Prey (2017)

This title is an immersive sim that combines science fiction, horror, and exploration into one of the most atmospheric experiences of its era. Set aboard Talos I, a massive space station orbiting the Moon, the MC is called Morgan Yu, a scientist who wakes up in a world that quickly unravels into chaos. The once-bustling research facility has been overrun by the Typhon, a shape-shifting alien species capable of mimicking everyday objects. From the moment you step into the station, Prey captures you with its unsettling mood, smart level design, and an overarching sense of isolation and mystery.

Talos I itself is the true star of the game. Every section of the station feels distinct, from luxurious corporate offices to claustrophobic maintenance tunnels, and everything is connected in a way that rewards backtracking and exploration. Arkane’s trademark world-building shines here, as even minor details, emails, audio logs, and environmental clues, flesh out the lives of the crew and the tragedy that befell them. There’s an impressive freedom in how you can navigate and interact with the world, whether you choose to hack locked doors, use alien abilities to transform into small objects, or simply find alternate physical routes using your tools.

The gameplay systems encourage experimentation and creativity, you can build your character with human skills like engineering and hacking or embrace alien powers such as telekinesis and mimicry. And this system is complex enough to lock you in a certain "build", you cannot make yourself overpowered by leveling up each and every ability, instead you need to choose a playstyle and stick to it in order to it effective enough to be worth it. Each choice affects how you approach challenges and how other characters perceive you.

The GLOO Cannon, a versatile tool that can freeze enemies or create climbable platforms, is emblematic of Prey’s ingenuity, nearly every item in the game can serve multiple purposes depending on your imagination. This is by far the most useful weapon you'll be using, I used this quite a lot, from the start, to the very end of the game, it never stops being useful, especially to clean out weaker enemies, and there is a whole lot of them. Visually, it is striking without relying on photorealism. The soundtrack enhances the tension perfectly, mixing eerie ambient sounds with sudden bursts of energy during combat.

Despite its strengths, Prey has a few shortcomings, the combat, while serviceable, often feels clunky and less polished than the exploration or puzzle-solving aspects. Early encounters with Mimics can be tense and terrifying, but later battles sometimes drag due to repetitive enemy types and resource scarcity. The pacing can also slow down in the middle portion, where objectives become less urgent and the story loses some of its early momentum. While the ending offers interesting twists, it feels somewhat abrupt compared to the depth of the journey that precedes it.

Ultimately, this game stands as one of the most underappreciated sci-fi games of the last decade. It challenges the you to think, explore, and experiment rather than simply shoot their way through. With its layered storytelling, immersive environments, and deep mechanics, it captures the spirit of classic immersive sims like System Shock and Deus Ex while carving out its own identity. Prey may not be flawless, but it’s a rich and rewarding experience that continues to resonate with those who appreciate atmosphere, freedom, and thoughtful design in their games. This is truly one of the best immersive sims we got up until now, and a must-play if you like this genre to any extent.

Steam Curator

Putting into words how much I like this game is an incredible challenge.

It's a game that finally turned me onto a genre that I've struggled to love for years, and did it with a level of execution and polish that's absolutely premium.

Prey is a game all about celebrating player creativity, and to say any more would spoil the fun.

If you like games that give you a set of tools to play with and a well designed and tight world to use them in, pick this one up.

For my full thoughts, check out the video review:

And not just because you're on a space station where an alien species that was being studied has broken free and is killing everyone and can change its form and it's your enemy but also gives you powers and you're having to go back and forth between various areas on the space station as you unlock new security clearances and technology but the aliens start to sense what you're doing and try to sabotage your efforts and you have a computer telling you what to do and there's one really powerful alien that's hunting you and when it shows up you just need to run away and the game ends (possibly) with you blowing up the space station but (possibly) rescuing some of the lifeforms aboard—though that is a lot of it.

The other thing that makes these games so similar is how goshdern creepy they are. Granted, Metroid Fusion doesn't get outright scary until Samus-X gets involved, and even then is still mostly fine when she's not around, whereas Prey pretty much leads with trying to make you soil yourself and doesn't let up. But both have a similar unsettling vibe even outside of the jump scares and nonononononono moments. It's that post-apocalyptic human-settlement-minus-the-humanity thing, but somehow worse because they were just here a moment ago.

Not to mention the soundtracks—and this is a self-reflective aside, but I've noticed that I never comment on the music in my game reviews, and I don't really know why. I mean, it's definitely a big part of some my favorite games: Talos Principle, Horizon Zero Dawn, GRIS, Control, Celeste. I think the only games I have pointed it out in are the Supergiant games and Inner Space (though even there I heavily understated how of much my enjoyment of the game was due to the music). It's a weird thing to leave out, not only because I do actually notice the music but also because I write music reviews every year, so it's not like I'm worried about going out of my lane or whatever (if anything I know way more about music than I do about video games). Anyway, I'm going to try to make a point of talking about the music in future.

So, the soundtrack. Both Metroid Fusion and Prey have generally spooky electronic music throughout, and it's very good at setting the mood (sometimes too good, like when the Prey "Uh oh, there's a typhon" music will just start going for seemingly no reason [and sometimes actually no reason as far as I could tell]). The music that really gets me, though, is Prey's main menu music. The first twenty seconds, when it's just the guitar going, is some the most unsettling music I've ever listened to. Like, deeply unsettling. The combination of the creepiness and melancholy gives it this sense of inevitable doom that just...man, it hits me hard, every time. There were times when I booted the game up and then almost shut it off again just because of that music. And honestly, when it hits that first chord change and the synth comes in, I mean it definitely ups the menace factor, but it completely breaks the spell for me. That first twenty seconds, though...

Anyway, I eventually got tired, like physically exhausted, by how tense and kind of tedious the game was, so I switched to easy mode and just blasted through the last couple hours like Samus with a shotgun. If I were to play it again I'd probably play on story mode since there were definitely some storylines I didn't end up following because it just didn't feel worth it. But I liked the main storyline (mechanically I like the Dishonored games a little better because there's nothing like blinking around the map, but narratively Prey is far and away the better game), and the reveal at the end was interesting, and I like that the game kind of tells you what it thinks you should do based on the choices you made, but still lets you make the final choice in case you happen to disagree with it. Honestly I'm kind of surprised that I ended up playing through the whole thing, given my general dislike of being scared, and that probably says a lot for how good this game is.

P.S. Just to be clear, I don't think it's a problem that Prey has so many similarities to Metroid Fusion, nor do I think that one is a substitute for the other. Metroid Fusion, for the record, is one of my favorite games of all time.

P.P.S. I forgot to mention, one of the biggest mistakes I made was thinking "Oh, I like using the turrets and I don't want to have to be constantly fighting them, so I guess I won't get any of the typhon neuromod upgrades." That was stupid. Having powers and not having to just rely on weapons would've made the late game a lot more fun, and after about halfway through the game most turrets are broken or undeployed when you first encounter them, so while your giving up being able to use them (at least being able to use them safely), you don't really have to worry about having to fight them.

I couldn’t help but spend the whole time comparing Prey with Arkane+Bethesda’s earlier titles Dishonored and Dishonored 2. While Prey is an ok game that tried to reproduce some of that magic, it’s a shame it doesn’t live up to the studio’s more inspired predecessors.

The intro sequence is well done and some ideas are smart and fresh: recycling, uchrony setting, different possible endings and giving a choice to the player. Sadly, there are a few things that don’t work well with this game.

I was hoping for a clever level design, like Dishonored and Dishonored 2, that truly served the gameplay. All I got was a few maintenance shafts, ceiling pipes that usually go nowhere, and a Gloo gun that occasionally allows a clumsy Morgan to climb walls.

While there are some good ideas in the gameplay, I think more stress should have been put on alien abilities other than blasting the sh*t out of everything like any other game can do. The gameplay also becomes confusing and awkward with unpredictable behaviours from enemies, which is frustrating.

Let’s face it, the art direction is not very inspired. No clear visual identity for the environments, space station, suits… Apart from the Mimics, the aliens’ design is uninspired and just plain disappointing.

Talking about aliens, it’s frustrating that the story does not explore how they are (or should be) special. One can see there’s potential there to have a sci-fi story that stands out… but no: throughout the game turns out aliens are just mindless beasts to be put to death.

Could Prey have been a great game? Maybe with more effort put in what could have made it different from other sci-fi FPS.

Wow, what a great game!

I thoroughly enjoyed this playthrough, right from the spooky beginning to the high-speed ending. The combat was fun with a wide range of approaches for every fight, but the story asepcts were what really stood out for me. The design of Talos I is wonderful, and the environmental storytelling is extremely good - hearing those recordings of people's last moments were chilling. I really liked the variety of characters included in the game, all of whom seemed fully fleshed out and not in the least stereotypical. I just wish I could have interacted with them a little more! Having a character with no dialogue options was extremely frustrating at times.

Okay so I just wanna say that on my marathon of catching up with Bestheda published games, I am very thankful for the fact that this game has optimized fullscreen scale to fit options unlike The Evil Within 1 and 2. If you do 800x600 (After a higher one) resolution to run fast on your computer, it'll stretch to fit to your widescreen screen. This is good because my monitor is huge, and if I were to give it that big of a resolution my PC wouldn't run it.

You are given the option of picking a gender between woman and man, and what I love about that is that about nothing changes really, most of the game works as much as with a man and a woman and the plot point of you dating a woman is kept as well. You'll want to pick the woman because Arkane Studio has a usual style of drawing their guys very gruff and not as pretty.

Straight off the bat you are going ape spit, throwing all of your possessions around as if you possessed the character and you don't hear their consciousness as they see through your eyes what you are doing to their room by destroying all of their cups and making a mess out of their pans. I was practically wasting 30 minutes yelling "gimme ya FACKIN MONEY" and throwing stuff at the windows (because the physics engine is really fun) in the room, and mostly because I was trying to find extra items. I don't have a really good reason for putting all of the toilet paper in the toilet though.

Also I just wanna say how friendly this game is to speedrunning, from the bat you can sprint and slide. No slowdowns, no constraints, just go, reminds me of the good old days of 90s PC Gaming where you relied on the core mechanics of the game and didn't limit it you know? Even the introduction is cool and immersive and not much of a constraint. That's a constant theme through out the game, it reminds me of a legit FPS adventure game from the late 90s like System Shock, you even got the side-view thing from the game, if you want to take a little time and listen to plot you can, but if you wanna just progress forward you can do that too. Sure, there's a tutorial (if you don't know how to skip it) but it's actually done in a fast way too. With so many games with very slow introductions, this one's alright. Like it's brief and before you know it, you're playing some stealth game prop hunt where enemies KILL YOU instantly.

Like the good old days of action RPG FPS games in the late 90s, you'll have like an open design approach to things with a lot of ways to reach something, the fact that you can create platforms is TOO LIBERATING, also the crickle crackle moments of the mimics when you're really close to discovering them never gets old, sometimes your fast to melee the item and sometimes you don't melee it in time and they pop out, it's always exciting.

Every time you make a little makeshift platform to go to some place quicker, and then hover a little, it is very satisfying. The more you play, the more things start to open, new abilities, new means as to how to get those abilities, it's like at first it's very bare bones but then you unlock a lot of mechanics. Like at first you might just have 1 side-mission, but then you'd have the opportunity to have several really.

Seriously, this is what Bioshock should've been. This is up to standard and even better than System Shock 2's map design in many ways. Because while System Shock 2's backtracking felt linear, claustrophobic, and boring and had a lot of constraints and downtime while going through the train, every time you backtrack in this game you familiarize yourself more with the area and get a few errands done, not only that but making shortcuts is always fun. Plus, the whole Space travel thing is actually kind of calming and cool. There's a lot of HUB worlds that feel comfy and you'll get used to, you'll definitely feel connected to the place as the world building is TOP NOTCH, one of the best honestly.

If you want to grind you can, it's not the most painful grinding and I think enemies and supplies respawn for you get more materials (although sometimes harder enemies spawn and you don't have ammo because you've been wasting it on killing them), this game manages to make revisiting areas to not be that much of a hassle as you go on recycle runs through areas to find more stuff to recycle so that you can make more upgrades!

Also don't waste all of your resources on medkits at first. This is a game that motivates you to really look into every nook and cranny and value your surroundings, and this is the aspect that makes me appreciate this game the most because the means of experience through actually rewarding exploration is great, it reminds me so much of System Shock 2's way of rewarding the player. Everything around you is useful, and your surroundings are good to know too.

Sometimes the areas are a little too open and you kind of get overwhelmed by that because as soon as you enter a new area, you're thinking to yourself: Where is the recycler, and it takes a while to find 1 (you could also just... throw your items on the floor and recycle bomb them), and sometimes the game opens more areas than you expected to open so you don't know if you should continue exploring or just return to your missions, the pacing of the areas are all over the place too and I just had a deep sense of dread at one point because I was just playing sleep deprived exploring more and more without any enemies at one point because I cleared everything out.

It's open design is also kind of overwhelming too, often times I forget that there are thousand of ways I can go through something because I forget I could like transform into something to go pass a small hole, but my creative thinking isn't shallow yet, due to being raised with Deus Ex I've thought of so many times of using grenades to open new locations, or just brute force.

Combat has a lot of ways to approach too, and the game even tells you the proper way to defeat an enemy is to combine multiple mechanics like freezing them with goo and then smashing them, using different abilities, and you don't give it much thought at first but you'll realize you'll be using a lot of means to do something.

The premise is short and simple, and honestly Prey deserves a medal for making a plot concept that is straight to the point but also just enough to make you enthralled in the first seconds to discover a little more if you want, it's not THAT important because the major part of the game is exploration. I feel as if it is the perfect balance between suspenseful and mundane sci-fi plot device and universe building.

I mean that's the basis of most of these spiritual sequels to System Shock: something goes wrong with a base and it is infected with things, that is for the most part the entire premise, Prey does it REALLY well though with making the events feel very connected to the main character. The soundtrack using aggressive synths and using peaking noises to go along with almost every action was a neat idea. It definitely made itself more notable because of this, although I prefer the fact that this game was made more notable because if you cheese it, that's a feature! Cheesing is GOOD. You deserve the fruit of your cheesing that because you thought that out.

In a sea of games holding back due to modern boring ideas, this one keeps it true to old design while modernizing and making some aspects less boring by keeping itself fresh, with things like more open areas, or introducing a new cool mechanic every now and then. If you are a fan of Adventure RPG FPS Games, you gotta try this one out, it really lives up to the "Shock" (?) series.

I know I referenced it a lot to old 90s PC games but that is what this game exactly is, it is like a love letter, it is the best features of all of those games condensed into something that seeks to upgrade the genre. A lot of people get confused and overwhelmed by how much ways you can approach something (be it stealth, environmental means, brute, just a lot of planning), but for someone familiar with the multi-genre approach all the pieces should perfectly fit. You actually gotta think stuff out and the game is very engaging that way.

If you're interested in this, go play it, seriously go in FRESH. Because the experience is as made as fresh as it can be. Like this game is sorta like Subway: Have it your way, and fresh.

Also no, this has no relation whatsoever with the original Prey. I wish they had titled the game Mimic or something, or Python. Because the title just makes me remind of the fact that even if this is an amazing game, Bethesda canceled WHAT WOULD'VE BEEN AN AMAZING GAME TOO In turn of it, and somehow used the title as if people would recognize it as a reboot? What?! The whole thought process around that decision does not make sense.

Regardless, this is a rare collaboration of very interesting names within the gaming industry and it is so rare to find a game that is true to it's roots like this is, the fact that Chris Avellone's name is on it is a testament to that, they'll be working on System Shock's remake in the future too!

Prey is ok. You play as a test subject on a space lab where some space monsters (kept for Science!) have gotten lose.

The mechanics and progression actually feel really good (the developers are Arkane, who made Dishonored); exploration rewards a keen eye and abilities feel powerful. However, as you play the game, you get bogged down by small inconveniences and feel unmotivated to continue the game due to poor storytelling.

The crafting system requires you to decompose the open-world bric-a-brac into things like ammo and medkits. Unfortunately, you can only do this at certain locations scattered across the map, so much of the exploration is interspersed with running back to the deconstructor to turn the miscellanea into crafting materials. While

Player choice is the modus operandi for Arkane, and this means you can accidentally play Prey in a way that isn't optimal (that is, I did). After a certain point in the story, you can kinda go anywhere in the ship. While you can do this, I wouldn't recommend doing so, as the areas will stay cleared (save for the few incidental enemies that respawn) when you come back for story reasons. It's disappointing as areas later in the game felt the same as the ones I had already explored; a poor sign of times to come.

While I might not have experienced the story beats in the best way, having swaths of time story-less due to being sidetracked, I wasn't missing much. You spend the game running errands for your brother, the lead scientist, in order to save the station. The most flavor you get are incidental text and audio logs, which paint the chaos when the monsters escaped. Nothing too interesting, unfortunately. My issue is that the enemy has no voice, they seem to just be animals, bent on consuming. Your other enemy(?) is your brother, whose goals are different from yours, but as the only actor with agency in this story, his wants hold no power over you, and so story-wise you have no reason to obey him.

So, I quite like System Shock 2, a (the?) game from which Prey draws inspiration, which doesn't have the story problems Prey does. SS2 has only audio logs, and does quite a lot with them. The actors all have unique voices and overexaggerated personalities (which is optimal, since you're only going to have a few minutes of dialogue from each character). And most of all, some of the monsters are converted crewmembers, and you get audio logs of people at different states of transformation, which are fantastic. Similar plot beats include a big plot reveal midway through (Prey: about you, SS2: about your guide), and SS2's is much more compelling.

Un capolavoro di struttura e design, con un lavoro incredibile sull'unione dei vari sistemi che ne compongono le meccaniche e una personalità pazzesca sul piano del gameplay. Può non rapire subito se non si è troppo avvezzi al genere, anche perché è molto più System Shock e Deus Ex che Bioshock: aperto, libero, non ti guida per mano, ti offre un ambiente libero e ha una struttura sandbox spalmata su un contesto quasi open world, non ad arene circoscritte come Dishonored. Ma se gli dai il tempo di respirare e ti impegni a trovare il tuo modo di giocare, emerge l'animale da gameplay che è. Criticabili forse solo il sistema di combattimento un po' limitato, che però ha un senso nel contesto e diventa molto più gradevole quando sviluppi il personaggio, e lo stile visivo delle ambientazioni, molto da fantascienza slick moderna standard stile Apple (compensato però da una grandissima cura per i dettagli, un'enorme personalità nelle piccole cose e nelle caratterizzazioni - la scrittura è deliziosamente tragicomica - e un design che coniuga a meraviglia profondità di gioco e realismo degli ambienti).

Capolavorone.