Prey Review 277
- Title: Prey
- Publisher: 2K Games
- Developer: Human Head Studios
- System: PC (360)
Instead of the protagonist's racial background being a footnote, or something you only find in the manual, Human Head brings a version of Native American spirituality to the fore by tying it directly into gameplay elements. Tough-guy Tommy doesn't believe in 'that crap' when the game starts, but soon enough he's leaving his body to walk about as a being of pure spirit (which comes in mighty handy around auto-turrets). This 'out of body' experience means that, for all intents and purposes, Tommy can't die. When you do deplete your health bar, instead of reloading the game you're taken to a grim-looking plateau and given the chance to fight for your life. Your spirit-bow is quite adept at taking out the bad spirits surrounding the place, and every one you destroy returns a little health or spirit energy. After a set time span, you're sucked back down and out into the living world to face your foes again. It was great not having to worry about saving and reloading, but after the third or fourth time the simple shoot-the-spirits game got a little old. It would have been great if the spirit world had become a tougher place further into the game. And while the occasional chat with your dead grandfather was enjoyable from a plot perspective, the lack of gameyness to your trips into ancient New Mexico disappointed. The designers took us on an in-game spiritual journey, but there was very little to actually 'do' as that journey progressed.
While there are spirits in the game, most of the shiny comes from alien technology. Portals are a great tweak to time and space, and already look like they're going to be a permanent fixture in FPS gaming. Opponents and some simple switches can throw open oval passageways to 'someplace else'. Not just a loading gimmick or gag, the portals physically link areas that are otherwise inaccessible. Early in the game they do a bit of showing off by walking you past a glass box with a small rock in it. You're left wondering what exactly it is, as it has no obvious purpose. Just a few moments later, though, you're stepping through a portal onto a rocky spheroid inside a glassy enclosure. It's a cheap trick, but effective at getting across the technology's potential. The gravity flipping trick is a more straightforward puzzle element, requiring you to alternate the orientation of 'down' in order to gain access to various surfaces in a room. In most cases it's fairly simple to see what's going on, but there are several great Escher-esque moments that require you to exercise your three dimensional thinking skills. The 'undying protagonist', gravity-flipping, and already adopted-portals are all great gimmicks, and I find myself actually hoping that I'll be seeing copycat game mechanics in future FPS titles.Unfortunately, the overall vision of the game falls somewhat short of the greatness it was striving for. The techno-organic (read: drawn on a trapper-keeper) motif that your surroundings and enemies display begins to look exactly like every other game made with the Doom 3 engine after you've killed your tenth identical bad guy. So far, every game we've seen made with this technology have been visually arresting, but more or less artistically bankrupt. Prey, at least, takes the gooey look to its fullest; many of your weapons are actually alive, and some were formerly pieces of enemies. As you're walking along, your weapon might hiss at you menacingly. This little touch is so clever and appreciated that it makes the boring sameness of the enemies and corridors that much more drab.
Even more frustrating is the ease with which most veteran FPS players will complete this title on 'Regular' mode. There's a solid fifteen hours or so of gameplay here, but for the first half of the game you're probably going to find yourself trying to remember what the spirit world looks like. The second half is more challenging, but only at a level the first half should have ramped up to. That said, I would far and away rather games be too easy than too hard; it's a lot of fun to finish a game and I think a lot of modern titles don't keep that in mind when gauging difficulty. The challenge level felt as though they were purposefully teaching you as you went; the integration of new elements into your knowledge of the game world was accomplished at a brisk but digestible pace. Just the same, once the game really got rocking I found myself hoping for more intelligent baddies to fight; not every bad guy can be from F.E.A.R., I guess.Visually, Prey acquits itself well against its contemporaries. The Doom 3 engine is still a solid platform to wrap a game around, and the dark-n-moody atmosphere it fosters was fairly appropriate considering the setting. The 'generic alien squishiness' did get old after a while, though. Even more annoyingly, the alien designs felt uninspired on first brush and just kept hanging around throughout the game. There just aren't that many types of baddies to face in this title. While I'm not looking for a menagerie to start hunting me down, I would have liked a little more variety; the ground-level grunt was particularly boring. The spiritual children, at least, were interesting from a background standpoint. Encountered in a few choice areas, their creepy appearance and haunting laughter was one of the few genuine chill-inducing elements of the game. Aurally, there wasn't much beyond those laughing children to look forward to. Forgettable music and fairly standard moans and groans from your enemies dog your steps through the game. Weapons sounds were serviceable; while not anything amazing, they did lend a passable feeling of weight and power to your arsenal. My favorite audio element was actually the occasionally overheard snippets of radio broadcasts from Earth. Quiet moments could be spent preparing for your next run by listening to (real-life radio host) Art Bell receive calls from bewildered humans experiencing the alien invasion on the ground. The only real humour in the game, the vignettes were well written and produced, and well worth the time it took to listen.
Prey, with its retro-inspired corridor shooting and tired alien antagonists, could have fallen victim to retread gameplay and genre boredom. Instead, Human Head has managed to lift the simple shooter out of mundanity by give us some new things to see and do while we're mowing down generic baddies. A serviceable plot and a spiritual twist, on top of new-tech portals and gravity flipping, is just enough to make everything old seem somehow a little bit new. The 'classic' shooter is something I'm starting to get tired of, but with Prey at least one more title has made aiming and shooting fun enough to recommend. If you're a fan of the FPS genre, especially the early work of id software, you're going to have fun with the new toys given to us by Human Head Studios.
Re:Dear Lord, (Score:3, Informative)
One of my favorite parts of this game is towards the end when your character actually gets pissed off and he starts yelling "Die you mother f@cker!" and other expletives as you're killing aliens.
My impressions (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe calling it revolutionary is a little too much, so I won't, but the game featured a huge amount of refreshing ideas (portals, gravity tricks, immortality, and somewhat the weapons, and some minor stuff) but, as Zonk said, had its weaknesses in enemy variety and behavior. So, after finishing the game, I didn't immediately want to play again through the whole thing, but I did to take a few screenshots and found it hard to stop when I got to the place I wanted.
BTW, did anyone notice the aliens changing the jukebox to JP when you return to the bar? Now a less rhetorical question: under what conditions does the Blue öyster Cult appear on the jukebox [imageshack.us]? I didn't think it was special when I took the screenshot, but it wasn't there the second time I tried.
SecuROM v7 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Does it run linux? (Score:2, Informative)
No. It seems that many believed/hoped it would, since it uses the doom3 engine. However, apparently ``There just really isn't any big demand for it" - see this post [3drealms.com] in this thread [3drealms.com].
There isn't supposed to be a mac port either, so save your time if you're not a windows/xbox user.
Re:What's the copy protection like? (Score:2, Informative)
You can take solace in the fact that 3DR will remove the CD protection [3drealms.com] in a future patch. No word when the plan on doing that though.
or you could download Prey via Triton [playtriton.com], and have no need for a CD whatsoever
Re:All new 3D Shooters are missing one thing... (Score:5, Informative)
Very good but the AI was lacking. (Score:1, Informative)
I've been waiting for this game to come out ever since I read the first reviews of it three or four years ago and now that I got my hands on it I'm certainly not disappointed.
This game certainly turns the way you have to think during a FPS game on it's head. You'll hear the sound of an alien grunt shouting at you and start to get hit but to begin with you'll have trouble remembering to look right above you for the gunfire. When you do find them and blast them off the ceiling they drop down to the floor (or if you are on the ceiling they stay down there). It's very easy to get disoriented and not know which way was up. I've gotten to the point where I build up a mental map of areas as I play them but I lost my direction quite a few times when the floor suddenly becomes the ceiling.
The spiritual children referenced in the article are pretty freaky to being with as they make childish comments while constantly coming after you. Between the freaky children, the mind-warping gravity effects and the very crazy violent ways the aliens act towards the humans I actually had to take a break and left my save game named "I can't take this anymore" which is quite an accomplishment. Unfortunately, after I took my first break I never found myself getting that off-balance again, even if my mouth was hanging open time and time again.
The spirit mode was interesting and was used very well in a couple of puzzles but most of the time what you needed was right next to where you would use it. I also found that you could use the spirit mode to explore areas and fight the enemies and most enemies wouldn't see you until you attacked them. However, this made the easy enemies even easier so it was a catch-22. I was glad to see that the transition from regular to spirit mode was instantaneous.
The weapons in the game were very different from each other and quite well designed but even so you'll likely end up using your first gun throughout most of the game anyways until you start to pick up which weapons work best on which guys. My favorite weapon was the Leech gun that you had to recharge by drawing power out of terminals on your way through the game.
The place that sorely disappointed me was the AI as the last FPS game I had purchased was F.E.A.R. and these enemies mostly just stand and shoot at you. There are a few that do things a little differently such as ducking into outlets on the wall to pop out elsewhere. I read that the AI does get better during the harder difficulty but I haven't decided to replay yet. However, that brings me to the next problem I had.
When you die in the game you can see your body fall as your spirit steps outside and you end up in another world. Your body starts up way high in the sky and slowly works it's way back down through a hole in the center back to your body. It's a nice touch that if you look down the hole you'll see the exact place your body fell in the real world. You do play this little minigame where you fight spirits to regain spiritual energy and health. While it is a nice break from having to constantly save in the crazier areas it leaves you with very little reason to play well. The game designers do use this well in that you end up fighting larger and crazier battles than you would in a game where death means reloading a game, but it also means your main motivation for not dying is because you don't want to play the minigame again. Then again, when was the last time you played an FPS where you can have full ammo on all weapons yet still run out during a big battle? If you were feeling really crazy you could run through the game and use only the melee weapon for most of the game.
The portals are nice and can end up with strange effects (such as croutching to enter a box only to see you crouching to enter a box) but they end up mainly being a doorway you can't pass back through. Most of the time it's pretty obvious where you need to go at each area as you just keep going through portals. I think they could have come up w
Fun little history 1998 Prey. (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, Prey was due out in 1998. This is 3d realms, and they finally released Prey, now imagine if Duke Nukem comes out this year. They'll have nothing to work on
The funniest thing is that they tout portal technology. Portal is due out with Episode 2 of HL2, producing a more interesting a better version of dynamic portals made by the player.
Feel free to laugh at meantions of DNF also on that history page.
Re:Don't Bother With The 360 Version (Score:3, Informative)
I was actually quite interested in how this game compares to games available on the 360 and games that will be available for the PS3. Without regard to whether the port is any good, the grapics on the PC version look great compared to screen shots I've seen of other games on next gen consoles. Being a long time PC gamer, I remember when the PS2 came out how jealous I was of how good it looked. But comparing these screen shots to shots I've seen of 360 games, it doesn't look like the 360 has much of an edge, if any.
Slashdotters have been happy to point out that for the cost of a PS3 you can get an Xbox 360 and a Wii. Consider for a moment that everyone who has a console will also have a PC. Looking on the Dell site right quick I was able to outfit an XPS 400 with a 2.8Ghz Pentium D, 1GB RAM and an nVidia 7300LE video card for $720 (Free shipping). The lowest end entry level PC on the site, the Dimension B110 goes for $299. That means that the cost of a reasonable, mainstream gaming PC, more than capable of running this game, is cheaper than the cost of either the Xbox 360 or the PS3, plus a cheapy PC (360@$400 plus PC@$299 equals $799. PS3 is $200 more). The Wii is the exception, but it's particular market and gimick make it an apples to oranges comparison.
Without going into whether the types of games you'll find on a console are better, are you getting better equipment out of them? Are you getting better looking games? Is this the generation of consoles that the PC ends up winning? I don't know, but it looks to me like the PC is both a more powerful gaming machine and a better value.
TW
Re:Doom III Engine Doom II the Game (Score:2, Informative)
Re:No Linux port (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Single Player Demo (Score:1, Informative)
Re:OpenGL (Score:1, Informative)
I Liked It (Score:3, Informative)
I found spirit mode to be a very interesting addition to the game play and strategy. Sometimes the gravity stuff seemed gratuitiously used - used for the sake of doing it - but in other places in the game it was downright brilliant, as were some of the portal based puzzles.
Not one of the weapons is a "classic" FPS retread - no pistol, no shotgun, no chainsaw, no "nail gun". There's a rocket launcher of sorts, but interestingly it's only usable on a handful of enemies.
I did find the game to be a tad on the brief side - it definitely left me wanting more. I replayed the game immediately in "Cherokee" mode. The primary difference between "Regular" mode and "Cherokee" mode is there are no health packs or health rechargers - anywhere. This difference forced me to play far more aggressively.
Something else not mentioned in the review is that the game has a dynamic difficulty level - how well you play, and what weapons you favor has an effect on what enemies show up, how many show up, and what kind of ammo you are going to find in the ammo closets and lying around. If you think you are a tough guy, play like it, and the game will ramp up the difficulty for you. Something else that's off in the review is that the spirit world - where you fight for physical and spiritual strength when you die - does change in difficulty throughout the game, with more obstacles blocking your shots, and a tendency to not give you enough of the "kind" of spirits you need. The spirits will also attack you more frequently and rob you of strength.
I never once got lost in the game - its very linear, which is odd given is decidedly non-linear architecture and level design. You will never have to guess where to go, or what to do. Some people might not like this, and enjoy a real brain buster. This game isn't for that. I solve quite enough puzzles at work thank you - I play games to have fun. This game is fun from start to finish, and I really recommend it to people who also look for fun from their games.
[*spoiler warning*]
Maybe I am a softy, but I really felt terrible having to kill off the one person I had been fighting to protect for the first half of the game. There was an emotional intensity both to the character's devotion, and his reaction to that event that made playing the second half of the game even more fun - I was on a trail of vengeance, leaving a wake of death behind me. Having the character yelling at the aliens as he slaughters them was a great addition. Kudos to the designers for making me give a crap about what was going on in the game.
Re:Timetable (Score:4, Informative)
Portal effects and Portal Engine are not the same concept. Portal Effects are merely the ability to render through a warp in space. (e.g. Create a jumpgate that shows through to the other side.) A Portal Engine, on the other hand, is built with Portal Space (4 walls and two ceilings, even if there's no physical object at that location) at its core. Portal Engines allow for things like modifiable/destructable terrain and zero-cost for invisible polygons.
Everything from Quake to Doom 3, however, is still based on the concept of pre-generating level information inside a BSP tree. If you try to modify or destroy the terrain in real-time, you run the risk of rendering objects incorrectly. Worst case, you could slow the engine to a crawl.
There's a good article on building a Portal Engine here [flipcode.com]. I think you'll find that it's stupidly easy to grasp once you understand the basics, but very difficult to build a complex engine on top of.