Prey

THOUGHTS

Bethesda really bungled the marketing for this one. Are we really so scared of new franchises that we needed to reboot an 11 year old first person shooter rather than just let this game stand on its own merits? The answer is no, and it's hopefully a lesson they take into future projects. 

I only mention this because it seems like Prey didn't receive the plaudits and sales it deserved — from myself included, at least until recently. If Prey is rebooting anything it feels more like a spiritual successor (and love letter to) System Shock, or a soft reboot slash continuation of the Bioshock series. Prey is firmly and unashamedly an 0451 game. If that phrase means anything to you and that kind of game appeals to you, I recommend it without any hesitation. For the uninformed, 0451 games refer to the door code at Looking Glass studios, makers of the likes of System Shock and Thief. They point to a type of game, often referred to as an 'immersive sim', that have a very certain feel to them. There's a few elements on the checklist here - broadly including strong world-building, open-ended and non-linear gameplay and puzzle solving, very few (if any) fail states outside of death and an emphasis on choice, consequence and player agency. Think Deus Ex as the gold standard here. 

Prey wasn't marketed like this. It's neither a shooter or a horror game despite having both shooting and horror within it. Prey is a real mindbender; a deeply atmospheric and moody game that poses deeply philosophical questions from its sparse story while presenting the player with a host of individual dilemmas from moment to moment, both in gameplay and character interaction. 

Taking place on an art-deco styled space station named Talos 1, Prey opens with a bang and sets the tone perfectly. The game quickly settles and you're left to your own devices, with goals but a fair bit of freedom in terms of how and when you achieve them. The gameplay itself is a lot of fun — the enemy and level design are both excellent (although both do become repetitive late game) and the truly open ended ways you can solve puzzles and pass obstacles is one of the games great successes. There's a real sense of cleverness when you successfully get somewhere you're not meant to and the game seems to encourage you to 'break' it as often as you can using the tools you have at hand. The most obvious example of this is with the GLOO gun, which forms piles of hardened foam that can be used to traverse the environment, trap enemies, plug leaks and negate environmental hazards. It's one of the most fun weapons I've used in recent memory and it does it without doing any damage to enemies. 

I'm skirting around the perimiter of the game without delving too deep on purpose, as I think the less a player knows of the exact nature of scenarios and enemies the better. 

Prey definitely isn't without its issues (which might as well be a prerequisite of 0451 games to some extent). Much like Dishonored 2, Arkane's previous game before Prey, the story is spotty, poorly paced and often awkwardly implemented. Luckily, unlike the majority of Dishonored 2, it's a fascinating story, but the way its presented leaves a lot to be desired. There's also a real reliance on fetch quests for quest design. One the one hand, this is cool because it lends a sense of familiarity to the station and how best to traverse it. By the end I didn't need to look at a map to get to most places - if someone needed me to get to the arboretum I knew I could take the lift from the lobby, or skirt around the outside of the station and use the airlock to enter directly. 

Realistically this is just a byproduct of time spent with the game, as fetch quests are fairly lazy design and feel like constant padding and interrupting after a certain stage. This is compounded by the astoundingly frustrating load times — it may sound ridiculous but there were stretches where I was staring at load screens more than playing the game. This is partly console hardware and partly the complexity of the environments (which keep an impressive record of your interactions with them for future visits) but that doesn't change the fact that I depressingly skipped a couple of side quests because I figured the reward wasn't worth the 3 load screens between my current location and the end point. 

Prey is also a game that relies heavily on resource management, which works extremely well for the most part but does come with frustrations. Inventory space is always at a premium (leading to many treks back and forth to dump loot) and, unlike many of the puzzles, it feels like there is an optimum way to gear abilities and combat styles to negate resource loss. It makes it feel more like a puzzle (which is cool) or a branching math problem (less cool) than straight combat a lot of the time. It works, but your mileage may vary as to how much it works for you. 

I could go on as there's a hell of a lot to dissect with this game, but I've already gone well past my usual 'gut feel word limit' so I'll leave it there.

Plus/Minus

+ Awesome atmosphere and world building

+ Excellent, intriguing enemy design that is in service of the narrative

+ Moody music and good to excellent voice acting 

+ Well executed choice mechanics that don't gate you off

+ Individually recognisable areas - everyday life on the space station makes sense

+ Interesting story with a hell of an opening 

+ Truly open ended puzzle and problem solving in the environments

- Load times are a killer 

- Over reliance on backtracking and fetch quests

- Silent protagonist is frustrating in points

- Pacing is awkward 

- A little too long, it's always enjoyable but they could have trimmed the fat

Overall

Prey is great. It shoots for the stars (pun somewhat intended) and achieves more than it fails at. I'm a sucker for a good immersive sim and the folks at Arkane clearly are too, with this setting working more for me than Dishonored did. This is one of the more underappreciated titles in a stacked 2017 for games and well worth your time, even with its flaws. One can only hope Bethesda keeps allowing Arkane to do what they do best in making games that clearly draw from the lineage of 0451 games of the past and placing them in new settings with more modern mechanics. You'll probably know if you'll dig it from reading this, but if you're on the fence I strongly recommend you give it a shot. 

8.5/10

Technical Stuff: Played on a PS4. Copy purchased by myself. One full playthrough with plenty of exploring and sidequests, about 40 hours spent.