I’ve been amazed with Prey way back when I first played it but I didn’t really write about it. Seeing that PC Gamer surprisingly voted it as the Best Shooter for 2006, I figured it wouldn’t hurt those who haven’t played it to read another blog as to why they should.

Prey deserves to be played. PERIOD. I personally think it’s a shooter that has gotten little attention because of F.E.A.R., Half-Life 2: Episode One, and Battlefield 2142, to name a few. With it’s plot involving an American Indian rescuing his girlfriend from techno-organic aliens, it would really seem that a story has just been haphazardly slapped to the engine to justify the release. But if you can get beyond the first few minutes of the starting level, you’ll discover that the game presents a whole new experience.

Best bits:

• Portals. Some areas in the room are literally doorways to another area. It’s very common to find the inside of a crate opening up to a whole new expansive area filled with enemies. This one will screw your sense of space.
• Gravity shifts. There are platforms in the game which can allow you to walk on walls, up to the roof, over the side of the next wall, then back to the ground again (or is that the ceiling?) - all while shooting scores of enemies. There are switches that literally change the gravity’s orientation, so those crates will literally fall “up” when the room changes pitch, yaw, or rolls.
• Weapons. When I played Quake 4, the weapons didn’t impress. Nothing new there; same machine gun, nail gun, shotgun. With Prey, it’s Half-life / Half-life 2 all over again. There will be moments where you pick up a weapon for the first time and ask yourself, “What the hell does this do? No, really?”

Bad bits:

• I prefer to let my shooter protagonist stay silent, please. Tommy, the character you control, is a whiner. He complains, shouts like a girl, disrespectful and at times - stupid (”ignoring” his grandfather’s instructions as if the player can’t possibly control him where to go and what to do). I guess that’s just his character. And the cursing (yes, the game is peppered with it) I think was overdone. Don’t play this on loud speakers with children around.

It sports a Doom3 engine so it’s no surprise that you’ll find yourself in industrial darkened settings and gigantic, slimy organs in walls that blend in shadows. Equally menacing are the enemies. Nothing remarkable but the AI is fairly solid. Thankfully, unlike Doom3 you won’t get monsters that jump you in the back. (Lame ass approach to entertain, really.)

All in all, I think everyone should go through at least the first level of Prey. The game was designed excellently that despite the cheesy plot and the bad manners (I should wash your mouth with soap!), a player would find himself looking for what lies in the next dark corner ahead.