Prey Review
Score: 4/5
It’s difficult to differentiate a game from the glut of others that have come before it. Nowhere is this truer than the first-person shooter genre. Perhaps the genre is so crowded that developers have simply run out of ideas. Perhaps, therefore, the only real innovation can come in the form of switching perspectives in the vein of Halo’s third-person vehicular combat or Perfect Dark Zero’s third-person cover and dodge system. Despite these trends or perceived limitations of the genre, Human Head Studios makes a concerted effort with Prey to separate it through a handful of gameplay innovations whilst never straying from first-person. Whatever the case may be, Prey comes out ahead of the pack, albeit falling a little short on the fundamentals.
Prey has a typical sci-fi premise: you’ve been abducted by aliens, now you have to fight your way out. By the way, they have your girlfriend too, so you might want to stop off on your mad rush out of there to get her. Actually, finding your girlfriend is your sole (soul mate?) motivation. In that effort, you’ll be traversing all over the “sphere”; an alien spacecraft/entity that is as much flesh and bone as it is electricity and metal. The sphere, in effect, is alive, and the battles you wage inside are a nice metaphor for an immune system fighting off infection (you). Corridors pulsate with living flesh that weaves in and out of metal structures, electronic displays, labs, and all sorts of mind bending technologies. What keeps the living portion of the sphere alive? We do: humans are harvested as protein. Which begs the question: Where does the sphere get its carbs? Apparently it’s on the Atkins diet. All joking aside, the story is compelling despite the fact that at the end of the game, if you were really paying attention, there are all sorts of logic flaws. But the game is vastly better at setting incredible atmosphere than plot anyhow, more on that later.
First-person shooters need to get one thing right: the shooting. Unfortunately for Prey, this is a particular aspect of the game that isn’t so hot. Much like the metal and flesh motif of the sphere, the weapons too are part organic, part mechanical. Even grenades aren’t really grenades; they’re little three legged creatures whose ‘pin’ is pulled by tearing off one of their legs. Nice. All of the weapons are certainly unique and fun to watch, but most lack punch; very few feel satisfying to actually shoot. One notable exception would be the acid-sprayer, the games’ equivalent of a shotgun. Once triggered it splatters a round of acid that literally paints enemies in green goo. The secondary function lobs an entire canister of the stuff that upon impact blows up and splatters even more green goo in every direction. It’s really a blast just to see enemies running around covered in the stuff.
Another aspecta shooter needs to get right is its enemies. In this day and age, enemies need to be clever and intelligent, display at least a modicum of tactical smarts, and not just mindlessly aggressive. The enemies in Prey aren’t stupid, but they’re not terribly smart either. They’ll occasional hide behind objects, strafe back and forth, lob a grenade or two, but that’s just about it. Here too, then, the game falls short. There’s no shortage of enemies, and the variety is commendable too. But they aren’t ever going to pull a fast one on you, or really present much of a challenge. Even the most imposing of your foes won’t make your spine tingle, probably because you can’t really die anyhow.
Yes, amongst the games’ fresh ideas is how it handles death, or rather does away with it almost altogether. When you lose all health, you’ll be immediately transported to a spirit realm. For a short time you’ll have the ability to regain health by taking down spirits with your bow before being sucked back into the real world. Once you reenter the real world, you will find yourself exactly where you’ve left off, enemies still registering the damage you previously dolled out. Needless to say, this takes the edge off of enemy encounters. Under this system, it is completely possible to play the entire game never having to dodge the sights of a single firearm, but you will anyhow because you’d rather play to as much potential as it offers than not. This gameplay innovation and a few others attempt to set Prey apart from other first-person shooters.
Chiefly amongst the new additions are spirit walking, wall walking, and portals. Early in the game you gain the ability to spirit walk; with the press of a button you enter your spirit form and leave your body behind. Levels sport magnetic strips; once activated they allow you to walk up walls or along ceilings flipping your perspective askew. Portals are also in abundance; circular rifts in thin air will appear allowing you to progress from one area to the next. While these additions are decidedly unique on paper, they don’t offer a terrible amount of innovation in practice.
True, while the sum of these additions keeps things fresh, they aren’t explored enough to realize their complete potential. Spirit walking allows you to pass through forcefields where you can then deactivate them from the other side, but that’s about it. Occasionally entering spirit form will reveal new pathways allowing forward progress, but not often. Wall walking shifts perspective and also allows forward progress, but that’s about it as well. Portals definitely look cool, but they’re simply doorways, and, yes, that’s just about it. When all these aspects are cleverly placed together in the form of puzzles, it’s then that the potential is realized. In fact, the best parts of the game are often the puzzles, albeit none will really wrack your brain with sheer difficulty. Perhaps in one of the oddest (and probably accidental) twists in game design, it’s what these gameplay innovations do for atmosphere where Prey is a knockout.
Prey is awash in creepy, trippy atmosphere. This may be your typical extraterrestrial tale, truth be told, but it’s less Aliens and more Event Horizon, and that’s a good thing. The sphere, as mentioned, is part organic, part mechanical; where there isn’t metal, everything pulsates, drips, flows, and creeps. It’s this convincing marriage of two disparate elements that immediately makes ones’ skin crawl. Tendrils meant to ensnare foreign objects writhe in the darkness; orifices spew acid; limp proboscises swell to give birth to eggs; ceilings drip with unknown liquid; perhaps most disturbing of all, some doorways resemble… ‘lips.’ If this weren’t enough, it’s the addition of the non-organic elements that really puts things over-the-top. Wall walking up the side of a room and then hanging from a ceiling places things unnaturally; if you look up (which might really be down) you may see objects or characters appear to be clinging to the wall or ceiling themselves. Shooting an enemy on a wall walking strip on the ceiling causes him to fall “up.” Portals may be just doorways, but visually fascinating nonetheless. They spark and swell, warping the air around it. They offer a view to sometimes vast spaces, where behind the portal there is nothing but a dead end. What’s more, the portals are only visible from one side; walk behind it and it completely disappears. It’s this juxtaposition of technologies that speak of knowledge vast and terrible against your spiritual abilities that puts into perspective your ability to rise from the dead and spirit walk; how would any normal individual be able to battle such a force without some help in the form of the divine? The much touted gameplay features, then, serve much more effectively the purpose of wrapping you up in a convincingly disturbing universe.
It also helps that the game is eerily beautiful. Character models are the low-point in the game, but are never ugly. On the other hand, the environments are often breathtaking. Everywhere is mist and off-coloured fog that is practically pixel perfect. Texture maps are very highly detailed and placed upon smoothly rounded environments (an HDTV will likely bring out the best this game has to offer). Lighting, when used best, is stunning. Despite being a corridor crawl for much of the game, Prey also pushes the view distance to vast stretches in some areas. Best of all, it’s the combination of all of these elements together with barely a hitch in the frame-rate that keeps you locked into the game, easily able to suspend disbelief for long periods of time.
Having both critiqued Prey and praised it, it must be said that all elements of the game (either positive or negative) keep improving upon themselves the further into the game you play. The initial first few hours to perhaps as far as the mid-point of the game are, frankly, underwhelming. It’s not until you’re past this point that things really start to come together. This applies to everything from the gameplay to the graphics to the atmosphere. In fact, those underutilized gameplay elements take off in a few scenarios, but, as I said, not until late into the game. It’s rare that a game slowly builds to a crescendo like Prey does, but when it does it really hits some highpoints, leaving one with a positive impression overall.
Prey is unusual in the sense that the typical focal points of any game, namely gameplay and to a lesser extent story, serve the fascinating atmosphere, not the other way around. It’s in this context that flaws in the fundamentals are forgivable; they’re not really bad to begin with anyhow. Both gameplay and the story are elevated and propped up by an original and compelling universe. Taken as a whole, Prey is a unique and worthwhile addition to the genre that will take you on a trippy ride that you’ve likely never taken before.
peachey @ July 16, 2006