Prey

This game reminds me of such classics as System Shock 2 or BioShock - in terms of setting and stylistic choices, as well as their melding of FPS and RPG elements. The game's dense atmosphere and story are very engaging and probably its best aspects. Unfortunately, while the overall experience is great, the game-play itself is merely good in my estimation, for a number of reasons: - The difficulty curve is poor. Even on Nightmare difficulty with survival mode, the endgame is a breeze. After an admittedly tricky beginning, the game never really grows appropriately more difficult as time goes on, despite how powerful you become. - The main story-line is rather short; this isn't such a big deal in itself, as there are plenty of side quests and additional tasks to do. - However, the game doesn't really have any good way to reward you, even for extensive side quests (beyond additional story-beats, which are very enjoyable): Since the entire item management is focused around recycling and crafting, side quests will usually just give you more stuff to get resources from. This gets boring and the rewards are less urgently needed after the first third of the game or so. - In line with this, special or even unique equipment is extremely rare (I've found exactly two special items, one of which was a pre-order bonus originally) and the variety of weapons and tools is overall low. To make up for this, the weapons and tools you do get are at times quite ingenious and have multiple uses (GLOO gun and recycler charges come to mind). Weapons can be upgraded, but boringly so. - Skills and suit/scope upgrades are where the actual variety of the game-play is hiding, letting you play around with varied active abilities and passive bonuses. Overall, I had a very enjoyable time with this game. Thanks to the many side quests, multiple ways to finish them and at least two extremes of "moral" and "skilling" play-styles (and anything inbetween those extremes), I'll replay it at least once.

Prey (2017) is the one of my farorite modern games. Kinda interesting how the story balances between genres and themes; like, game clearly gives you space horror vibes for a first few hours, but it changes to strange fable about humanity and commiseration. And - which is suprising for fiction - story gives you something pretty close to modern science as an answer. Also whole Typhon stuff reminds me about aliens from "Blindsight" novel. But in the end you can actually see clearly Lovecraftian story about encountering alien mind from outer space. Prey is all about immersion and impovising. Most of time you are not seeking your way further - actually, you making it by youself with a GLOO canon, wrench, Typhon abilities and your imagination. The game gives you one of the best sandboxes for exploring constantly feeding your curiosity with various rewards such valueble items, consumables or new intel. And once you start to dig into it, you just can't stop until every suspiciously looking coffee mug will be checked with psychoscope and wrench - for scientific and safety purposes, of course. Prey aesthetics is really something cool. As i think, its desings blends retro-futuristic vibes with a modern functional approach (like using color codes in interior, clothes and in level-design generally). It's impressive, but also intuitive. Whole Talos-1 looks real, sensible, natural. Arcane didn't screwed up with fighting mechanics. The game allows you to focus on weapons and your skill and rush forward, shooting everything at sight, but you also can get much more profit from stealth attacks and thoughtful exploring; either way you can rely on Typhon powers, choosing betweet one of the weirdest and fun stealth mechanics or agressive face-to-face fights with superpowers. Soundtrack of Prey (2017) mostly made by Mick Gordon. It's actually pretty short but definetely fits whole game's mood. Semi-Sacred Geometry rocks! Just give a chance to Prey and play it.

From a design point of view, Prey is truly one of the best games I have played in the last decade. The game excels at two major components: level design and atmosphere. However, I can't overlook the one major issue that I have encountered: a bug. I've been playing games for more than 20 years now, but no other bugs that I have encountered in a game before enraged me as much as this one. The bug relates to items disappearing from your inventory when entering/leaving a specific section of the game. I lost two fully upgraded weapons from my inventory. Without giving anyone major spoilers, there are some weapons that are indispensable throughout the game. Not because of their power level, but because they have uses outside of combat as well. The first weapon that I lost did not bother me that much; I still managed to play another ~5-6 hours without it. However, the second weapon that I lost made the game impossible for me to continue as it was my main form of offense in combat and indispensable outside of combat as well. The fact this bug is still in the game since 2017 is just sad. I really fell in love with the game. Its' level design and atmosphere are still some of the best that I have ever seen. PS: The bug is totally random. Most of the players finished the game without ever encountering this bug. PSS: The bug does not only affect weapons, but all items.(e.g.: depending on how lucky you are you can loose a weapon or a piece of paper that you found on the floor).

To begin with, let's start with a brief synopsis of the game itself. It can be very cool at times like you'd come to expect from Arkane at this point, but it can also be unbelievably jank like you would also come to expect from them. About 80% of the enemies are mechanically similar to the Archvile from Doom 2 with practically no way to break line of sight, all the enemies are amorphous blobs which makes basic stealth and combat a chore, the game is structured kind of like a metroidvania which really just wastes your time, and cool moments and dialogue are ruined by people constantly talking over each other and cluttered visuals. Don't get me wrong, it does some really great stuff, for instance I've never played a game before that portrays how disorienting zero-gravity would be, but the negatives make the game just overall a really hard thing to recommend. The biggest problem isn't even really the game itself, though. This game has forever buried a much better game, Prey (2006), and for that I have to remove one star. For those who don't know, this is completely unrelated to the original game. Bethesda apparently just had so little faith in the IP that they let Arkane use it for this, and that's really a travesty. The original Prey is possibly the most unique game I've ever played, and I could rant on and on about how good it is and how it constantly keeps you on your toes for what crazy thing you'll see next. The fact that this exists has sentenced the original Prey to the same fate as the original Quake, so much potential that was thrown away because they couldn't be fussed to come up with a new name. tl;dr - Don't play this, track down a copy of the original Prey instead.

Thank you Arcane for creating a total masterpiece. Narrative and environment story telling in this game is unmatched; me and my partner have enjoyed all of the story that this game (and its DLC) offers. And thank you for publishing on GOG. F🖕Microsoft.