Prey: First Impressions · 5:07pm May 23rd, 2017
Today, I wanted to share my first impressions of the new game Prey.
As I mentioned in my previous “Where I Hang My Hat” blog, any more playing of Fallout 4 is going to have to wait until I’ve finished Prey. And that might take a while. Despite how obsessively I’ve been playing it this last week, I haven’t gotten very far into the game. This is due to a combination of being extremely thorough and extremely cautious. Prey rewards both.
The game starts with you waking up in a sunny apartment with a breathtaking view of a slightly futuristic San Francisco. As a phone call reminds you, this is your first day of your new job, and there are a few tests you have to run through before you can get started. So get up to the roof; a helicopter has been dispatched to pick you up.
The immediate assumption is that this is the bright, cheery calm before the inevitable storm, and that the “tests” are probably the game’s way of weaving in a tutorial. The brilliant (and gorgeous) opening credits sequence exemplifies this.
However, for people who take things slow and pay attention that assumption dies before you even get to the elevator. I spent a while looking at and reading everything in my apartment, getting a feel for my character. And there are enough disconcerting details in your apartment alone to put you on edge. (A passage from a book on cooking with woks reads as particularly ominous.) And these details just get more alarming when you step out.
I’ve worked in places were the floors seem to be magnets for scuff marks. So these marks didn’t really bother me…
...but these did!
That sets off serious WTF klaxons in my head. Before I got to the roof, I was paranoid and questioning the nature of my environment. And the few conversations that you can have before you get to testing, if you follow them completely through, only amplify those feelings. (Especially the one with the maintenance girl outside your apartment.)
Prey is a game that reinforces and rewards being paranoid and observant. The first monsters the game presents you with are called “mimics”. They are pretty easy to kill, but strong enough and fast enough to kill you if they get the drop on you. And true to their name, mimics have the ability to disguise themselves as inanimate objects, which they will do to hide when wounded or to set an ambush. When transforming on the fly, mimics will copy objects in their vicinity, so it pays to keep alert to your surroundings. If you walk into a room with more chairs than desks, or with one mop and multiple mop buckets, then warning signals should be going off in your head.
But it is important to note that mimics do not have to copy nearby objects. So in a new area, virtually anything might be one. (“Oh thank goodness! I’ve finally found a shotguuUUUAAAGH!!! IT’S EATING MY FACE!” ...okay, not exactly. They don’t eat your face.) And even areas that you have cleared of enemies will not stay cleared forever.
I won’t divulge anything about the story. Suffice it to say that the story (at least so far) is solid and engagingly told.
Playing “Prey” is very much like playing a cross between BioShock, Dishonored and Deus Ex. The mechanics and gameplay can easily be compared to elements of those games.
The game has very solid and natural-feeling combat. I am playing Hard mode, and enemies are tough enough to pose a real threat (I have died a lot) without feeling unfair. I have a very limited number of weapons, but a suitable variety to open multiple methods for approaching any fight. Most weapons can be upgraded, allowing you to buff your favorites.
So far, the stealth element of the game heavily resembles that of Dishonored. It is definitely more solid than in modern Fallout games, but the game designers do not give it the emphasis and polish of 21st century Deus Ex titles.
What is very much like Deus Ex is the sleek menu system, inventory and progression. New skills and abilities are acquired by spending “neuromods”, much like spending praxis in Deus Ex (or runes in Dishonored). There is even an ability tree for increasing inventory size that is virtually identical to that in Deus Ex. However, unlike that game, there are no experience points in Prey. You advance in abilities solely through finding or crafting neuromods. In this way, it resembles Dishonored 2, which I really like since that avoids any pressure to approach solving things in the most XP-beneficial fashion.
Crafting in Prey is simple and enjoyable. You will regularly come across Recyclers and Fabricators. There is at least one functional of each in every major game area so you never have too far to go to get to one, and usually there are multiple Recyclers, some of which will be broken and require repair.
Dump things from your inventory into a Recycler, and watch them get broken down into fractional amounts of base components. Go to a Fabricator and select from the fabrication blueprints that you have found. If you have enough of the right base components, a single button will load them into the Fabricator in the correct configuration and another button will transform them into the requested item. There are only four types of base components, so you don’t have to worry about complicated recipes or clogging your inventory. Plus, every container seems to be a safe storage space.
I love this technology conceptually, as it gives you a reasonable explanation for why it is useful to loot lemon peels and crumpled wads of paper. And the game goes further with it by giving you recycling grenades. While you can only load a Recycler with items from your inventory, recycling grenades ill will recycle a limited number of objects in their immediate vicinity, including tearing matter out of enemies (or yourself if you are not careful)!
Thee game gives you several wonderful tools to play with. I cleared a barrier by planting a recycling grenade, then triggering it at a safe distance with a Nerf-style toy crossbow. The game gives you a “GLOO” gun which fires globlets of material which expand into a hardened foam on contact with surfaces or enemies. While GLOO won’t trigger against itself, so you cannot build a bridge with it across thin air, I was able to reach a quest area by spraying a line of it across a wall, creating a ledge leading from one balcony to another. Creativity and exploration are rewarded.
As for other elements: the graphics are gorgeous, the soundtrack is enjoyable and most everything about the game has been a lot of fun. There have been a few minor frustrations, of course. I have occasional trouble with menu navigation and object use, but that is mostly due to mistakenly using the keys I use in Fallout. (I do not change the keybindings because this game has additional functions like “lean left” and “lean right” that would be inconvenient to map elsewhere.) I have gotten stuck in the geometry a couple times, and the game has crashed on me twice (which for over 24 hours of solid gameplay is not bad). None of the minor frustrations detract from my enjoyment of the game or my hearty recommendation of it. But they do drive me to quick-save regularly and recommend doing the same.
Overall, I highly recommend this game for anyone who enjoyed the three games that I compared it to above, or who just enjoys survival FPS games in general.
Its a very nice and fun game. I had to pause and wait for a patch fix with one game breaking bug i ended up finding. But its been a joyride.
I love Prey, and glad you´re enjoying it
Personally I find the first scene when you use one of the ability upgrade items in the game a bit squeamish.
The game certainly has a way of establishing that one should be careful and take notice of one's environment, because things might not be entirely as they seem and if you don't pay attention, you might miss something. I like the one mimic you meet on the way towards your office. Very sneaky.
Prey's a great game. One thing that stood out to me in particular was the voice acting - it almost always felt authentic and well done. Good character building too. I laughed out loud when I scanned my phantom double.
New game Prey? What?
*checks it out*
Omg, who did think of Idea to name a new game exactly as an old one?
I'll play it. Definetely. Probably.
I've seen some live streaming of the game. It does look promising. Might be overpriced, but I'm always looking for something cheap.
It's the kind of game I usually play in stealth mode, but like you said, level designs are not made with stealth in mind, moreover, it's hard to get good loot without a fight (especially the exotic amaterial.
Though, Even though I play in normal difficulty, I find the game very hard, how many time did I die fighting a simple operator and taking way too much time figuring if I should fight this fantom or not...
How do you even kill them in hard difficulty ?
4544257 You need to use the right tools for the job, and modifying weapons is a major plus. Your basic Mimic or Phantom is best dealt with, in my experience, by sneaking up then immobilizing them with either the GLOO cannon or the disruptor stun pistor (fortunately, both are available before you even see a Phantom), followed by shotgun (Phantom) or wrench (Mimic) at close range. The disruptor is better since you can get multiple hits off before they can move again, and usually take the enemy down. However, ammunition for the GLOO gun seems more plentiful.
Corrupted Operators are best handled by sneaking close and hitting them with the disruptor, then taking out with the weapon of choice. Just remember to back up swiftly after killing them, because they will explode.
Spending weapon mods on upping the power and recoil of the shotgun and the range and shots of the disruptor are highly recommended. Also, be sure to pick up the first level of the Stealth skill.
4544288 Oh...I don't have the disruptor, I must have missed it... Just saw how to get it, and now I know why. I'll go get it first thing when I'll play next time.
As for mimics, unless there is a lot of them, I don't want to waste gloo munitions, it's better simply to kill them with the wrench (even if it's also a very good way to die :D )
The only downside to this game from what I can tell is that they insisted on reusing the name of an older game that, as far as I can tell, is completely unrelated.
Other than that, I've heard nothing but good things about both games.
4544656
I own that older title....
4545110
I have it too. Sort of. I borrowed it, just before my old computer failed. And I haven't had a computer with a disc reader since.
Was pleasantly surprised to see your thoughts on Prey. Finished it a couple of days ago and was very impressed with in-game depth of everything - lore, characters, station itself, each gameplay mechanic and in-game tools + awesome soundtrack. They work perfectly together.
My first playthrough was on Hard and I decided to beat the game without taking any Typhon abilities and the game was perfectly suited for this playstyle. Each closed room has at the very least 2 ways to unlock it. If you can't open a door - look for the buttons you can trigger with your NERF crossbow, or vents, or the crates you can recycle, or windows, or computer screens (these can also be trigged using the foam bolts).
The game had a perfect System Shock Reboot feeling. One of the best immersive sci-fi exploration sims in the past decade - better than any Bioshock and on par with classic Deus Ex.
P.S. WIll be waiting for more Prey blogposts. I'd love to hear analysis of the plot which unexpectedly turned out to be really good.