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Prey
Score: 80%
ESRB: Mature
Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: Human Head Studios
Media: DVD/1
Players: 1 - 8
Genre: First Person Shooter

Graphics & Sound:
Having been in development for a long time, Prey has had a lot of time to build up hype. Having first been developed by 3D Realms, the creators of Duke Nukem, and then later by Human Head Studios, this new FPS has finally hit the market -- but does it do the hype justice?

Prey is a graphically pleasing game. Character models are detailed and the enemy bio-organic designs really help to sell the game's feel. Levels are a mix of technologically advanced machines and living creatures with bits of human vehicles and buildings sprinkled about.

From an audio standpoint, Prey is top notch as well. Not only is the game's voiceover well done, but the way the characters interact with you while they are talking is definitely something to mention. Little things like the characters turning their heads or bodies to keep facing you or stop talking when you get too far away so that you don't miss some of the conversation are what really help to put the player at the center of the experience.


Gameplay:
Prey puts you in the moccasins of Tommy, your typical unlikely hero who has been wanting to find his way off of the reservation for years. Well, now he has his chance -- only it isn't exactly what he expected. One night, a race of aliens descend upon the earth and scoop up people en masse. Tommy, his girlfriend Jen and his grandfather are all captured and begin being processed by this alien threat. But before the humans can be turned, a band of rebels sabotage Tommy's conveyor belt and he escapes.

Tommy soon watches his own grandfather consumed by the mechanical horrors that the aliens put their victims through and becomes determined to save Jen before she suffers the same fate. But our hero won't have to go it alone, as soon his grandfather goes Obi-Wan Kenobi and starts appearing to our hero in ghostly visions.

Now Tommy cannot only wield the various weapons of the alien invaders, but he also has an ancient ability called Spirit Walking. With this ability, Tommy can leave his body and move through force fields and activate switches. He also has a spirit bow that uses spirit energy (which rebuilds over time) and allows you to sneak up on enemies.

With the exception of the Spirit Walk stuff, Prey doesn't really sound like anything special, right? Where the innovation really kicks in is with the game's loose definition of gravity and its extensive use of portals.

First the gravity. It seems this invading race has developed walkways that allow you to not only walk up walls, but also along ceilings. This means that you will really have to keep your wits about you when you walk into a new room. Don't just look at eye level or at the platforms above and below you, keep an eye out on the walls and ceilings.

This also means it is really easy to get turned around. There were a couple of occasions where I had walked onto the ceiling and some enemies spawned on the floor I had just left. As I dodged and backed away from their fire, I inadvertently walked back onto the floor with my back to them -- not a good idea.

The other major feature of the game are portals and one-way doors that are scattered throughout the alien ship. Early on, you see plenty of good examples of these doorways. One of the coolest parts in the game is when you walk into a room with nothing but a portal and a glass case holding a small brown sphere. When you walk into the doorway, you find yourself transported onto the sphere (and shrunken to fit onto it) and see enemies come into the room, look at you in the case, and come after you through their own portals. Unfortunately, this happens pretty early on and it is, at least in my opinion, the best use of the mechanic. Essentially, the game shows its hand early on and never really tries to do anything better.

There is one final aspect that keeps this game from being just another FPS. About halfway through the game, you get access to vehicles that float around. This is used to solve a few puzzles and kill some of the larger enemies. Frankly, I felt like this whole aspect could have been left out. It feels tacked on, and never feels quite intuitive enough to get used to. To make matters worse, the last quarter of the game uses these shuttles almost exclusively, making it a real headache.

Prey also has two multiplayer modes, Deathmatch and Team Death Match. There isn't anything real special about these modes. They are your standard run-and-gun, frag-counting modes and anyone who has played one of the many other Deathmatch games out there will be able to pick up these mods without any problems.


Difficulty:
Prey would be a much harder game if it weren't for the fact that after the first couple of levels, you can't die. After the ghost of your grandfather awakens your spiritual powers, when your health runs out, instead of losing a life or getting a game over, you are transported to the Death World. Here you enter spirit form and have to shoot red and blue flying creatures called Death Wraiths in order to regain health and spiritual energy. After a certain amount of time, you are thrown back into the real world and continue your fight exactly where you left off.

The game would have had a much different feel had there actually been a threat to your character. You face one really big enemy a couple of times -- a giant minotaur (that is very reminiscent of the Cyberdemon from Doom, I might add). And while there are ways to kill it by being clever, there isn't really a need to since you can just stand in front of it, keep shooting, die, come back and keep shooting.


Game Mechanics:
There are two game mechanics found in Prey that are worth mentioning. The first is the game's portal system. When I first saw this in the demo released a few weeks before the game went gold, I spent quite a bit of time just marveling at the coolness of the system. I would walk around and around the portals, amazed at how the would disappear when I looked from the wrong side. Since the portals made it possible to jump from one side of the mother ship to the other, it really helped to give you the feeling of immense worlds. Unfortunately, most of the cool gimmicks you will see in the game appear in these first five levels.

The other mechanic is the shuttle's control scheme. I couldn't figure out what was off about it until StarScream told me it was the same basic scheme as the game's FPS controls. This poses a problem mainly when the levels take you into tubes out in space thus making you feel like you should have full pitch/yaw control. Instead, there is an up and if you get turned upside-down, it takes a good bit of work and mental effort to get yourself righted again and head back in the right direction. This would only be a minor annoyance if it wasn't the bulk of the last part of the game.

Ultimately, Prey is one of those games that has a lot of potential, but doesn't quite live up to it. With its portal mechanics and Spirit-Walk mode, there are a ton of cool puzzles that just don't show up. Hopefully though, with the downloadable-content model that Microsoft is pushing with the 360, we will see level packets in the future that will show what this game can really do. As it is now, if you download and play through the demo, you've seen the best this game has to offer, unless you are looking to gain some achievements or jonesing some new online play, wait to see what becomes available for download later.


-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications
AKA Chris Meyer

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