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REVIEW: PREY (PS4, xbox One, PC - PS4 Version Tested)

29/5/2017

12 Comments

 
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Do you remember the original Prey? Get this: I don't.

Or didn't until yesterday anyway.

In fact, after spending some time with this game called Prey - supposedly a reworking of the 2007 game called Prey - I remained pretty sure I'd never played the original. I thought that was weird, because I'm a sucker for a first-person romp, and it seemed like the sort of puddle into which I'd have furiously mashed my frond.

In the interests of due diligence, I went onto YouTube to double-check... and then it came flooding back: I had played the previous Prey, and it isn't much like this new version at all. I've no idea why I'd forgotten it, but maybe it has something to do with this: unknown reasons.

In fact, aside from both being first-person games, and both being set on alien-infested space stations, they've virtually nothing in common.

Why bother remaking a game that nobody remembers, and then changing more or less everything about it? It's not like alien-infested space station is a massively original and unique pitch. It's like remaking Pac-Man into a game where you play a tax inspector, and have to audit a small, family-run, bakery called 'Yeast Region'.

Anyway. This is the sort of game that Prey is: one of those ones where it's not quite a first-person shooter, not quite an RPG. You know: like Deus Ex, or the classic System Shock. You spend as much time upgrading your abilities - you're one of these cybernetic people they have nowadays, see - and reading the personal diaries and emails of the station's former inhabitants, as you do shooting at things.

​Which is just as well, because shooting at things in Prey is Not So Great.
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PREY TELL?
Prey is a frustrating game. For everything it does well (its head-spin of an opening, for example) it does something real bad (slipping into generic monsters-on-spacestation narrative).

It bowls novel concepts at you - such as the Gloo Gun, which shoots out a foam that immediately hardens - then doesn't really offer opportunities to use them in clever ways. It gives you an intriguing setting - basically an alternate history space station version of Bioshock's Rapture - then keeps you at arm's length from it with some of the most clumsy and unrealistic object-handling physics seen in decades.

It invites you to try different solutions to obstacles - stealth, brute force, hacking - but makes some of these approaches needlessly tougher than others. 

It's also weirdly imbalanced; the opening few hours are maddeningly difficulty, as you flail a wrench at the aliens who insist on jumping all over the place, dying and dying and dying again. Then, far later, makes you virtually indestructible thanks to your psychic powers, so most of the challenge evaporates.

If you can overlook all that, there are good things to be said about Prey. The basic facehugger-like enemies, Mimics, can assume the form of any object. Given that you need to recycle objects to turn into ammo and gear - and you never know which object is going to try to kill you - that helps maintain tension.

If you like reading emails from strangers then you'll have a great time - indeed, much as I often hate reams of text in a video game (video games seemingly ignore the storytelling rule adopted by almost every other narrative medium: show don't tell), they do a pretty good job here of establishing the world.

As does the world itself; sprawling and open, and full of secrets to discover. In fact, returning to previously-visited areas to reach new locations using previously-unheld abilities, gives it almost a Metroid-like feel.

Also: you can, later on, transform into a roll of toilet paper, if you do so desire. 
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DUNNO OSMOND
​Unfortunately, there's no escaping the fact that Prey isn't as good as it nearly is. There's little here that's truly original -  except the Mimics, perhaps.

Surely, abandoned space stations have been done to death now? Even the light Art Deco, retro-futuristic, styling of Prey's environment has been seen before. We've all experienced the zero gravity thing, the psychic powers upgrading, the hacking... and as much as its clumsy handling and weird imbalances disappoint, so too does the unoriginality. 

I dunno. I'd really been looking forward to Prey, but the whole way through I couldn't stop feeling like a council estate car tyre: let down. There's something archaic about it, and not in a wholly good way. It never feels quite as slick or as polished as it could've been, almost as if its ambitions reached beyond its budget.

Or, at least, as if every good idea was let down by some bad implementation, every clever notion countered by a weird choice. And that's a shame, because there's a good game in here struggling to get out. 

If you like Dishonred, Deus Ex and Bioshock... this is more of the same sort of thing, but (while not a disaster) not as pretty, polished or fun as any of those games. 

It's a shame, because it would be nice if Prey was sufficiently great enough to inspire a rabid fanbase, as I've thought of a really good nickname for those people: Preyholes.

SUMMARY: A game you've more or less played before, even if you never played the original Prey.
​SCORE: 5.2812312312 out of 10.51235555
FROM THE ARCHIVE:
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REVIEW: THE LEGEND OF ZELDA - BREATH OF THE WILD (SWITCH, WII U - SWITCH VERSION TESTED)
​
REVIEW: HORIZON ZERO DAWN (PS4)
12 Comments
Clive peppard
29/5/2017 08:56:05 am

I played the demo, it was so like deus ex it angered me.

Stuff this game, wipeout is nearly with us!

(Also you've still not played wild lands which I thoroughly enjoyed)

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Alun berger
29/5/2017 09:58:13 am

Dino Dini said Prey was amazing.

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Col. Asdasd
29/5/2017 10:19:38 am

Ehem. We actually prefer the term Prey-ertorians.

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Ryan
29/5/2017 10:39:02 am

For me the game just fails to excite me. Emotionally it never goes beyond a straight line and with a total lack of surprises and reveals after the first 20 minutes or so it's a forgettable experience in my eyes.

Reply
DEAN
29/5/2017 11:15:35 am

I played the original and very much enjoyed it. The gravity element added a whole new dimension (gravity) of fun! No - it added gravitas. Interesting and fairly original story, too. And who could forget that opening - Don't Fear The Reaper! (You, obviously!)

Old Prey deserved a sequel and I think rebooting it into something as seemingly generic as this is a wasted opportunity.
Oh well, whatever, never mind.

Hey, remember that teaser vid for Prey 2 from a while back?
Worth watching and if the opening doesn't make you want to go on holiday then nothing will!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sfGLv7XJlM

On a more positive note: If you say "Gravidy" then it makes you feel cool like in the good old days...when Prey was cool.

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Jones
29/5/2017 11:20:26 am

The original 3D Realms Prey was a great game. Sadly you can't even get it on Steam now. It was the game which invented the portal concept which Valve later took and used to create their portal spin-off series. Alas, the original Prey came at a time when FPS games were falling out of favour with audiences; ironically that same genre is making a successful return—as seen by the recent Doom remake—given how FPS games evolved into relatively less fun experiences. If you can get the original Prey (ideally on PC), then definitely recommended. It's beautifully imaginative.

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David W
29/5/2017 12:41:30 pm

With regard to the Mimics being original, I'd like to put in a word for the underrated D/Generation.

It had monsters who could disguise themselves as objects, including hostages you were trying to save, which caught me out something rotten in 1993.

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ChorltonWheelie
29/5/2017 02:09:17 pm

I think after forcing my way through the interminably po faced and miserable Dishonored 2, a game I really wanted to like as I adored Dishonored, I'll be giving Arkane/Bethesda a swerve 'till they re-engage their fun glands.

Maybe the PC modders can have the Mimics do a few Frank Carson lines as the expire?

And...Preymadonnas.

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Spiney O'Sullivan
29/5/2017 04:13:30 pm

I actually love reading people's emails in games. Or big databases of information. And if it comes it, even audio logs.

I really don't consider it to be violating the "show don't tell" rule, mainly because if a game is told mostly from the protagonist's perspective, then there's simply no reason to show everything. We see it as the character does.

The issue to me comes when the way these pieces of information are seeded makes no sense. For instance, why would parts of a single person's diary be scattered all over a map, such as the diaries on the island in Tomb Raider?

That said, some games handle it better than others. Infamous thought to stick its audio logs around the place as CIA dead drops. Assassin's Creed's "you are in a computer network" has glitches in the system that let the Assassins crack into Abstergo's network.

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Col
29/5/2017 05:18:09 pm

Interesting review, thank you. Can I add that the adjustable pipe wrench in pic. 2 may be adequate for braining aliens, but it'd be nothing but trouble as a wrench; loosening it would cause the knurled wheel to bind on the woefully short ledge on the lower jaw, if it made contact at all. I still might buy the game, mind.
Prey-ops.

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Jenuall
29/5/2017 08:46:27 pm

It saddens me that games like this don't get more love (and sales), I adore this type of experience and have been having a whale of a time with Prey.

Obviously I've come to accept that I just have niche tastes and have have thus learned to appreciate the odd Immersive Sim when they do show up, but it's still frustrating that the world seems to have room for hundreds of identikit FPS, JRPG, and open world collectathon games but this kind of experience is limited to maybe one or two a year (and until recently even fewer than that)

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Ganapan
30/5/2017 04:05:44 pm

I was enjoying immensely the opening hours of Prey. But suddenly I realized that at whatever intetesting room I'd end up it will be always full with the same uninteresting enemies. So I stopped playing.
Mimics are the best ones but a lot of times they seem erratic: exiting/reentering the room at random and getting close then backing off without attacking.

Reply



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