Prey

I like immersive sims. I played the first Dishonored to completion (this company's claim to fame), I love Chris Avalone's work (the story in KOTOR 2 literally changed me as a person), and I like immersive sims (I beat the original Deus Ex). I just want to write down what the "last straw" was for me. I feel I'm like 1 hour away from getting into the mid-game when the game will start "getting fun", I have guns, plenty of ammo and medkits, and like 4 skill upgrades. I need to get back to my office and I run into a room with 3 enemies, followed by another very small room with 2 enemies. I spend 3 minutes waiting for the 3 enemies to spread away from the door and it's very clear that the enemies aren't following set paths and I decide to just brute force my way through. They do not let up chase, I end up fighting 5 enemies which is WAY to many for me to deal with and die. This happens 2 more times until I just decide to just go for the level exit and it works. Next up is a room with an enemy I haven't dealt with before and I "freeze" him and whack him with the wrench. I do about 7% of his health. That's about 1/3rd the damage I was expecting, because he looks very similar to an enemy I was already dealing with. He unfreezes, I die. I try again to freeze him, so I can try using a grenade, but he splits into 2 copies of himself right when I freeze him and I give up. It's really a combination of a lot of things, moving in this game is clunky (it's intentional but it's also not fun), every time I run into a new enemy I basically just have to die to him once (this kills the tension), none of the weapons are satisfying to use (again kind of intentional, but I would've rather had them make the crafting more expensive or something), and probably the biggest thing: the stealth sucks, enemies don't follow paths, I have very few movement tools, it takes AGES to get anywhere while stealthing, and honestly the map layout (at least for where I was at) is restrictive.

Nice graphics. Weak combat. Dreadfully dull hacking mini-game makes hacking a complete chore. But the worst part (for me at least) is.. How to artificially pad out your game length by adding a rehashed and truly uninspired resource hoarding/ crafting system. In nine easy steps. 1 Make player pick up literal rubbish (without a litter picker) until their black binbag is full. Call the carry limit on banana peels and used toilet paper "Management". 2 Don't let player use any of it yet. Make them carry that rubbish around some more and force player to haul said rubbish back to a preset recycle point. See "Waste Management Simulator" 3 Insist it's fun to recycle crap at the recycle machine. It goes whrrrrrrr after all. 4 Reward the players efforts by giving out unusable crafting junk. Call these 'Materials' 5 Repeat step 3 with 'Materials' but don't call it 'Recycle', instead call it 'Fabricate' or something similar. Few will notice it's the same thing really. 6 Finally give some actual useable items like ammo. 7 Make enemies bullet spongy so as to waste said ammo and maximise the resource gathering. This should add at least 3-5 hours of monotonous grind to pad the games length even further. 8 Defeat objections by slapping the word 'survival' in the game description and then brazenly declare it intelligent design because there's more than one pathway to the next landfill site. 9 If anyone complains of artificial bloat, spellcast the word 'Immersion' to make them disappear. If this fails because they've pointed out the amazing immersion provided by having toilets filled with clean toilet paper and clean towels, and rooms filled with countless other items/objects that could be recycled but cannot because 'Reasons'. Realise they cannot be spoofed and declare the game 'Not for them'.

I played through Prey twice on the hardest difficulty. I haven't played with any DLC. I played on a Linux system using Proton, the game ran very well on a system with a GTX 1660 6GB, Ryzen 5 2600, 16GB LPX Corsair RAM, sn550 m.2 SSD, 1080p at mid-high graphical settings. Towards the late game I started to get bored, as there was nothing new to read anymore, nothing exciting to experience either. Side quests are mostly 'fetch this, fetch that', pretty uninspiring. Late game especially there is just no merit in doing any of them, due to resources naturally being everywhere and the game's crafting mechanics. I would say the beginning of Prey is great, and the late game, boring and predictable. The story is nothing amazing, the end of the game felt rushed and I almost wanted it to end. If you blitz your way through the game without reading or caring about anything, the game will be over in less than 10 hours, which is not how I chose to play the game. The game has a good soundtrack, my favorite song being Into the Tunnels, that or The Phantoms. Make sure to listen to the soundtrack AFTER you play the game. There's a decent amount of text to read in the game, but you don't need to read it if you don't want to, I chose to read everything I could. Much of the writing was uninteresting and unrelated to the player's situation, which I personally didn't mind. Some characters wouldn't stop speaking even though they had nothing useful to say, one character in particular made me take off my headphones in order to preserve my sanity. I 'solved' these issues in my second playthrough, if you know what I mean :)))) Exploration is a key part of the game, and you are rewarded for it. Combat is obviously a key part of the game, and is very enjoyable. I wouldn't say the game is difficult at all, as resources are plentiful and it is easy to obtain important items. Please don't go into the game thinking it as a 'spiritual successor' to System Shock 2, it's not.

Imagine if someone took the best elements of Half-Life 2, System Shock 2, Thief, Deus Ex, Bioshock, and Alien Isolation, and put them into one game. Imagine no more, because Prey is that game. While not the most original, as it draws heavily from these titles, it is certainly the most complete. Prey learns its lessons well from its predessors, creating an open level experience that is not only fun, but evolves over the course of the game as the player avatar grows. The gameworld is gorgeous. If you loved the terrifying exploration of Alien Isolation, this space station is for you. It's so much fun to explore every nook and cranny, in part because you CAN explore them. This is a game where I often found myself wondering "I wonder if I can. . . " and then I'd try it, and discover I could! The game is completely rendered, allowing you to use your many abilities to climb, fly, and sneak into every possible space. The gameplay mecahnics are so smooth. Climbing is effortless, and you can climb on everything, and if you can't, use your GLOO gun. You also get to go weightless, both inside and outside the station. The freedom to just thrust around in free space is simply awesome and terrifying. Additionally, finding objects is incredibly rewarding, as this game has a brilliantly streamlined crafting system. All of the complexity of System Shock 2 is here, but without the obscurity and clunky mechanics. It's so easy to interact with this world, collect items, recycle, fabricate new items, and install upgrades. The combat is quite difficult until late in the game, requiring a lot of strategy and planning, and use of the environment. But it's always fun and challenging. The story only has a couple twists to it, early on and at the end, but it's engaging because of its deep philosophical undertones, which are allowed to come to the forefront many times.

Super enjoyable, really unique and will likely age well as a cult classic for a very long time. Do not expect to go guns blazing from A to B, instead, think, plan, execute, reconsider and possibly experiment. This is not your ordinary first person rpg, i would actually switch it around and the emphasis is on RPG, you have so many options of navigating and problem solving situations you gotta be creative and think to try out new things, you have more options at your disposal than your tool belt of weapons and items. This game was frustrating in a very good way, after my first playthrough i had a really good idea of how i can approach general gameplay again, there is just so much you can do in this game than other games and the options are not openly apparent to you unless given a presentation, some things which seem obvious to do i didn't realize until hours into it. The level design is spectacular, its one huge detailed spacestation with multiple ways of entering different sections of it, if you enjoy detailed environments that award exploration, environmental awareness of your surroundings and planning then this game is for you. The negatives of this game i would say are certain play styles just get shit on because of the game is, there are respawning enemies in every part of the station, so my idea of investing heavily into turrets across the station to have secure areas ended up costing me because some places just insta killed turrets when i loaded the level and enemies had respawned.