Game Review "PREY"

I purchased prey and installed it yesterday. After an hour of play, I have a few impressions that I want to share.

First a few disclamers: This game has swearing, lots and lots of swearing, I saw no options in the menu to turn it off or down. ALSO The game creators tried to honor the "ancient ways of the Cherokee" unfortunatly they didn't do any research at all on the Cherokee, the over all feel leaves me feeling mildly insulted about my heritage.

Ok, now on to the meat and bones, Plot- There actualy seems to be a plot outline kind of thingy, and there are supporting characters that you interact with in a basic way.

Graphics- I do not know what graphic engine the game uses but the over all quality seems to be the same as quake 4. The shadows in the game are dynamic and light sources seem to be placed to take advantage of the effects. The games details are also fine, interestingly, when you use the zoom feature on one of your weapons on an object up close it does not pixalate it, the zoom retains your native screen resolution.

Weapons- I am only a little bit into the game at this point. but it seems that the game has 7 weapons including your basic trusty pipe wrench. Weapons have multiple firing modes, and in at least one case multiple ammo types. The most interesting weapon so far has been a small wandering creature that you can pick up and arm, when you throw it it skitters around until it sees somone and then blows up in a cloud of green energy.

Gameplay: The gameplay has more than a few interesting twists. The first twist is that after a point in the game, when you die you can fight in the after world to come back. The second twist is that the Maps are true 3d with almost any surface able to become the floor. NOTE: I liked this feature, but my fiance' said it made her sick to watch. Another twist is that you can spirit walk, you leave your body behind and can pass barriers and interact with the environment.

Bottom line- is the game worth 50+tax.....I am going to withhold judgement for now. It was apparent to me when I was this far in UT2004 and Quake 4 that the games were well worth the money.

prey is build on again, improved doom3 engine.
and so is quake4 IIRC.
(just read something about the prey demo and it being build on a doom3 engine 2 days ago.)

it looks like a good game as far as i have seen, but havent played it at all.
so i cant talk along about the game really.. did read a few things about the feature's..

So grizz, you really liked quake 4? I was thinking of getting it. I upgraded to a x1600 pro card and it played doom 3 very nicely. So now I want to throw a few other games at it before it's obsolete.

Was also thinking of getting Prey, so when you get further into it let us know what you think.

I've played through the demo a few times. The portals are my fav. At one point in the demo you can hit yourself in the back of the head with the wrench. My computer was a hair laggy on the multiprey (multiplayer), so I haven't dropped the $50+ dollars. Maybe later after it's cheaper or I've upgraded video cards.

So grizz, you really liked quake 4?

I like Quake 4 well enough, it is decently long. I actualy bought it in the hopes that that the Quake 3 fortress team would update their mod. I was part of the 30+ clan a number of years ago and it was a load of fun. At any rate the game I feel is worth the money for the game play, but it fails to bring a lot of new game play, Its just a massive upgrade on the visual effects.

I have gotten a bit farther in Prey now, I have found one point in the gravity effects that I could make myself feel mildly ill on. There are alot of gravity effects where you can go through a portal and the "roof" becomes the "floor", you have to go up on a wall to go through a portal that places you on the opposite wall. The combined "local gravity" with "area gravity" and walkways that you can turn on to go from roof to wall to floor can be disorienting.

At several points you can see your self thorugh a portal on what appears to be a wall, or there is another place that you enter a portal and come out the same portal on the same side you entered. The programmers did this so seamlessly that there does not seem to be a transition at all, so I find it rather innovative. Even if the combat is not that sepcal at this point.

I have not seen any vehicles yet in prey but I think that there is a space shuttle you can pilot later on. On a 1 to 10 scale I would rate prey as a 7.5 so far, but I am hoping that it gets better.

Played this whole game through, it has some memorable moments, but I felt a little gyped on its length... it's very short.

Back to UT.

Finished Prey (normal mode) tonight. Let me add my thoughts.

First and foremost, it seems I judge games the same way Grizzled does: was it worth my money?

Yes. Prey was worth my $60.

The single player campaign took me 7:38 to finish first time through. A replay on the hard mode that gets unlocked once you finish the game will probably be closer to 4 hours. There's not an INCREDIBLE amount of content here, but it's good enough - and since I don't really intend on playing the multiplayer, the 7.5 hours playtime was what made my money worthwhile.

Tech: the portals and gravity shifting are nice touches. While a spirit walking-type thinger isn't really new or exclusive, it's nice, and the fact that it's used consistently is both a plus and minus - minus because they just didn't get creative with it. See a force field? Spirit walk though; there's a switch to turn it off on the other side. Guaranteed.

Story: Decidedly average. The characters are mostly flat and the whole thing is a clear and simple everyplot. And the ending was totally flat.

Engine: The game uses a "heavily modified" version of the Doom3 engine. The graphics are very nice, though the speech/mouth movements and character looks cannot compare to those in the Source engine (Half-Life 2).

Difficulty: The game is fairly easy. Since there's technically no game over, progression is linear. I like that. However, whenever there's a "where do I go?" moment, all you have to do is look a little bit and the game basically tells you where. It's like it tries to be clever, but they were afraid of actually challenging someone in terms of environmental exploration.

A review I read classified the game as a "hallway shooter." I concur. If you're a big fan of the FPS genre (I suppose that most of us are!) and of classic FPS games that featured lots of...well...hallways, you'll like this game. There are, of course, wide open areas, but I think you get what I mean.