While the game was good and I enjoyed my playthrough I think some of the praise the game receives is overblown. The idea pushed in the game that you can "play your own way" didn't seem to actually fit the gameplay from what I could tell. There is a little bit of variety in how you can approach combat, with some unique weapons and some environmental traps with explosive barrels, turrets and some electrical junctions. There are a small number of weapons grenades and some powers you can upgrade. Other than that there's almost nothing that allows you to play your own way. There's no non lethal approach to the main enemies in the game, few dialogue driven options, the areas in the station are actually quite linear and there aren't many real opportunities to find new ways to approach areas outside of the options available in combat. The combat is serviceable, but not great. Controls feel floaty and sluggish compared to a standard FPS, which is probably by design. Enemies are bullet sponges, even with upgraded weapons, which makes the combat a chore, and because upgrades aren't tied to combat there's not much reward for it with the respawning enemies. By the last third of the game I was running passed the enemies in almost all cases cause the combat wasn't interesting anymore and there was no point to it. The number of enemy types in the game is very limited as well, but it does fit the game narrative. I did encounter a few minor bugs. Textures not loading correctly and the menu UI occasionally failing to load properly. But there was nothing game breaking and it wasn't frequent. The sound and music is great. The story was also really enjoyable and was the main reason I enjoyed the game. It's not to say that it's a bad game. Prey is a good game. But for people buying this cause they think it's going to have the depth of something like Deus Ex, based on what some other reviews say,they may be disappointed. I gave it 4 stars but it's probably closer to 3.7 stars.
As others have mentioned the controls in this game are terrible. They're slow, they're counter-intuitive, and they aren't any better regardless of input method. I tried using the keyboard, point and click, and a gamepad and all three options were just as clunky. The game is also very short it took me about 4 hours to complete the game even with getting stuck retrying a terrible arcade sequence several times. Though the game card boasts of multiple endings there are only two that are solely determined by a decision at the end of the game, there is no replay value there, nothing else during done during the game changes the outcomes as far as I can tell. As I previously mentioned, I got stuck on a couple of the arcade sequences. They were incredibly difficult, not because of the games difficulty, but because of the terrible controls. The game is actually very easy outside of the artificial difficulty presented by the bad control scheme. I really wanted to like this game. It started out very promising with its atmosphere and initial presentation, but it just got let down by the bad controls and terrible arcade sequences that just make you want to quit in frustration. The parts of the game that are closer to the adventure game genre were actually fun. Had they made a game that was solely built around that with more sneaking around and espionage gameplay like in some parts and if it were longer with a more fleshed out story this game could have been a four star game.
