Final Thoughts on Prey
I wrote up a quick “review” of Prey back when I started it. Since I finished the single player game tonight, I wanted to follow up with some quick thoughts.
Short form, enjoyed Prey a great deal. I particularly appreciated the Spirit World concept that allows you to refill on health/spirit energy and effectively never die (and hence be able to continue playing through the game). Prey also does a great job of having “wow” moments with things like seeing the level being built around you, or moments of huge scale that really make you feel as though you are on a gargantuan, alien ship. Lot of great moments to be experienced in the game.
That said, the game does have a few problems – swearing and dialogue is a bit forced at times, and there are times when the game milks certain concepts a bit too hard. One example is the “find a force field, switch to spirit mode to pass and flip the switch to deactivate so your corporal body can continue the game” puzzle. You’ll see this over and over again, and it becomes a bit tiring. Another disappointment is the relative lack of diversity in creatures you meet. Counting off the top of my head, I think I saw eight different things to battle throughout the entire game.
Final rating: 8 of 10 (same as before)
Note that my final rating doesn’t take into account online play as I haven’t spent much time there yet. But since I’ll probably be moving on to finish up Tomb Raider I wanted to close out this chapter for now. All-in-all, if you’re a first-person shooter fan I can’t imagine you’d be disappointed with Prey. Recommended.
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Working my way through Prey and Tomb Raider as we speak. So Far , so good.
Yeah, I thought the swearing was over the top and didn’t add to the game. Look at Halo 2, that does a wonderful job without the excessive swearing that Prey has.
I’m working through
Prey[/i] right now as well (alternating with 
Cloning Clyde[/i], which has me giggling). It’s not bad. You’re right about the swearing and the dialog. It’s one of those games that made me wish we hadn’t figured out audio codecs or could just go back to typing out the dialog. Fortunately, Our Hero seems to be of the big, dumb, but quiet type.
I think my only real problem with the game right now (except for the irritating ghost children… die… die… die!!! oh, wait…) is actually with the spirit world wheeze. It’s a nice concept, and it does a lot to take away my frustration with dying in video games, but ultimately it feels to me very derivative of
Soul Reaver[/i], which I think did it better (by which I mean it made more use of the concept and had more puzzles that required its creative use). The uses of the spirit world in 
Prey[/i] are all pretty straightforward (so far as I can tell), and I haven’t had any "how the heck am I supposed to… ooooohhh" moments with it as I did with 
Soul Reaver[/i].
My "eh" reaction to the spirit world is, however, more than made up for by the clever use of gravity and freaky-deaky geometries in the game. Some of the rooms in this game feel like the combination of an Escher print with an H. P. Lovecraft story. I have to say that I now have absolutely no idea where I am in the "sphere" because I’ve been flipped and teleported and whatevered so many times. I think that adds a certain realism to the game… I would imagine it would be very disorienting to be on a real alien ship.
All in all, I have to say it’s pretty enjoyable. Now, if I can just figure out how to kill those ghost children. Hmm…
Yeah, cool game. I’ve heard some people complain that it was too short, or that you couldn’t really die so it wasn’t challenging. But at the end of the day, great story and lots of WOW moments as you’ve said. I think the question is would you rather have an innovative and cool game that is over a bit quick and easy, but lives long in the memory, or would you rather a game that drags it out by making it extra tough and long, stays to the same trusted FPS formula and is quickly forgitten once beaten (I could insert far too many names here).
Brightest candle and all that…
Kudos to HumanHead/3Drealms for bringin something a bit different into the 360 FPS library. Now if only Duke Nukem 3D made its way to the XBLA!
Have to agree with the tiresome forcefields. I was always finding myself thinking "Right, perhaps there’ll be something more difficult to do with this one…" but there never was, very disappointing.
I’ve come away from this game thinking massive potential…let’s give the dev’s another nine years and see what they come up with!
I really enjoyed this, I loved it when you get to the edge of the sphere and you can land on small planets inside the sphere or go flying in your shuttle.
They really make you feel like you are on an incredibly huge space ship.
And I dont care what anyone says the portals are COOL COOL COOL
I played the demo and thouught Prey was average at best. Really nothing id spend hard cash on.. and multiplayer?… er.. its rubbish… there is one reason why Halo 2 still tops xbox live charts, there is nothing that comes even close….
cool aspects, spirit stuff, portals, gravity, etc, but these are gimics to sell a game.. all in all, the engine is dung.
Re: "I played the demo and thouught Prey was average at best. Really nothing id spend hard cash on.. and multiplayer?… er.. its rubbish… there is one reason why Halo 2 still tops xbox live charts, there is nothing that comes even close…."
All I can say is that the game has a ton of surprises as you go through it – the demo just can’t capture all of them. I’d look at the demo more for visual look/controls and then just a taste of portals/gravity warping IMO.
Re: "I think the question is would you rather have an innovative and cool game that is over a bit quick and easy, but lives long in the memory, or would you rather a game that drags it out by making it extra tough and long, stays to the same trusted FPS formula and is quickly forgitten once beaten (I could insert far too many names here)."
I couldn’t have said it better myself. Prey is one I’ll remember for a while (and look forward to the sequel they set up after the credits).
As I wrote in my little review (http://blog.rakkoon.com/?p=36) I think Prey is a great game, but without actually dying and restarting from a savegame or checkpoint, it’s too easy and too short.
Yes, the game gets tough to get through when you play it on "hard", but it’s still too easy to save a few bullets and opt to die when your health is low, only to return with full health and finish the enemies you couldn’t get before.
The only real disappointment I have, in hindsight, is that the multiplayer doesn’t offer enough gravity and wallwalk switching. It’d have been awesome to flick a switch and have your opponents fall down so you can shoot them.
Like Andre I’m really looking forward to Prey 2, but for now my copy of Prey is online, ready to be sold.
I agree with it being a good game. I’m about half-way done now, and I’ve enjoyed it so far. I agree with their not being much diversity in the creatures you face, but it doesn’t take away from the overall experience.
The "not dying" thing however is kind of a double-edged sword. It helps like Ozymandias said, by never really dying so basically you don’t have to start up again from the last checkpoint, blah blah blah. But then again, like imaginedbug said, it makes the game a little TOO easy. Still an interesting and innovative idea. All in all, I’d have to go with an high 7/low 8 out of 10.
imaginedbug, while I agree, I’d say its not really all that different than FPS games now. I can exploit the old system just as easy as this one.
With quicksaves, I can just quicksave after every encounter. If something goes wrong, I just hit my quickload. Dying purposly to hoard ammo is just about the same thing.
I’d personally rather not have to feel like I’ve quickloaded the same area 15 times to get a battle completed. But we all have our different tastes.
Still, I can see both sides of the argument. Either way, I love the new feel to the concept. Even if its not proven to be better, its not the same ‘rinse, lather, repeat’ formula of every other shooter out there. In that sense it scores points with me.
I’ll have to agree with most here. Its fair to above average. Like a good solid 82 you got on a test that you thought had kicked your ass. It’s not THAT great, but you thank god you pulled enough quick answers out your ass to keep that low A class average.