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Prey
The history of Prey is almost longer and more convoluted than the plot of the game itself but suffice to say it has been long overdue. You start the game of in the shoes of Tommy a Cherokee Indian living on a reserve and hating every second of it. Tommy would like nothing more than to take the love of his life, Jen, and get the hell of the reserve but after his wish is granted in the form of aliens invading earth and carrying everyone off into space for food or experimentation he experiences some regret. Managing to escape from the aliens clutches only to see his grandfather brutally slain and Jen carried off into the depths of the alien ship Tommy has to set off in rescue of her and hopefully save earth along the way.
Running on an enhanced Doom 3 engine Prey is very pleasing on the eyes and although bearing more than a passing resembles at the aforementioned title still manages to impress. The ship you find yourself on for most of the game is very organic looking and through some awesome level design and set pieces will draw you into the game. Enemies are similarly grotesque looking and consist of various aliens and human experiments gone wrong. Prey has to aces up its sleeve to set it apart from your normal run-of-the-mill First Person Shooters and the first of these is the “portal” technology that allows enemies to warp into areas through portals. The clever part is that these portals sometimes stay open for you to jump through and take you to a completely different section of the ship. These is quite an impressive achievement pulled off with no loading and also cleverly disguises the fact that enemies can randomly teleport into a fight and catch you off-guard. The other clever bit of trickery is the level layouts themselves which can see you sometimes walking on walls or ceilings or even flipping entire rooms upside down with switches. The first few times it happens your head will literally go into a spin and even Tommy himself loses his lunch the first time it happens. Fire fights will never be the same after fighting enemies while standing upside down on the ceiling and shooting at targets on the ground or walls. The sense of vertigo can be quite overwhelming at times and multi-player deathmatches feels quite different because of it. The unique level layouts are used for some creative puzzles especially one cube section and because of the realistic physics never feels gimmicky or tacked on. Despite seeming initially confusing and overwhelming I found that I didn’t get lost half as much as I tend to do in other similar games and the action was always relentless and straightforward keeping me in the game. In fact Tommy has a unique “spirit walk” ability which sees him leaving his physical body and roaming around as spirit armed with a bow. This gives him the ability to access otherwise unreachable switches but comes with the price of leaving your body vulnerable. Even this isn’t too big a threat as death doesn’t result in a game over screen but instead takes you to a kind of mini-game where you shoot evil spirits to regain health and spirit energy before manifesting again in the real world. While this keeps the game flowing and action packs and eliminates the need for quickloading the whole time it does make things a little bit on the easy side and eliminates your fear of death. Boss battles for one are hardly worth breaking a sweat for as you can simply keep blasting away and coming back when you die until the big mother beast is dead. It’s nice to see that some effort has been made with the audio and Prey definitely features some of the best voice-overs I’ve heard in the genre. The actor that does Tommy’s voice did a superlative job at injecting some emotions in his character and although there is lots of swearing it never feels gratuitous but instead adds to the experience. Trust me if you saw some of the things that Tommy witnesses you’ll also utter a few choice obscenities. The audio is also quite nice and sound effects are suitable creepy. There is a great selection of tunes you can play on the jukebox found in the intro level of the game but strangely after that you won’t hear any of the songs again which is a bit disappointing. It’s a bit strange to have health and ammo bars instead of numerical values but you get used to it and the controls themselves are a breeze for anyone that has played similar games. The weapon selection is quite bizarre but very good and features some goodies like an acid shotgun and severed alien hand machine gun. None of the weapons are generic or straightforward and you will have lots of fun trying them all out. There are also a few vehicle sections where you get to jump into the cockpit of an alien hovercraft and while these are hardly highlights they do add some variety. While Prey is a very cool game and well worth the hype in my opinion it’s also quite short and coupled with the fact that you can’t really die will be over in no time. Those that like to nitpick will find lots to complain about but I for one had a blast playing the game and am eagerly looking forward to a sequel. |
System Requirements
TAGS: Prey, Tommy, Cherokee, Doom 3 Engine, Aliens, Portal Technology
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