Prey belongs to one of my favorite subgenres - the Immersive Sim. Kind of a weird title for what is essentially just an action-rpg with a focus on interactive worlds and systems that let you play the game YOUR way. The most famous of these types of games is Deus Ex - you can sneak, shoot or talk your way through pretty much anything. Use weapons not for offense but for distraction or utility, options that are rarely afforded to us in video games that are primarily "Here are your tools - go kill enemies in the only way we intended with them". This game is very much a spiritual successor to another Immersive Sim that I hold dear - System Shock 2. The scifi elements, the philosophical themes, horror mixed with exploration, it all feels very familiar. While Prey is not new (I beat it very shortly after it came out in 2017, I liked but did not love it at the time) I did really enjoy my time back on Talos 1.
The story of Prey is at first seemingly standard sci-fi fare - you're aboard a space station in the near~ish future and aliens are attacking! Well, except even from the beginning things take quite a twist... The intro to the game actually implies you are on Earth, and you undergo some tests with your brother on a new technology - things are going quite strangely until a doctor is killed by a Mimic (the main enemy of the early portions of the game) and the day seemingly resets itself again, Groundhogs day style. Pretty weird huh? Well it gets weirder when you receive a message from a Robot Lady with your voice who reveals that your existence is a lie - it is several years after the day you had yesterday and you've helped develop technology that rapidly expands the human mind, with the help of some evil aliens who have now escaped onto your space station! This technology is the neuromods - taking human experience and abilities, turning it into brain matter, and being able to inject those skills and abilities into just about anyone. Excellent sci-fi tech, with a twist you quickly learn, that it is all based off of these aliens and their biology, and that you and your brothers meddling has called these creatures to the station thus making YOU responsible for all of the death and destruction happening. As you escape your 'cell' into the wider station, the usual ImmSimm conventions appear - VERY few friendly NPCs, as you make you way through levels of enemies and obstacles to progress the story forward. The station has an opprossive, abandoned atmosphere as you make your way through trying to piece together what happened here exactly and the lives of the crew before ultimately deciding all of their fates. While it leans far too heavily on the old tropes of "audio logs and hacked emails" to tell its story and not quite enough environmental story-telling (Human Revolution still holds the crown there) but the people who lived here are, by and large, incredibly sympathetic in just how normal they are. There's a few exceptional bits (the budding romance between two high ranking crew members, ultimately cut short by murder, or your former girlfriend who kinda sorta hates you) stand out, but a few too many are simple fetch quests that, due to the length of time and number of loading screens to resolve, often lead to a "What quest was that again..?" when you see the quest-completed pop-up.
While the gunplay of Prey leaves something to be desired, the leveling system and item management feels pretty great. You can choose a variety of categories of abilities to use your mods towards that generally lean you in two directions - Human mods which increase your physical stats, engineering or hacking skills. Or, you can lean towards Typhon abilities - essentially straight up magic powers. Telekinesis, pyrokinesis, mental assaults, even becoming a mimic yourself to squeeze in small spaces! Nearly 20 hours in turning into a coffee cup and rolling around was still fun... Sadly the rest of the abilities are only "pretty good". The attack skills feel pretty similar, mainly point and click with very little punch. The weapons similarly are interesting in their uses, the GLOO gun being one of my favorites weapons/tools in gaming, but also lack some PIZAZZ outside of the few notable exceptions. I do always appreciate scifi games that TRY to make their arsenal be more than "Assault rifles and pistols but IN SPACE!!", but I do think the team just needed some more work on these to make them feel cooler and more useful. I fell back on my trifecta of GLOO/Pistol/Shotgun 99% of the time.
So yeah, Prey is kinda awesome. The level design is excellent, the enemies are suitably creepy and weird even if there are too few of them (and visually they're all a bit too samey - kinda RE7 style actually) , and you have an impressive array of abilities and weapons with which to do battle against the alien menace. So while I don't know if any particular part of Prey stands out as exceptional, I do think it manages to be more than the sum of its parts. It asks some interesting philosophical questions - if this is all a simulation, what does it matter how we treat anyone inside it? Why do them any favors, any kindness? What purpose does that serve, other than to be good for nothing other than its own sake? Or do you have another motive perhaps? As the game says, it has no real idea why you did anything at all you chose to do, but it chooses to believe in you. What do you think? Why do we always try to be the best we can in a roleplaying game? Because we want to be, or because we just think that we should?
The story of Prey is at first seemingly standard sci-fi fare - you're aboard a space station in the near~ish future and aliens are attacking! Well, except even from the beginning things take quite a twist... The intro to the game actually implies you are on Earth, and you undergo some tests with your brother on a new technology - things are going quite strangely until a doctor is killed by a Mimic (the main enemy of the early portions of the game) and the day seemingly resets itself again, Groundhogs day style. Pretty weird huh? Well it gets weirder when you receive a message from a Robot Lady with your voice who reveals that your existence is a lie - it is several years after the day you had yesterday and you've helped develop technology that rapidly expands the human mind, with the help of some evil aliens who have now escaped onto your space station! This technology is the neuromods - taking human experience and abilities, turning it into brain matter, and being able to inject those skills and abilities into just about anyone. Excellent sci-fi tech, with a twist you quickly learn, that it is all based off of these aliens and their biology, and that you and your brothers meddling has called these creatures to the station thus making YOU responsible for all of the death and destruction happening. As you escape your 'cell' into the wider station, the usual ImmSimm conventions appear - VERY few friendly NPCs, as you make you way through levels of enemies and obstacles to progress the story forward. The station has an opprossive, abandoned atmosphere as you make your way through trying to piece together what happened here exactly and the lives of the crew before ultimately deciding all of their fates. While it leans far too heavily on the old tropes of "audio logs and hacked emails" to tell its story and not quite enough environmental story-telling (Human Revolution still holds the crown there) but the people who lived here are, by and large, incredibly sympathetic in just how normal they are. There's a few exceptional bits (the budding romance between two high ranking crew members, ultimately cut short by murder, or your former girlfriend who kinda sorta hates you) stand out, but a few too many are simple fetch quests that, due to the length of time and number of loading screens to resolve, often lead to a "What quest was that again..?" when you see the quest-completed pop-up.
While the gunplay of Prey leaves something to be desired, the leveling system and item management feels pretty great. You can choose a variety of categories of abilities to use your mods towards that generally lean you in two directions - Human mods which increase your physical stats, engineering or hacking skills. Or, you can lean towards Typhon abilities - essentially straight up magic powers. Telekinesis, pyrokinesis, mental assaults, even becoming a mimic yourself to squeeze in small spaces! Nearly 20 hours in turning into a coffee cup and rolling around was still fun... Sadly the rest of the abilities are only "pretty good". The attack skills feel pretty similar, mainly point and click with very little punch. The weapons similarly are interesting in their uses, the GLOO gun being one of my favorites weapons/tools in gaming, but also lack some PIZAZZ outside of the few notable exceptions. I do always appreciate scifi games that TRY to make their arsenal be more than "Assault rifles and pistols but IN SPACE!!", but I do think the team just needed some more work on these to make them feel cooler and more useful. I fell back on my trifecta of GLOO/Pistol/Shotgun 99% of the time.
So yeah, Prey is kinda awesome. The level design is excellent, the enemies are suitably creepy and weird even if there are too few of them (and visually they're all a bit too samey - kinda RE7 style actually) , and you have an impressive array of abilities and weapons with which to do battle against the alien menace. So while I don't know if any particular part of Prey stands out as exceptional, I do think it manages to be more than the sum of its parts. It asks some interesting philosophical questions - if this is all a simulation, what does it matter how we treat anyone inside it? Why do them any favors, any kindness? What purpose does that serve, other than to be good for nothing other than its own sake? Or do you have another motive perhaps? As the game says, it has no real idea why you did anything at all you chose to do, but it chooses to believe in you. What do you think? Why do we always try to be the best we can in a roleplaying game? Because we want to be, or because we just think that we should?