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Prey (PC DVD)
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Description:
In a nutshell:
Although it was announced more than a decade ago this demonstrates that the best things really do come to those that wait, with the most original and technically advanced first person shoot `em-up in years.The lowdown:
Although it was conceived at a time when 3D graphics cards were still optional the basic idea behind the Prey portal technology is still the same as it ever was, allowing you to instantly step from one world to another in the game. You can even create the portals yourself as you battle grotesque enemy bosses in one area and jump back to another to recover. The game casts you as a Cherokee Indian with a number of magical powers such as spirit walking that let you explore the game world as a spirit, and deathwalk which replaces the normal need for intrusive quick saves with an innovative mini-game set between the worlds of the living and the dead. Most exciting moment:
Not only is the portal technology amazing but the game's use of gravity is equally inspired with gravity escalators that run up and across ceilings and some excellent zero gravity sections where you pilot spaceship pods and explore a tiny rotating planetoid. Since you ask:
Originally intended only for the PC, the Xbox 360 version is being developed by British team Venom Games, who previously created Rocky Legends for Ubisoft, and features an 8 player multiplayer mode. The bottom line:
Looks like being one of the top predators in the shoot `em-up world.
Harrison Dent
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4/5 |
Really a missed opportunity
(June 22, 2008) |
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A decent enough game, although if you have the awesome and mighty Doom 3, or Quake 4, then Prey will not offer anything much different. |
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3/5 |
good if you can get it cheap
(May 27, 2008) |
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Just finished it.....
Its Ok, but not brilliant. Did not keep me hooked, I just played for an hour or so at a time really....the idea was good, just poorly executed I think. i like the idea of the spirit thing, the gravity walkways and portals. However, these become overused i thought. The other annoying thing I hated was the use of the shuttles....in FPS games, I much prefer to be on the ground and in more control.
However, that said, the plot is pretty good, which does make a change for this type of game...I won't talk too much about this as it will spoil things if you haven't played it.
It is a one play game really though....I have no inclination to go back and play it again, unlike its way better brothers, such as Far Cry, Crysis, HL2 etc.....
That said if you can find it cheap and have some spare hours it is quite a bit of fun, in small doses... |
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5/5 |
Let Us Prey
(May 26, 2008) |
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This excellent game sees you playing the part of a modern day Native American who gets kidnapped by disgusting aliens. You have to rescue your girlfriend whilst destroying the Death Star (again). Been here before!
In many senses Prey is an old style, traditional shoot 'em up, with cardboard cut out bad guys ever ready to impale themselves helpfully on your weaponry. But in several important aspects the game play is innovative and fresh.
First there are the gravity tricks. The game is set in space, right? So, gravity is optional to begin with. Developing this idea leads to glowing magnetic walkways that take you spiralling overhead into the ceiling. Jump off the walkway and you flip back to the floor. All the while getting shot at and shooting back.
Or the switches that flip the gravity centre of entire rooms, allowing you to send baddies plunging to their doom.
As well as effectively quadrupling the available game play space, these mechanisms set up some wonderful puzzles. How do I get that box over to that ledge whilst that force field is in the way? Flip the room, push the box, and flip the room back. That kinda thing.
Then there are the portals - an innovation closely related to Valve's recent Orange Box puzzler Portal, with which it shares a common development heritage. In Prey the portals are pre-set, but mind-bendingly fun nevertheless.
As if that wasn't enough, your character can become a spirit and pass invisibly through certain obstacles (such as laser surveillance and force fields), allowing you to get access to otherwise unreachable goals. You replenish your spirit energy by sucking up the glowing souls of your dead enemies, and when you die it isn't "game over". You get sooked through to a swirling spirit realm where you take pot shots at your disgraced ancestors to get your health back.
Sounds confusing, don't it? But it all makes perfect sense in a game that is paced to lead you through the various mechanisms.
The game looks great, being based on an updated version of the Doom 3 engine which allows much greater scope for rendering extremely large play areas. Metallic textures and organic alien sliminess are delivered with equal fidelity. Perhaps the only minor quibble would be the occasionally unconvincing character animation.
With a soundtrack by Jeremy Soule who composed the music for the likes of Oblivion and some convincing voice acting, there is hardly a weak element in the game.
The scope is breathtaking, matching the likes of Half Life 2.
It's closest relatives are Doom 3 and Bioshock, with a nod in the direction of the aforementioned Half Life 2. If Doom 3 disappointed you, then you may well love Prey. It's everything that game should have been, and more.
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4/5 |
Prey
(May 07, 2008) |
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"Prey" is weird. It's a weird game. Firstly it's a mix of genres: the game style is solid FPS, but the story is another matter completely. It's urban. It's sci-fi. It's mythology. It's all those things mixed up in a bizarre storyline featuring Native American folklore and levitating aliens.
Perhaps that's not the best start. I'll try again. You are Domasi "Tommy" Tawdi, a man of Cherokee descent wondering if one's genealogy is really worth a damn when you live and work on a crummy reservation, in the middle of a dusty highway somewhere in Oklahoma. Your wrinkly, feather-in-hair grandfather is on your case, fearing for your eternal spirit. Your girlfriend believes in all that crap and doesn't want to move away from her ancestral soil. And you're a garage mechanic who thinks there's more to life that dust in your coffee and truckstop thugs pawing at your girl.
That's how the game starts. You don't like it when thugs paw at your girl. You pick up your wrench - and you bludgeon them to death right there next to the bar. Your wrench gleams with sticky redness in the artificial light from the slot machines. Jen, the girl in question, screams at you. Then there are rays of pale green light slicing through the dirty windows and the cracks in the ceiling, and things in the room start moving of their own accord, and you and Jen and your wise old grandpa are being sucked into a huge craft hovering directly overhead, the jukebox wailing urban rock in your ears, and then--
Weirdness. The story is weird: as a Cherokee apparently with the power to stop the sentient alien "Sphere" expanding around the Earth, you must use your mystic skills to "spirit walk" out of your own body. You can do this to pass through energy field, and flip switches to open doors for your physical form, aided by your dead falcon Talon. Weird. The Sphere is run by a psychic alien race who strip planets for a living to prolong their own existence. Their vast ship is full of wandering tentacles and man-sized sphincters that belch acid. Weird. It's also riddled with artificial wormholes, doorways in the wall or in crates or on rails, that take you to different areas of the Sphere. Sometimes they throw you out on the roof. Distorted gravity keeps you there while enemies warp out onto the opposite wall, shooting at you with bugs that have corrosive gas for blood. WEIRD. You don't even walk on the floor in this game!
In fact, all of this weirdness is used to brilliant effect. The puzzles that sometimes temporarily halt your progress involve using the spirit walking and the gravity defiance to your advantage. Your weird weapons, including the afore-mentioned bug-grenades, vary from standard energy rifles to armour-piercing gun-arms blown from the shoulders of psychopathic alien giants. And don't expect to utilise any cool technology to open all of those cyber-organic doors. You have a severed hand.
In short, with "Prey" you literally don't know which way's up. You don't know what's more real, the spirit or the flesh. You don't know whether that body part on the floor will help you later on. You don't know if you'll rescue your grandfather or your girlfriend, or if those near-humans who are trying to help you will get you killed first. You don't know if you believe in yourself or your heritage.
You're the saviour of Earth, but you don't want the job. Can you handle the weirdness? It's dirt cheap now but sadly forgotten about, despite the good reviews it earned eighteen months ago. Get it. Enjoy it. Forget what's normal.
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3/5 |
Worth Picking up if you can get it cheap
(April 11, 2008) |
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I've just picked up Prey for about £3 and whizzed through it in a couple of hours, over the space of about a fortnight. Based on that, I reckon it was reasonable enough value for money.
I'm certainly glad that I didn't pay full price for this when it was first released - I remember looking at it in the shops and thinking "Yep, looks just like Doom 3". I'd have definitely felt cheated if I'd had to fork out £30 for it or something like that.
Now that I've played it through, it's generally a fairly satisfying, if pretty generic, shooter which you can happily blast through a bit of spare time with. It does have what it claims are new ideas, but none of them seem that new to me...
Example 1 - the spirit world. Soul Reaver already did this (and better).
Example 2 - gravity. I seem to remember being able to run up walls as the alien in AVP2, and that was years ago.
Example 3 - Portals. Who hasn't played Portal yet? Shame on you!
OK, so that's the "innovations" roundly trashed. But on to the better bits.
The story is diverting enough, not long but OK. The sound is up to the standard you'd expect of a modern PC shooter and the majority of the graphics are nice. Again, you'd expect that too from the Doom 3 engine which I'm sure powers the game. Oh, mention must be given too the particular use of one (famous) song to set up the game's main thrust. Top drawer!
Less good bits... One of your aims is to rescue your girlfriend. Sadly, she is pretty much the ugliest in-game character I have ever had to bother saving (including Vortigaunts). In fact, the all human character models are actually more unlucky-looking than the alien bad guys. That's hard to justify these days, post HalfLife 2. Seriously, she is Hard on the eyes. Sorry designers, must do better.
The shooting action is, well, not so good. There aren't that many types of bad guy, and there aren't really a lot of them so it does not feel as visceral or frantic as some of the other shooters you may have played. The actual control overall feels a bit X-Box 360-ish. Just not quite responsive enough to be a dedicated PC-FPS. Sorry, but console FPS games are simply not as good as PC ones. If you think otherwise, you're are sadly mistaken. Scream "Halo 3" as loud as you like. Same old...
But other than that, you'll still feel quite pleased with yourself once you've finished Prey. You just won't really care much. It won't have frightened you, you won't have laughed or cried (or at least not in the desired sense) and you won't have really felt involved. Peculiarly, for a game with a BBFC 18 certificate, it feels a more than a little childish.
So overall, the three-star review is based on whether or not you can get it for a fiver or less. If you can then Prey will salve your bloodlust just nicely for a while. If you're expected to pay any more, don't bother. It's not like you're short of choice in the first person shooter genre. |
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