Words cannot discribe this game.
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+Innovative use of the Doom 3 engine.
+New portal technolegly revoulutionizes FPS games.
+Tommy is a very likeable character.
+Very unique and differenct set of weapons.
+Long Single Player.
+Multiplayer is just as crazed up as Single Player.
+Level Editor is a huge improvment from Doom 3's editor.
+Human-for-protein story is amusing.
+Enchanced Doom 3 graphics.
+Includes Particle and GUI editor and every good thing Doom 3 had.
-Alot of mushy romance.
-This review won't be able to fully discribe this game.
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How many PC shooters have left you more or less speechless because they are so awesome? Prey is one of the few games that leave you in this state. Taking the Doom 3 engine, Prey revoulutionizes shooters with its new Portal Technolegy, Gravity changes, upside-down flips, and just about anything you can think of without making your head bleed. Its just that Prey just is different. We're not talking about Doom marines, Doctors with crowbars, or anything that natural. We're talking about a revoulutionary game, and a man who must overcome breath-taking alien twists and technolegly in an attempt to find the thing he seeks.br />
That man is Tommy (kinda random name), a native Cherokee garage mechanic who's luck has completly drained out. Unlike his girlfriend and grandfather who are spending their life at some indian roadhouse bar, Tommy's indian heritage is definetly not on his best interrest and wants to take his girlfirend, Jen, out of the reservation, which she repeatidly refuses. During the time of this drama cinimatic scene, Tommy, Jen, Tommy's grandfather, and a good chunk of Jen's bar gets sucked up into space by some strange, alien spaceship. When Tommy wakes up from the abduction, him, as well as countless of other abducted humans are stapped on a suspended assembly ride for human processing. But before Tommy is processed into tasty food for the aliens, an unknown, yet bold survivor of the hider clan manages to rescue Tommy. The machine malfunctions, Tommy falls into a slimy pit, and from there, he must pull himself out of the muck and make his way to the top of "The Sphere", through the alien world in an attempt to rescue his girlfriend and unintentionally save the earth in the process. Now, on paper, that sounds like a totally dumb and actrocious attempt for an amusing storyline, but you'll be amazed at how well Prey presents it. However else, a garage mechanic with a personality is a hell of alot more interresting than a speechless doom marine.
In the game, Tommy witnesses some really freaky alien technolegy which seperates the game from Doom 3 or Quake 4. He meets with portals, upside down gravity, and planetoids. Walking through a glow portal that clearly lined up with a blank wall with have you actually teleporting to a different room in actual realtime. They're just like normal portals, but the key is that you can see through them in real-time. Sometimes when they are lined up parallel, you can see yourself entering the other portal and exiting the other. Hitting different switches or walking on certain textures allows gravity to be changed up or down, letting you walk on what you thought used to be walls or ceilings. Some upward bevels in the game have "wallwalk" textures that let you simply walk right up them. Prey continusly strains your brain with this kind of technolegy via numerous puzzles more than action. Although Prey has tons of shooting in it, it feels more based around puzzle solving at times. Tommy refers to mythisim as "Cherokee Bullcrap", but its not until later on in the game where he realizes that his indian abilities prove as an advantage againest the enemy. He gains a skill called Spirit walk, which allows him to leave his body and walk through certain areas he could not reach with his normal form. So whenever you find a forcefeild or special bridge or something you can't get to with your body, you hit the Spirit Mode button, waltz through the barrier and hit some switch on the other side to reveal alternitive route. There's also a DeathWalk feature. When you die, you don't get a game over screen. Instead, you get sent to a mystical deathrealam. Here you play a minigame where you have to shoot as many of strange flying spirit creatures to rack up as much health and spirit power as possible before time runs out and you're revived. You can't really die in Prey, so this ensures that the awesome action of Prey never, ever stops.
Its totally new for shooters what Prey's puzzles have to offer. The graphics are neatly textured, but when it comes to spheres and cones, the textures look sketched up and almost look like poorly coated cake iceing. The framrate also gets downright horrible at some points, particularly since smoke and steam seep off of things like vents and lights. With all that gravity changing and portals everywhere, the framerate rarely drops down tremedously, and give the fact that the enemy AI like to dodge back and forth alot, it sometimes makes them impossible to kill. I've heard people saying how Prey's system requirements are amazingly low for its superb quality, but even with a GeForce 9400, I did come across some areas in the game that slowed down.
The aliens look no more or less like minature verisons of Halo's brutes. They occasionally have some robotic technolegly that's embedded into their flesh but usually, its all organic species and slimey stuff you're fighting. In fact, some of the enemies feel copied off of Doom 3 and Quake 4. In a particular scene, a giant alien, looking like a cyberdemon, spawns from what looks like a giant hellportal, like Doom 3. Other times, some of the aliens, and humans look like Quake 4's stroggified victims, with cybernetic bodies. Like the Strogg from Quake 4, the aliens process the humans for their organic stroyet or additional warriors. Still, Prey features alot of its own ideas. It has about 10 different organ-fused-with-metal weapons in the game. You get the inital pipewrench, since Tommy is a mechanic. Its fun to use, although its not very powerful. The rest of the guns look pretty goofy, but work perfectly normal like any other shooter. A rifle, which looks like a bug-infested hand-held piston fires just like a machine gun. An acid gun is included that shoots a large cluster of acid, like a shotgun. Small crawler bugs portray as hand grenades that explode when you rip their legs off. The list include a few more, but there still aren't many to choose from.....and the pipewrench is still the most fun to use.
The sound is so and so for Prey. Like Duke Nukem, 3D Realms made it so the main character talks alot and has alot of personality, which makes him very likeable. Tommy usually makes gestures like "What the F**k" or "What the hell is that thing!?" whenever he encounters something new in the alien world. There's also alot of comedy coming from all the characters, but most of the time, Tommy's voice actor doesn't sound at all like the real Tommy would sound like. Sometimes he sounds like a congested collage student. The music consisted of some licensed real-world songs, like Barracuda or Catscratchfever that you can hear in the bar's jukebox, but most of it sounds alot like a remake of Star Wars. The weapons sound like the ironic punch from Quake 2; the autocannon hicups to make it sound funny and powerful, and the acid gun also has a good metal-organic merge sound with it. But like I stated before...the pipewrench is always the most fun to use.
Like most PC shooters, the PC verison of Prey comes with a built-in level editor for designing your own custom maps. It also includes all the good things Doom 3 had; Prey includes a GUI editor, Particle editor, Sound editor, and even shares the same consle. The editor works pratcially identical, except it has plenty of more entities, and crashes less often. And given the fact that you have plenty of toys, like Portals and Gravities at your disposal, you will probably enjoy editing the Prey's engine continusly.
Prey also features an online Multiplayer mode. It has the same, wacky portals, the same wacky enviroments, and everything else in the Single Player. It supports about 16 players, Internet or Lan, but absoulutly nobody plays it online. Overall, if you want it at a supershot, Prey is a revoulution, my friend. Prey is definetly along the lines when you think about the best shooter you've ever played. If you are a level designer, you will love Prey. That's most because after a few weeks of play, you will probably have seen everything the game has to offer. Still, even if you aren't, you should be playing it right now. Its as good as FPS games get.