Introduction Some of you know the background of Prey, and some of you do not. The idea came up about the same time the yet incomplete Duke Nukem Forever. Unfortunately, the original crew quit the project and it was shelved for several years. When Doom 3 was in the works, Prey was revived and assigned to Human Head studios. All said and done, Prey is now available. Now, is it worth the ten year wait? ESRB Rating: Mature, for violence, strong language, partial nudity, and gore. MSRP: $39.99 First, here are the system requirements straight from the Prey website: Minimum CPU Speed: Intel Pentium 4 2.0Ghz / AMD Athlon XP 2000+ processor RAM: 512MB system RAM Video Card: 100% DirectX 9.0c compatible 64MB video card with latest manufacturer drivers (see supported chipsets below) Drive: 8X CD-ROM (standard edition), DVD-ROM (Limited Collector?s Edition) Hard Drive: 2.2GB of uncompressed free hard drive space Sound Card: 100% DirectX 9.0c compatible 16-bit sound card Operating System: Microsoft Windows 2000 or XP with latest service pack installed DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (included on disc) Recommended CPU Speed: Intel Pentium 4 2.5Ghz / AMD Athlon XP 2500+ processor RAM: 1GB system RAM Video Card: ATI Radeon X800 series or higher video card with latest manufacturer drivers Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi series sound card Internet: Broadband internet connection or LAN required for multiplayer Supported Video Card Chipsets ATI: ATI Radeon 9600 series, ATI Radeon 9700 series, ATI Radeon 9800 series, ATI Radeon X300 series, ATI Radeon X550 series, ATI Radeon X600 series, ATI Radeon X700 series, ATI Radeon X800 series, ATI Radeon X1300 series, ATI Radeon X1600 series, ATI Radeon X1800 series, ATI Radeon X1900 series, or better with latest manufacturer drivers. NVIDIA: NVIDIA GeForce3/Ti series, NVIDIA GeForce4/Ti, NVIDIA GeForce FX 5800 series, NVIDIA GeForce 5900 series, NVIDIA GeForce 6200 series, NVIDIA GeForce 6600 series, NVIDIA GeForce 6800 series, NVIDIA GeForce 7300 series, NVIDIA GeForce 7600 series, NVIDIA GeForce 7800 series, NVIDIA GeForce 7900 series, or better with latest manufacturer drivers. For reference, I played the game on the following: Athlon64 3000+ (Winchester) DFI LanParty NF4 Ultra-D 1GB Crucial Ballistix PC3200 (2x512MB) eVGA GeForce 6600GT Western Digital 60GB/7200RPM PATA Seagate 160GB/7200RPM SATA (game drive) Maxtor 40GB/5400RPM PATA Pioneer DVR-109BK DVDRW Samsung SW-252 CD-RW Philips Dynamic Edge 4.1 sound card CMD694 IDE PCI card Enermax EG565P-VE 535W power supply Windows XP Professional SP2 nVidia Forceware Drivers 84.56 -in-game settings- 1024x768x32bpp Medium Quality image settings
Story The main character is Tommy, a Cherokee indian who works as a mechanic on a reservation. From the game itself, he's got a very short fuse. He hates the reservation and generally just doesn't give a crap about his Cherokee heritage. This puts him at odds with his grandfather, Enisi, and girlfriend, Jen. Now, cue alien invasion. It's pretty obvious that the aliens are not kin to E.T., and if you've played the demo, you know that grandpa meets a pretty brutal demise. With some luck, Tommy gets loose and is trying to find Jen and get out. Gameplay Prey is a first-person shooter, so there's some fighting, but not to the extent of Serious Sam or Painkiller. In a basic sense, the gameplay would be closer to Half-Life than Quake 4. Usually, you only have 2-3 enemies at any given time, and playing it through, I can't recall taking on more than 5 enemies at any given time. There are two elements that are essential to the game itself: Spiritwalk and Wallwalks. Spiritwalking allows you to leave your body behind and move your spirit elsewhere. There are some places that Tommy's spirit can go where his body can't, and vise versa. Getting around forcefields and motion sensors linked to turrets are some of the more common items where spiritwalk is used. Ledges and ramps that can only be crossed while in spiritmode are also fairly common. While in spirit mode, you are equipped with a bow, so you can stealthily take out enemies if need be. However, by doing so, you will use your spirit power. Fortunately, you'll be able replenish this by picking up the spirits of your fallen enemies. The second major element is the wallwalk. These pathways, when activated, allow you to walk on the walls and ceilings. It's pretty self-explanatory, but the experience itself is a complete trip. In more than one case, you'll have to use spirtwalk and wallwalks to complete a level. One thing that you can't do is use the wallwalk in spirit form, which might seem odd. However, seeing as that there are some areas where you can't go in human form that you can get to in spirit form, this does balance things out well. A separate, but key feature, is deathwalk. This comes into play once Tommy is introduced to spiritwalking. In traditional games, when your life meter hits zero, your character dies and you reload the last saved game. Deathwalk bypasses this by sending you to a battleground to shoot wraiths to restore your health and spirit power. Without a real threat of death, you're more likely to act like a kamikazee once you acquire spiritwalking. While the built in save system is pretty regular, you're unlikely to reload a save, since death has lost a lot of threat it does in other games. There are also parts where piloting a small ship is necessary to progress onward. This ship includes guns and a short range tractor beam. Controls are tied to your movement keys, and feels quite natural. While it's not used as much, the tractor beam comes into play a few places throughout the game. Outside of completing objectives, you can hold enemies while pummeling them with shots.
Gameplay, cont. Another touted feature involves gravity. Parts of the game allow you to change the direction of the gravity in a room. Figuring out which way to adjust the gravity becomes crucial to completing objectives. Along with this, plantetoids have their own gravity. If wallwalking isn't crazy enough for you, the gravity aspect just might do it. Enemies are obviously something to talk about. They're reasonably aggressive, but the AI isn't quite what's been touted. Don't kid yourself to think that these are easy kills, but anything remotely challenging seems to be scripted rather than free form. Your main enemies are the hunters, and they're pretty easy. The last major part of this game are the portals. While no more than over glorified doorways, they do have a 'wow' effect if nothing else. Additionally, they're used to make some interesting puzzles. Multiplay----er, Multi-Prey The multiplayer aspect brings in wallwalking and spiritwalking for what is a pretty unique experience. While deathwalk is part of the single player game, it's removed from the multiplayer component, and that only makes sense. Deathmatch and team deathmatch modes are included. While I'm not the biggest multiplayer fan, I do think that they could've expanded this a bit more to include some interesting capture the flag or other modes. Comments There are a few things I'd like to bring up about Prey. The first deals with deathwalk. HumanHead delivers in making this a very quick and seamless part of the game. It works very well at keeping you in the game. I know personally, when I die, it's usually a good time to take a break and come back later. I suspect I'm not alone on this. On the flip side, this does bring up a couple of issues. With deathwalk, you don't loose any progress, and I noticed my gameplay being pretty sloppy after running through a couple of times. I mean, what's to loose? The health bar doesn't mean much. Essentially, deathwalk does to Prey what Force healing does to Jedi Outcast and eliminates or reduces the challenge from having to start over at the last save point. The death system is on the opposite side of the spectrum from a game like FarCry, where Rambo-style doesn't cut it. I know, that's the whole point of deathwalk, but if you're looking for a challenging game, Prey won't do the job. A second aspect is that since it's more likely to keep many players in the game longer and drops them back in where they died, I would argue this is a primary reason why people are finishing this game in 4 to 6 hours the first run through. I ran through Prey in about 6.5 hours the first time through, and I don't consider myself a speedy player. Prey has some neat features, but they're not just gimmicks; they actually work, and do that very well. This game feels very polished and well thought out. Every feature that has been part of the marketing isn't simply something cool that was dropped in to play with. Seamless integration of the amazing features is what makes Prey an amazing game. One thing I think could've used some improvements on is the story. There's not a real 'wow' factor here, and is pretty dull. It's also reason to believe that the games' length, or lack of, is due to the story. While most enemies are easily explained away by the game's location in an alien environment, there's some creepy spirit children that I feel could've been expanded on. This isn't to suggest that there's no attempt at all, but the little that's given still makes me wonder if I've gotten this theory correct.
Summary Prey has had a long journey to the shelves. Originally unveiled about the same time as the infamous Duke Nukem Forever, it was wowing gamers back then. Unfortunately, the orignal development team quit over the next few years, and Prey was shelved until a few years ago when it was given to HumanHead studios. Comments that the game took ten years to come out isn't quite correct. The Prey out now is vastly different than what the original version called for. The only real common bond between the two are being an FPS game and the much hyped portal feature. I've said it already, and I'll do so again. Just about everything that was hyped about in Prey is more than simply a gimmick. Sure, it's a sci-fi shooter, but even so, it's not often that all the hyped features feel so much like part of the game. The game doesn't rely primarily on any one feature to complete the game and balances out the useage very well. The seamlessness of Prey is something you rarely seen in any FPS. Final Words While I'd like to give Prey top honors, there's some things that bother me enough to not go through it. To sum it up, the game feels short all around. The single player and multiplayer modes both seem to fall short of potential. In the single player, just as you start getting into some really creative uses of the games features, it's abruptly cut off with something of a premature ending. In multiplayer, the limits to deathmatch and team deathmatch modes are more of a glimpse at what other exciting modes could have in them. Don't get me wrong, the multiplayer element does what it's supposed to, but after all the feature's this game offers,it's almost criminal not to have a little more variety here. Some enemies could've been expanded upon to provide a more robust story and longer single player game. Gripes aside, Prey is one of the freshest FPS games to come out in a long time. The features included work very well and don't feel like they're in simply to show off most of the time. The graphics are slick, and despite using the Doom 3 engine, it doesn't feel like a rip-off of Doom 3. While it's short, it doesn't feel rushed, although the length is still a disappointment. The gameplay is solid, unique, and well executed. It's very rare any game comes along and feels this good out of the box. Lately, we've seen at least one game come out and a patch released very shortly after it comes out, and after all this time, we've just now seen a patch hit in the past few days. Graphically, this game is beautiful, thanks in part to the Doom 3 engine, as well as the great job Human Head did. I'm not sure that Prey is worth full price, but it's worth considering adding to your collection when it drops in price to the $20-30 range. Rating: 4/5 If you enjoyed this article, please Digg us.
