is (for the most part) solid, and the sound design makes you sweat. I'm a sucker for atmosphere, and Prey delivered.

Prey was not what I was expecting. If you told me it was a nerve-racking, stealthy first person game I might not have picked it up. But I am so, so glad I did. It's one of those games that I'm going to remember loving, and one of the very few I might just play a second time through.

IMMERSIVE SIM - Navigate through Talos I, a space station, that has been overrun by the Typhon. It is up to Morgan Yu to decide how this Typhon infestation will be resolved.

PROS:

++ Great prologue. The game hooked me with its introduction, and continued to captivate me all the way until the final act of the game.

++ Incredible environmental storytelling. Exploring Talos I was incredibly interesting since there were so many mini-stories being told through emails, environmental details, etc. I felt compelled to search every inch of the game in hopes of discovering cool things.

++ Phenomenal level design. There was always multiple ways in which I could solve problems and objectives. And I was often rewarded for my curiosity.

++ Great difficulty curve. The early game was difficult and did a great job showing the danger the Typhon poses. And the difficulty in the mid-game did a great job of making the player feel powerful.

++ Typhon. The Typhon were great enemies, with the Mimics being my favorite since they provide so much tension in the early game.

++ Phenomenal atmosphere. Sound design and music were done well, and was an important factor in this game's great atmosphere.

++ Simple resource management. I liked the resource management loop in this game. Loot, recycle, and fabricate. Simple and effective.

++ Highly replayable. I didn't even touch any of the Typhon powers. And there were many more places that I didn't get to search thoroughly.

++ GLOO gun. It was a fantastic weapon, both for exploration and combat.

CONS:

-- Ugly NPCs.

-- Inconsistent detection. Stealth worked well most of the time, but there were instances in which I was detected even though I was clearly out of the enemy's line of sight.

-- The final act.The last act felt incredibly uninteresting compared to the rest of the game. It was also frustrating since Dahl and his military operators were not nearly as fun to fight compared to the Typhon. The final act needed more interesting new enemy types to keep the gameplay engaging.

-- Ending.The ending felt abrupt. I also don't fully know how to feel about the whole game being a mere simulation.

Having dived into Arkane titles for the first time last year with the Dishonored trilogy, I finally understood what the fuss was about. Their games have this unique feel to them that infects everything from level design to movement, from world building to aesthetics. I had a fantastic time with Dishonored 1 and 2, and I also enjoyed Death of the Outsider (though not as much), so I’d been itching to give Prey a go for quite a few months.

I can now say it has become my favourite Arkane to date, and it made me realise how much I love the way they make their games. The agency they give you in approaching missions, traversal, combat and exploration is a real standout within the modern gaming space and it really resonates with me. I’d say that I still prefer the aesthetics of D1 overall, that D2 likely reaches higher level design heights, and that I might give both games the edge when it comes to verticality. But in everything else Prey takes the cake, even if only marginally in some respects.

From the (very Arkaneish) intro, I was hooked. Like the Dishonored games, Prey comes with a fantastic sense of atmosphere and presentation, and it also very quickly puts you in the thick of it. But unlike them, here I felt a much bigger sense of isolation. There’s something about TALOS I that builds up the tension in a really awesome way, and for the most part, you feel an air of vulnerability that goes hand in hand with the story. And what a story! To me this is clearly Arkane’s best one yet, an enthralling, deep narrative (packed with lore, twists and a great post-credit scene) that makes you want to keep untangling it until the end. As sci-fi survival horror goes, this is almost up there with SOMA in my book.

There are so many other things that Prey does exceptionally well, however. I’m going to briefly go through the main ones as to not bloat up this post too much: 1) level design and traversal is, as expected, fantastic, with well interconnected levels, great verticality and a backtracking system that never feels tedious; 2) enemies are fun to fight and I had zero issues with AI, which doesn’t happen all that often. Mimics might have become my favourite enemy of any survival horror, with the way they hide in literal plain sight, instigating real tension in the early moments; 3) rewarding exploration is one of the things Prey does best. Every detour you decide to take leads you to useful loot, to another piece of the world building, to uncovered secrets. You play the game exactly the way you want to play, and not only does Prey not castigate you for it, it validates you; 4) last but certainly not least, gameplay is, in pure Arkane fashion, the game’s main calling card. It feels great to experiment with virtually every single aspect of its mechanics, from the environmental interactivity, to the degree of build customisation, to the abilities you can put points into (I think this is probably the best studio out there when it comes to designing character abilities), to the very creative weapons you can play around with. A gun you can use to create new pathways? Check. An ability that allows you to take the shape of any object to reach otherwise unreachable locations? You got it. A grenade that lets you eviscerate everything down to their literal basic components? Sure. This level of plasticity in a game is so incredible to me that I’m not quite sure how such a thing is possible, even by today’s standards. I honestly don’t think Prey gets enough recognition not only for the relentless creativity in its approach and implementation, but for how simple and logical it makes it look.

As high as my praise for the game is, there are a couple of things in the game that are annoying enough for my to not give it top marks. The smaller ones are very tolerable: map could be a bit more useful in the vein of early Resident Evil or Silent Hill titles, some objectives could do with a bit more clarity, and there’s still some lack of polish - the biggest offender being missions getting retriggered if you go back to certain places (which doesn’t cause a problem but stays in your objectives permanently). But there are two things I really didn’t like. One was the zero/low gravity sections. This is almost certainly a me thing because I never, ever enjoy them in games (had the same exact issue with every title that has this, from Dead Space to Observation), but since there are a lot of those in Prey, they got on my nerves. The other issue, which is certainly not a me thing, was the insane amount of chatter you get in your ear - for all the sense of isolation the game brings you, you’re also constantly receiving calls and listening to logs. I sometimes found myself simultaneously listening to an audio log, an incoming call and an NPC who was right in front of me. This superimposing auditive overload happens often enough that it is able to frustrate and take you out of an otherwise deeply immersive experience, and I think it could’ve been handled differently.

However, there is nothing else I would criticise the game for. This became my personal favourite title to date within the so-called immersive sim genre. Prey is an achievement in interactive and flexible game design, and has elevated Arkane to one of my favourite studios currently. And this is all without even mentioning Mooncrash, a fantastic expansion that turns the world of Prey into a completely different beast with fun roguelike survival tones undertones.

As cool as it sounds, ‘Prey' was a poor choice for a title. I remember hearing about this game when it came out and immediately associating it with a remake of the 2006 game. I was going though a gaming hiatus back then, and because I instinctively brushed it off as a ‘reskin', it was years before I gave it a second look. Coming into it now, I realise how deceived I was over that title, and I have a feeling I may not have been the only one. Prey is not only its very own thing, but from every angle you look at it, a fantastic gaming experience, one that deserves all the late appreciation it got. 9/10

Arkane studios has been developing open ended map FPS RPGs since 2002 with their first title Arx Fatalis. The only games they've made that I have played are Dishonored and part of Dishonored 2. There is a clear admiration for the System Shock games in both Dishonored games and Prey feels more like System Shock 3 than the IP it is ostensibly based on. I never played Prey from 2006, so I will not comment on it.

Prey is a horror FPS RPG with a strong focus on action. The game is brimming with atmosphere and has all the expected motifs of traditional Shock games including audio logs, a wrench, a society in ruins, insane people trying to kill you (this is a bit reductive to say). The early phase of the game is tense when all you have is a pistol, wrench and the iconic gloo gun. Anything more than a mimic is an imposing threat and acts as dynamic barriers to progression.

The game play loop boils down to exploration, combat and scavenging for supplies.

The exploration and environment crafted by Arkane is brilliant and encourages creative thinking. It's designed to be exploited such that you feel like you are doing obnoxious Speed Run skips as you learn the mechanics. You see a locked room you can't enter. It has windows, but metal bars under the glass.

Option 1: Break the window with your wrench, equip your dart gun and shoot the "open door" on the security terminal.

Option 2: hack the door keypad.

Option 3: Use gloo gun to climb up the wall and into the room.

Option 4: Adjacent room has a HVAC vent that leads into the room.

The payoff here is on a second play through when you realize how much of the game you can skip. It all clicks together in a very satisfying manner. Another great facet to the game design is how the space station feels like a real place. It's one of the greatest elements to both System Shock games where thought was placed on the purpose of each section of the station. It elevates the experience to another level and makes a truly immersive experience. My mind was blown away when I first entered Space and realized that the designers went the extra mile to ensure each location of the space station made sense both internally and externally. Another great example of world design with this level of detail is the original Dark Souls game.

The RPG element to this game comes in the form of skill trees. You can beat the game without spending a single point; while that's cool it's also a double edged sword. The end result is open ended environments with multiple solutions where you are rarely locked out of a path based on your build. You can make an argument with merit that this diminishes any sense of growth, impact on your decisions or reason to replay the game. In contrast, System Shock 2 was a punishing game where you could proverbially shoot yourself in the foot with a terrible skill build. Prey feels like an over-correction.

Combat in my opinion is problematic and likely will be the biggest turn off for most gamers. It's kind of like Fallout 4 without the VATS system. There are raw numbers each shot of your gun pumps out, with head shots/sneak attacks doing bonus damage. You can modify these raw numbers by upgrading the gun or adding skill points. The shooting is meh. Most enemies have abilities that lock on to you, making avoiding damage difficult or impossible. You basically have to stand your ground and take hits or stun lock the enemy and kill them before they can attack you. The later gets easier as the game progresses. By end game, I could use a spell to stun the enemy and easily kill them before they could do anything. This resulted in unsatisfying combat since it become so trivial. While there is plenty of enemy variety, they all end up looking like the heartless from Kingdom Hearts. Any of the shock games have more compelling creature design since they aren't limited to looking like black diarrhea.

The last element of the game play loop, which will be what you do the most, is scavenging for supplies. Early in the game this is a true slog. You have limited inventory space and places where you can convert junk into useful materials. Given that each area of the station is locked behind a load screen, this further amplifies the problem. The game is designed around you wanting to scavenge everything you can pick up because even a rotten banana can translate into XP to level up... I have mixed feelings about it. One on hand, this can be exploited to effectively level up and on the other hand it further diminishes any semblance of choice when it comes to skill builds. I ended up with every skill I wanted by the end because of how much I scavenged for supplies.

My biggest issue with this game would be the narrative and how quests are unlocked linearly when everything about the game design encourages non-linear exploration. It feels so dissonant and ironically discourages exploration. There's no reason why a quest that takes you to the oxygen room shouldn't unlock if you stumble into that section of the station. Instead, if you go there earlier in the game, you scavenge everything there of meaning and when your forced to go there for a quest it strongly diminishes the impact of returning. The game peaked for me when I unlocked the elevator. I explored around the station as much as I can and got sucked into the world. This all got diminished when I went on a series of fetch quests back to areas of the station I had organically explored earlier. This resulted in last 1/3 of the game feeling like a slog. It's a shame. With a little more freedom in how you tackle quests this could have been brilliant. The game already did this with the chef in the crews quarters. This is a truly brilliant section of the game. While this quest doesn't end in a satisfying manner, the concept was awesome. If only there were more moments like the chef...

In summary, there is a great immersive sim that encourages exploration for the first half of the game. After that, the game gets linear and kind of devolves into fetch quests with a ton of backtracking. There is a great twist at the end, but the last third will likely feel like a slog to get there. The combat isn't satisfying and while there is a lot of build variety, the game was designed with multiple paths in mind diminishing any sense of impact from builds.

Prey 2017 shares very little with its 2006 namesake and has a lot more in common with Deus Ex and Arkane Studio’s own game series, Dishonoured. Arkane have stated that the game was meant as a spiritual successor to System Shock which was music to my ears, as System Shock is one of those classic games I never got round to playing. I’d describe the gameplay as emergent; you can tackle situations in a variety of ways using the in game gear, special abilities and your own initiative.

In this way it’s more akin to DE than something like Bioshock, which was a fairly linear, story driven FPS. Prey takes place on a space station called Talos which opens up eventually and gives you a lot of choice in where to go and how to get there. I’d say it’s better than DE in some ways because there is verticality to exploration that was somewhat lacking in that classic game.

The story is also intriguing, if a little clichéd, and the style and animation of the enemies is great. I do have a number of problems with the game, the major one being that it lacks atmosphere, which was key to the original System Shock. This is one of the things that Bioshock (another spiritual successor) nails perfectly.

I also found the combat frustrating early on as the enemies are bullet spongy, hit hard and move like lightening. This, as well as locked doors, stops you visiting a lot of areas in the beginning and the game only starts sprawling after several hours, which is also when the enemies become a little bit more manageable.

Despite these issues I’d still recommend this wholeheartedly, especially if you missed out on the original SS and its sequel.

Playtime: 48h45m (Normal/Good 32:20, Nightmare/Evil 16:25)

Intro

Prey is a first-person shooter with RPG elements similar to System Shock, Bioshock and Deus Ex. You get certain objectives and complete them in your own way. You can fight, sneak, control, hack, morph, climb, jump, run, et cetera.

The Good

• The Typhon (aliens) are all quite neat. Morphlings are especially cool - they can turn into most objects and ambush you.
• I love games that tell you what happened through messages and Prey does this really well.
• The story is pretty good too, though they give away too much.
• The GLOO gun is an awesome idea. Slows enemies down, builds "stairs" and stops environmental dangers.
• The Morph power lets you turn into things to sneak through holes (like in a section of Dragon Age: Origins), avoid certain types of damage or fly as a bot. Awesome if a bit clunky.
• The game pauses while aiming spells which should be the standard.
• You can kill enemies by crushing them with couches.
• Turrets and summons make the game more relaxed.
• Interactive objects are highlighted by default.
• Climbing works really well in this game, especially with the jetpack upgrades.
• I adore the goofy nerf gun. It's super-handy too.
• The Nightmare hunting you keeps you on your toes and is just yet another cool concept.

The Bad

• So. Many. Loading. Screens. Seriously, it's painful even with a SSD.
• The lift sucks so hard. It takes forever and you can't even reload weapons or anything.
• The game crashed often on shutdown.
• Turrets are cool but their implementation is obnoxious. You have to hack each one to stop them from attacking you, you can only carry one in your hands and can't run, and deploying them is clunky too.
• Some of the skills are just not worth it. There's only 1-2 things you need Hacking 4, for instance.
• Once you figure out the "winning" combo of powers/weapons you will use those in almost all cases. Combined with the clunky interface even during New Game+ i mostly used the same things. I honestly forgot i even had the Lifting power too.
• The game already gives away too much of the story but if you follow the "Who Is December" quest and use the escape pod you basically get the ending completely spoiled for you.

The Ugly

• Pointless inventory bullshit. Having to go recycle stuff is just a waste of time. The whole cycle ("ha ha") takes up too much time too. Crafting is even worse with the animation and making one item at a time.

• Same goes for health/mana not regenerating automatically. You can usually get it for free by walking back one or two loading screens. Not being able to put food in a quickslot is really dumb. They should've just had both regenerate and had far fewer medkits/psi packs.

• Some of the Nightmare spawns are really bad. One time it spawned behind a grav shaft and it killed me so fast i didn't even get what was going on the first few times. It magically knew where i was despite being on the other side of the level and refused to leave as well. A Nightmare also spawned near the door in the Crew Quarters, leaving me unable to listen to the cook's dialogue (and dying a bunch of times).

• The interface sucks. Too many weapons/powers, not enough quickslots. I really don't care for the rotating wheel, just give me a double quickslot bar with a button to switch between the two or something. The item menus are awful as well. The Typhon research screen not being alphabetical nor having a search option is just The Witcher 3 level of awfulness.

• Some of the quests are too vague or clunky. The treasure hunt and smuggling ring especially. Another bad one is the "do the test to open the safe" quest which doesn't automatically play the sound file it requires, making it hard to find if you want to do it later. The worst offender is the Nightmare lure quest. It gives you two audio logs (repel/attract) that will play if you press/hold L - but they have limited uses. This means you can't use L anymore for the rest of the game because it will always play those files first.

Conclusion

Despite all of the complaints i have Prey is still really really good. The core gameplay is amazing, as is the whole "feel" of the game. The station comes across as a real place. It's genuinely creepy at times and it gives the same hunter/hunted vibe as Horizon Zero Dawn. The mystery of what is going on also keeps you on your toes. Combined with the colourful enemies, wide variety of "solutions" and cool innovations like Morph and GLOO it definitely deserves one of my rare five-star ratings.

Seriously, what other game lets you sneak past locked doors by using a nerf gun or turning into an apple?

9/10

Prey's been an amazing experience and exactly the kind of triple A game I've been looking for for a while: a self contained, limited but rich space to explore, some guns to shoot things with, a compelling narrative with a couple of good twists. To elaborate on the first point : oh boy, the level design was simply amazing. I spent so many hours just climbing walls and trying to get to tiny nooks that didn't seem reachable, finding alternate paths, piling stuff up and digging around on the off chance something was going to come up... It didn't always lead to a tangible reward, but honestly, the environment is so rich that exploring it was a reward in and of itself.

I started this game right after finishing Shadowrun Dragonfall and that caused me to be briefly disappointed that there weren't any kind of database exploration. That didn't last long. There's something deeply satisfying about seeing a story unfurl through the conversations of external characters. Trying to piece the tidbits together was a lot of fun (also reading the emails of your colleagues bitching about you behind your back is definitely entertaining). I will say there could have been a little more variation with the hacking process. Got a bit blasé with it, especially towards the end.

Despite the fact that it was the reason this game caught my eye in the first place, I didn't end up using the Typhon powers much (saw an overview of the mimic power sometime last year and immediately went "holy shit I want this"). Next playthrough I'll try and make a conscious effort to leave off the shotgun and get creative with the Typhon neuromods.

Anyway, if you can, go get that game immediately.

For some reason I was under the misguided impression this had been poorly received? Got it free through Epic Store and had an absolute blast, sinking a bunch of hours into it (couldn't say how many cos it seemed to track time while paused). Moody, humanist space horror that values human life - each of the station's inhabitants, dead or alive, felt fleshed out and powerfully real in a way that the meatier Dead Space never achieved.

Prey clearly owes a lot to the System Shock series, particularly Bioshock in its use of combat mods (i.e. spells) and personal augmentation. The ethical questions it asks, broadly, are superficial. On the whole, one can't see TranStar as anything other than a monstrous megacorp, and as for Morgan... he might be indicative on a micro scale of the family's macro-level crimes. On the plus side, while those judgments are black and white, the outcomes of your interactions with the surviving staff feel more impactful and morally grey.

It starts slow, but once you've modded yourself up enough, the action becomes more gratifying. I'd recommend using the survival difficulty options and some Typhon modifications as it makes navigating the world of Talos I more interesting and pleasurable, without negatively impacting the ending. It does unleash the Nightmare on you, but that ends up being quite a fun mechanic once you've unlocked your defense against it. Zero G navigation is delightful and most of my favourite moments occurred in the vacuum of space.

As for the ending, the roll credits moment was fairly disappointing (even with the "good" ending, 'A Mind Without Limits') but the post-credits sequence added some much needed context that made my choices throughout the game more meaningful.

Easy recommend for System Shock fans and anyone in need of a deep, immersive FPS/RPG!