FPS games can get monotonous these days. Thankfully Prey does something most games only dream about. It's creative. Yeah it's ironic that in a creative business creativity often isn't on display. Alot of games are more like televisions or stereo receivers these days - Yearly updates with incremental improvements.
Well Prey aims to literally turn conventions upside down with a handful of 'gimmicks.' Let's face it games are often built on gimmicks. The 3d fps game was a gimmick when it first became popular and doable as videogame genre some 12 years ago. Here we are 12 years later and that gimmick wears a bit thin with many folks. Deathmatching was so awesome back in the day and now it's been there done that.
Well Prey brings about a few new gimmicks to the genre. First we have changes in gravity. You can literally turn rooms sideways and upside down by hitting switches. This is suprisingly or maybe not suprisingly quite interesting and entertaining as it's so new in fps games. Wall/ceiling walking along lighted paths is also a way to get around the Prey universe. These 'gimmicks' don't let you go thru the motions and challenge your senses and I think they work quite well throughout the game. The gravity switches are used to great effect in figuring out how to get from a to b when there seemingly isnt' a way to do it.
Another 'gimmick' of Prey is the Spirit world. You can become a spirit not far into the game and pass thru forcefields and walk along spirtual winds or webs to places you otherwise couldn't get to in-body. This gimmick is used mainly for solving puzzles. For the most part they did good with it. It's not quite up to the puzzles in the dungeons of a Zelda game, but it's quite a bit above just opening doors with colored keys. Note: Prey is suprisingly puzzle heavy. There's a little too much going thru a forcefield and pressing a button somewhere to open it, but to be fair they do try and vary that theme a bit.
Spirit mode also let's you wield a bow and shoot the enemies without them seeing you.
The other spirit gimmick is when you die you go to a spirit world and you fight some spirit creatures to make your way back to your body exactly where you died. In effect it eliminates most of the need to save the game. And it's welcome relief to start back right at the point where you died.
Last, but not least are the portals. Yep portals that instantly transport you to a completely different place in the game world. You can see right thru them too to another part of the world. There's a few puzzles involving the portals that spice things up. And overall they add a bit of pizzazz to the game, but they also aren't much more than fancy doors in many cases. It does give the designers a great excuse tho to pop monsters in behind you by having 'em spawn thru portals.
Oh less I forget this is the first fps game I can recall where you're character talks throughout without being seen (ie no cutscenes.) It works pretty well. The story here is decent. I didn't follow it much. It's a aliens come and get the humans and carve 'em up to feed a big monster and you are determined to stop it and find your girlfriend who was also captured.
That's most of Prey's gimmicks right there. There's definitely a smarter more creative side to this fps game than most. It doesn't always hit the mark. There's way too much of hitting force field/portal/door touchpads. 500 times maybe during the game? It's up there. And some of the puzzles are pretty abstract and it's hard to relate them to what's happening in the game world. But nice touches abound.
Combat can get going at times, but often feels a bit dull. The weapons are fairly interesting twists on the usual weapons (standard weapon has a secondary sniper mode that's fun,) but for the most part there isn't a lot of ooomph to them and the it's a little too straightforward. The last boss battle is a pushover, but a couple of the earlier ones can be defeated in rather interesting ways.
Tangent #1: The problem with a lot of combat in American fps games is the game mechanics are all the same. Prey works in a few Nintendo-esque (Japanese) boss creature elements into the mix, but not enough. Most of the regular bad guys are defeated the same way. Shoot and move. Shoot and move. Headshots taking down the guys quicker. Yeah you can use different weapons, but it all has the same feeling. Same as most fps games you've ever played.
Not to say Combat is terrible. Some of the aliens are pretty sweet looking. The alien snipers make this great light-saber like sound when they are about to get a bead on you (complete with red tracers,) but it's all just lacking a bit of juice. I think American fps games need to change up their combat game mechanics a bit. Not just offer 7 different guns that essentially all behave the same - shoot stuff in a fairly straight line.
Overall I give this game a 4 out of 5 star rating or 85%. It's an entertaining game. It's worth playing. I'm never one to spend $60 on a game or even $50 so altho I wouldn't spend that on this game without thinking about later reselling it, I feel that way about nearly every game I buy. Prey receives high marks for taking chances and throwing quite a few curveballs at you. The beginning and end were entertaining. The middle part of the game lagged a bit. Low marks for too many touchpad controls and combat was so-so. Performance overall seemed quite good. The puzzles and combat could have used more refinement.
I did give the multiplayer a whirl one night. I found it highly entertaining. The gravity tricks and portal stuff really spice up the 'ole deathmatch game. Of course I just gave it a couple hours of play.
Oh what's amazing about this game is the ideas in it are some 7 years old or more and were ideas seemingly anyone could have copied, but didn't. I'm a bit shocked because there are good ideas in the game. The industry really does seem too focused on polygons and shaders and hdr and.... Let's hope more developers go the creative route. Challenge the player. Surpise him or her. That's entertainment. And that was what Prey delivers for the most part.
Well Prey aims to literally turn conventions upside down with a handful of 'gimmicks.' Let's face it games are often built on gimmicks. The 3d fps game was a gimmick when it first became popular and doable as videogame genre some 12 years ago. Here we are 12 years later and that gimmick wears a bit thin with many folks. Deathmatching was so awesome back in the day and now it's been there done that.
Well Prey brings about a few new gimmicks to the genre. First we have changes in gravity. You can literally turn rooms sideways and upside down by hitting switches. This is suprisingly or maybe not suprisingly quite interesting and entertaining as it's so new in fps games. Wall/ceiling walking along lighted paths is also a way to get around the Prey universe. These 'gimmicks' don't let you go thru the motions and challenge your senses and I think they work quite well throughout the game. The gravity switches are used to great effect in figuring out how to get from a to b when there seemingly isnt' a way to do it.
Another 'gimmick' of Prey is the Spirit world. You can become a spirit not far into the game and pass thru forcefields and walk along spirtual winds or webs to places you otherwise couldn't get to in-body. This gimmick is used mainly for solving puzzles. For the most part they did good with it. It's not quite up to the puzzles in the dungeons of a Zelda game, but it's quite a bit above just opening doors with colored keys. Note: Prey is suprisingly puzzle heavy. There's a little too much going thru a forcefield and pressing a button somewhere to open it, but to be fair they do try and vary that theme a bit.
Spirit mode also let's you wield a bow and shoot the enemies without them seeing you.
The other spirit gimmick is when you die you go to a spirit world and you fight some spirit creatures to make your way back to your body exactly where you died. In effect it eliminates most of the need to save the game. And it's welcome relief to start back right at the point where you died.
Last, but not least are the portals. Yep portals that instantly transport you to a completely different place in the game world. You can see right thru them too to another part of the world. There's a few puzzles involving the portals that spice things up. And overall they add a bit of pizzazz to the game, but they also aren't much more than fancy doors in many cases. It does give the designers a great excuse tho to pop monsters in behind you by having 'em spawn thru portals.
Oh less I forget this is the first fps game I can recall where you're character talks throughout without being seen (ie no cutscenes.) It works pretty well. The story here is decent. I didn't follow it much. It's a aliens come and get the humans and carve 'em up to feed a big monster and you are determined to stop it and find your girlfriend who was also captured.
That's most of Prey's gimmicks right there. There's definitely a smarter more creative side to this fps game than most. It doesn't always hit the mark. There's way too much of hitting force field/portal/door touchpads. 500 times maybe during the game? It's up there. And some of the puzzles are pretty abstract and it's hard to relate them to what's happening in the game world. But nice touches abound.
Combat can get going at times, but often feels a bit dull. The weapons are fairly interesting twists on the usual weapons (standard weapon has a secondary sniper mode that's fun,) but for the most part there isn't a lot of ooomph to them and the it's a little too straightforward. The last boss battle is a pushover, but a couple of the earlier ones can be defeated in rather interesting ways.
Tangent #1: The problem with a lot of combat in American fps games is the game mechanics are all the same. Prey works in a few Nintendo-esque (Japanese) boss creature elements into the mix, but not enough. Most of the regular bad guys are defeated the same way. Shoot and move. Shoot and move. Headshots taking down the guys quicker. Yeah you can use different weapons, but it all has the same feeling. Same as most fps games you've ever played.
Not to say Combat is terrible. Some of the aliens are pretty sweet looking. The alien snipers make this great light-saber like sound when they are about to get a bead on you (complete with red tracers,) but it's all just lacking a bit of juice. I think American fps games need to change up their combat game mechanics a bit. Not just offer 7 different guns that essentially all behave the same - shoot stuff in a fairly straight line.
Overall I give this game a 4 out of 5 star rating or 85%. It's an entertaining game. It's worth playing. I'm never one to spend $60 on a game or even $50 so altho I wouldn't spend that on this game without thinking about later reselling it, I feel that way about nearly every game I buy. Prey receives high marks for taking chances and throwing quite a few curveballs at you. The beginning and end were entertaining. The middle part of the game lagged a bit. Low marks for too many touchpad controls and combat was so-so. Performance overall seemed quite good. The puzzles and combat could have used more refinement.
I did give the multiplayer a whirl one night. I found it highly entertaining. The gravity tricks and portal stuff really spice up the 'ole deathmatch game. Of course I just gave it a couple hours of play.
Oh what's amazing about this game is the ideas in it are some 7 years old or more and were ideas seemingly anyone could have copied, but didn't. I'm a bit shocked because there are good ideas in the game. The industry really does seem too focused on polygons and shaders and hdr and.... Let's hope more developers go the creative route. Challenge the player. Surpise him or her. That's entertainment. And that was what Prey delivers for the most part.
ing stupid. The weapons have that real underwhelming-to-use feeling.