Prey

[Tetsuo_Shima]

Ah yes, here is Tetsuo again with another X360 demo review This time? Yup, you guessed it, Prey!

The basics: Prey is a first-person shooter developed by 3D Realms, Take 2 and 2k Games for the X360. The story, i'm not entirely sure of yet, but it involves a (rather cool) Native American being abducted by aliens, along with the rest of the Earths population. It seems to be a kind of cross between Doom 3, War of the Worlds, and Halo; in so far as that you get abducted by aliens with neon-red glowing technology that want to use mankind as some kind of fuel or sustainment. All good so far.

My first point - graphics. Amazing. I'd say comparable to Oblivion, if not better, however the human models do appear a little bit less real, more like Perfect Dark Zero-ish models. The aliens, however, look awesome. Kind of like Doom 3-Xenomorph-Covenant hybrids i.e. small, slimy, scary and packing some heat! So far, Ive seen little drone ones that dont pack much of a punch, and bigger ones with machine guns. Although I've mentioned that they look like everything, they do appear quite unique, and their Ai behaviour is quite decent (running for cover when getting shot at, finding a friend, coming charging back at you) so they are pretty cool.

The weapons look pretty decent as well. You first get a wrench akin to the halflife crowbar when you start out, handed to you by your girlfriend (I know, I know). Ive had a couple of others now as well, once i was abducted: A machine gun (yes, the ones the aforementioned aliens carry) and a little alien grenade like Half Life's very own snark - except green and with impact detonation.

As for the environment, it looks amazing. The bar you start off in is rendered well enough, but once you see inside the ship with all the biomechanics and the ooze and slime and organic walls your eyes go POP! Lovely reflections and garish colours with plenty of strobe lighting and fast framerates to go with it.

Now for the killer app. The first time I saw it I was all excited and jiddery, I havent ever seen it in a game before.
Ok, I was navigating my way round the ship, sort of being introduced to all the controls and stuff when I got stuck. I reached a little backroom, kind of like a control room but dark and devoid of electronics. The only thing in the room was this little half-donut shaped thing in the middle with squared off edges. So there i was having a nosey round it and getting nowhere, no switches or anything when it hit me. When I looked through one side of the donut, I could see the other side of the room, but when i went round the other side, I looked through and saw a different room! That kind of blew me away, its the neatest thing Ive seen for quite a while. Im trying to think of something to compare it to ... Kind of like a portal, but you can see straight into where you're going, and with no transition. You just walk straight in. Neat as.
And it doesnt stop there. I walked into another room. Slightly bigger this time with alien ooze and gizmos all over the place, but it was still a square room. In the middle of this one there was a curious looking pedestal with a strange globe-ish thing inside. I tried smashing the glass, pressing buttons etc. but nothing would let me get to it. So I walked off into another portal (similar to the one I mentioned earlier, but inside a crate this time) and found myself in a really queer situation. There I was standing on a slightly rounded, bare surface, looking up at a great glass ceiling, with a MASSIVE room beyond. Then into the massive room walks a MASSIVE monster and I was thinking 'Here we go, boss fight'. But then it hit me again! The portal I walked through transported me onto the little globe in the middle of the room! So it ended up I was tiny on the globe, and another regular size alien was looking through at the globe on top of the pedestal! Soon, a few of the aliens came through the portal after me and tried to kill me and I found another portal off - but WOW! What a mind trip.
Besides the portals there are also gravity defying floors and all kinds of other stuff.

Im gonna have to go now cos my bro needs on, but Ill leave you with this link to the game at gamespot. Enjoy!

P.S. Sorry this was structured so bad, i'm in a hurry. Will finish this post later on.

EDIT: Part II

Okay, so I've done the last half of the demo now, and it just gets stranger and stranger!

A bit of a way through the demo level

Spoiler

You come across a wonky bridge. Stepping on precariously, you run across to the other side and the door is locked. Bad news, right? You try to run back across the bridge, you get attacked halfway over and the aliens shoot it down and, well, you go splat.

HOWEVER, enter killer app numero dos: Spirit Walking! You meet your old grandfather again (after hes had the juices sucked out of him by a ghastly machine, urk) and he explains to you the finer points of Indian culture, including the ability to allow your spirit to leave your body and walk through fire :/. The puzzle element of the game lies therein, as the spirit walking allows you to walk through force fields and fire to access panels and gravity modifiers and all kinds of malarkey. Once you start to get into the gravity stuff it all becomes rather confusing and disorientating, but I'd say it just adds to the whole 'Oh my god, alien ship, what the heck' atmosphere of it all. After figuring your way through a couple of gravity puzzles youll find yourself

Spoiler

Back in the pub where you started! But the aliens have taken over the jukebox and they're busy playing ... Nooo! Barracuda! So you kill them And then a portal opens with yourself in it, and then another opens behind and then ... coming to a store near you July 14th

An excellent sneaky peeky of the game, they've now got me on the team

 

[BaRT]

Have played the game and it looks awesome .
Nice review btw tetsuo couldn't have done it better .

Oh the point you get abducted "Fear the reaper" is playing

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

Oh the point you get abducted "Fear the reaper" is playing

Aha! Here is another thing I was going to mention. I found out the reason the game looks a bit like Doom 3 is because it uses an upgraded version of the Doom 3 engine. Hence, there are plenty of really neat looking screens you can twiddle with and interact with, like the TV, videogames or the JUKEBOX in the bar! As soon as I heard Barracuda was on I was thinking 'Gotta get this off!' so I found the jukebox and put on Judas Priest >: ) Therefore, for some of us the song that was playing maybe wasnt Fear the Reaper Was quite amused though when I found

Spoiler

the bar on the ship, with the aliens standing around in it, revelling in their shit music choice. So I gunned them all down Clint Eastwood style

 

[Piacular]

Lol, Tetsuo walking around the gravity paths is crazy .

And mildly disorientating when you shoot someone on it and they fall "up" . That said, jumping can be confusing too!

Spoiler

Did you open the window in the map room?! Is the ship just one big semi-finished shell with a tower in the middle? I say "just", it's still ferkin massive

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

Spoiler

Thats the room that when you press a certain button a big orange spinning globe appears and you see down to Earth, isn't it? I can't actually remember any semi circle and tower; I was too busy searching for ammo, and trying to get over the people being spiked alive Im gonna fire up the demo again, so I'll have another look.

Oh and Piacular, Ill guiltily admit that when I saw you were the last one to post in this thread, I was expecting a big 'Tetsuo, are you insane! That was rubbish! You need your mental canal dredged!' or something to that effect

And one more thing while I'm at it: if you haven't already, don't play the multiplayer demo; unless you want to spoil every single weapon in the retail game for yourself. For some reason it has all the weapons available in the demo :/ Kind of like UT2004, even if you did have to put a code in for that one.

 

[Behind You]

I just finished Prey, and it was awesome. (I even got a little mutated freak pewter figurine because I preordered it )

I was expecting something scarier from the Doom engine, but overall it was mostly an action game. (A very good one at that) I figured I'd make a review of it so...

I'll start with the weapons, the ones in the demo were cool and the rest of them just keep getting cooler. I haven't seen this in a lot of games, but in Prey I was using every weapon (Besides the wrench) all the way through the end of the game. No useless pistol that just piles up ammo, all the guns had a purpose from start to finish. I won't spoil the rest of the weapons though, because learning what they do is half the fun.

The levels are also varied enough to keep the game interesting. Speaking of levels... Prey has one of the best, if not the best, alien ship ever. It really captures the "" as you enter some other freaky or distorted room. The instant portals are just crazy and really add to the alien nature of the ship.

Kind of a large spoiler here.

Spoiler

There are 2 vehicles in the game. The first is the shuttle, which is more like a fighter. It's a smallish aircraft with 2 weapons and the usual 6 direction movement. (It controls kind of like UT2k4's raptor) the main weapon is a pair of energy cannons but the secondary weapon is the fun part. It's a mass tow tractor beam that lets you pick up almost anything. From crates to enemies or even other ships, you can grab stuff and either throw it somewhere or hold it while you blast it to bits with your main guns.

I'll let you find out what the 2nd vehicle is.

The game started off easy, but after the first level or two stayed challenging. I don't know how much of it is the game or the auto difficulty balance. Some of you probably noticed in the demo you can't die. When you "die" you have to fight off some spirits that, when killed, replenish your health or spirit. After you've fought them for a short while you return to where you died. (Or near there, if you fell off a cliff or something) At first I thought that made the game too easy, but some of the fights would be pretty hard if it weren't for that.

The story became very interesting later on, and I highly recommend you listen to the entire broadcast section of Art Bell's radio show for some additional insights.

There's a little bit of humor tossed in at some points. I found it out of place but it didn't really affect the game much.

There are some references to other things in the game, both in the design of the game and in some obvious one-liners. For example, before entering a dark hallway Tommy says something like "It's so dark in here... I'm doomed." Although the best one is heard on a radio right as you enter the room, "...after which the snakes returned to their seats for the remainder of the flight." SNAKES ON A PLANE!

Edit: Forgot to stick the music in. I really enjoyed the soundtrack, but I felt it was underused. In hindsight, my music volume was fairly low so maybe I just didn't notice it.

The final battle was good, as was the ending. Make sure you watch all the credits because there's more story at the end.

That's my review of Prey, I hope you enjoyed reading it.

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

(I even got a little mutated freak pewter figurine because I preordered it )

Really? I preordered it from play.com and have taken receipt of 'One free download of the Prey Soundtrack Volume 1'. Its a nice gesture, but I cant help but feel id rather have had something tangible, maybe something like a pewter figurine of one of those lil mutated freak things. That would have been nice.

Oh, and nice review by the way. Im glad these are all good, that means its something I can look forward to getting home to. Now I just have to try and will the clock hand forward...

 

[elDiablo]

I too pre-ordered from play.com. And my key has already been used! The b*****ds! So now I have to email play and convince them I need another one

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

Heh heh, unlucky. Maybe you should have got a 360 then, huh You got no keys in your Prey, we were lucky and got 2 keys with our GW Quite jammy, because it meant me and my bro could have an account each. It was basically like having been sent 2 copies of the game. There must be some other way of verifying an official purchase, other than CD-keys, that would be fair and easy to use. Like biometric data

 

[elDiablo]

Well, been playing Prey a fair bit today. There are some very nice bits in it (I'll give a spoiler-full post when I've done it), but I have to say, my favourite bit is a little dig at Doom3 the developers put in. Not a huge spoiler, but I'll put it in the tags for people who want to laugh when it's so unexpected.

Spoiler

Tommy walks into a VERY dark corridor and say, "Wow, it's really, really dark in here. I'm doomed."!

Boom-boom-tsh!

 

[Nanor]

Got it today! It's bloody awesome! Although the gun fights may be a bit of a cliché, it still manages to amuse! It combines puzzle solving with horror! Now, I don't know what's more horrifying, a child exploding and turning into a ghost only to impale another child, or creepy maggot-spiders crawling in and out of huge, bloody vaginas..

 

[elDiablo]

Just finished it! Awesome! Some of my favourite bits, in spoiler tags! Very spoiler full.

• Spoiler

  Small girl turns into a spirit, and throws a small boy onto a spike!
• Spoiler

  Walking along a walkway, with a nice view of space, suddenly a plane get teleported in, and you can hear the pilot over the radio giving a distress call, just as it crashes into the sphere.
• Spoiler

  A little way on from that, when you see the message "Transport cleared of all protein" over a picture of the plane
• Spoiler

  The dig at doom, mentioned earlier - walk into a black corridor "Wow, it's REALLY dark in here... I'm Doomed!"
• Spoiler

  Having to shoot your girlfriend in the head Sad, but a good bit none the less!

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

Im nearly finished it, I had a nice big marathon session yesterday which was great fun. I think I'm pretty much finished now, I'm at the part where

Spoiler

you travel all the way up the central spire and reach where Jen is being held (I think, I havent actually found her yet). The last thing I saw was a couple of really neat parts where the 'keeper' starts building corridors in front of you all nice like.

One thing that did annoy me a tad was a glitch I encountered when

Spoiler

after you first find Jen and free her, you go into a big teleporter room and fight a couple of the really big guys with machine guns. Well, the game is supposed to trigger a scripted sequence with Jen getting abducted after you kill all the aliens. However, mine didnt trigger the sequence for one reason or another and so I was stuck in the room for literally half an hour trying to find a door or portal or spirit-walking construct. Eventually I realised it had glitched and loaded it at the start of the big battle again. Again it glitched so I loaded it up from a earlier save just before freeing Jen (luckily, I keep two saves in case something screws up thuswise) and listened to her entire dialogue and got it working again. Im annoyed at that because it just detracted me from the story, and cost me a good bit of playing time that I could have used to complete the game last night! I reckon the reason for the glitch was because I hadnt listened to Jen's entire dialoguebefore moving into the Hidden chamber, and so it failed to trigger something it should have.

So far, Im having a good bit of fun. I think the coolest bit Ive met so far is when

Spoiler

You find a school bus stuck up on a wall with its lights flashing on and off, and then the lights go really dark and a creepy blue light flashes through the bus windows.

Also, the weapons are ultra cool, especially the

Spoiler

acid shotgun

, and the leech gun after you find the

Spoiler

fire laser

energy. I really do hate the flying Harvester baddies, especially when you try to pop them with a rocket and they just block it. Thats when I crack out the leech gun for maximum kick-assimage.

Oh and by the way, did anyone else have a go at dropping the Hunters into the 'big glass jars' with the tractor beam and then watching them get sprayed with plasma as the 'jars' were being cleaned? I was disappointed to learn that the plasma doesnt actually fry them whatsoever

 

[elDiablo]

The tractor beam is SO MUCH FUN! I hate the guys who snipe you. Solution, tractor beam them, fly straight up, let go. They fire at you as they fall So funny!

And yeah, that glitch sounds annoying. And yeah (again), the bit you are at is great. I don't want to ruin anything, so just go find Jen quickly

 

[elDiablo]

Well, I got an email from Play.com

Dear Customer,


Thank you for pre-ordering PREY from PLAY.COM. We are aware that you may have had some difficulty in downloading your Prey Soundtrack Volume 1 as a result of the code that we sent you not working correctly. To rectify this we have sent a new code which you will see as part of you download instructions below:


Instructions to download your free copy of the Prey Soundtrack Volume 1:...

Huzzah!

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

Jesus hath come! We all are saved!

Anyway, I completed Prey last night, and the last few sequences were pretty good fun. The ending movie is especially cool, but had I been the one that

Spoiler

gained control of the sphere

I dont think I could have restrained myself

 

[BaRT]

Ok finished it also and what can I say it is a really good game , one of the greatest SP FPS games around right now. The ending was lovely and everything.
It never gets boring and puzzles in the game are puzzles tbh

 

[elDiablo]

Tetsuo - I agree completely

 

[elDiablo]

Found this sweet little mod this morning. It replaces the secondary fire of the wrench with the ability to place portals! First click (silently) places one end of a portal, second the other end, at which point the portals will open. A third click removes both ends of the portal. To place more the 1 pair of portals, change your name ingame (easiest to do in MP), change weapon, fire some shots, then change back to the wrench!

Great fun!