An almost perfect near 10/10 experience. This is one of the very few modern immersive sims that has the same level of openness (both in terms of gameplay and story choices) as a classic like Deus Ex. Reading the wiki after finishing the game I’m struck by how many gameplay mechanics and small story alterations there are that I never thought of while playing. What you can do with the mechanics of the game is almost only limited by your own imagination.
This freedom can be a bit of a double edged sword however. Prey tells you at the very beginning that you can “play your way,” and as a result it is possible to play in a way that ultimately ends up being kind of boring.This isn’t necessarily a criticism but more of a warning to future players.
This is a game primarily concerned with how the player inhabits and manipulates their environment. The entire concept of the Mimics and the fact you can learn to use their copying ability is a testament to this. Accordingly, the most enjoyable part of Prey is the act of exploring Talos 1 for the first time and discovering what you can do with that space. Once you’ve fully explored the station and settled into which gameplay mechanics you want to use the game starts to lose steam. By the end you’ll probably be mindlessly traveling from level to level to finish off remaining objectives and sitting through very long loading screens in the process. This thankfully only happens in the last hour or two of the game, so it doesn’t spoil the overall experience. In a similar vein it’s also very likely that players will become overpowered by the end of the game unless they impose their own difficulty increasing limitations on gameplay to counter this. For example the player has the option to avoid installing any neuromods (abilities and upgrades) during their playthrough which would certainly make the endgame much more difficult and rewarding. If you attempt to upgrade your character as much as possible, however, your endgame very well could be jumping and gliding past every single enemy with ease, which can be a bit boring. This - again - is more of a warning than a criticism. It’s a testament to Prey’s openness that you can pretty easily break the game by the end if you want to. System Shock 2 - Prey’s most obvious influence - is quite similar in this sense and can fittingly be broken in almost exactly the same way. (Brief spoiler alert: on standard difficulty if you fully spec into ballistic weapons, health, and mobility increasing abilities you can turn both of these games into the easiest Doom levels you’ve ever seen)
Story and writing - like with System Shock 2 - isn’t the deepest or most critical, but works really well for a sci-fi horror experience. Piecing together what happened on Talos 1 and the different relationships between characters is incredibly engaging. The fact the 200+ NPCs are all actual named characters with jobs and email correspondence that can be located in the game world is a stroke of genius for this kind of audiolog and environmental based story telling. This kind of story telling in other games - Bioshock for instance - can often be engaging but very artificial feeling. (A lot of digital ink has been spilled commenting on how ridiculous and nonsensical the existence of audio logs is for Bioshock’s world). Prey’s take on this story telling - in line with its immersive sim gameplay - feels incredibly real and adds to the feeling of Talos 1 as an actual place that can be interacted with as such. The way Prey handles its NPCs is IMO one of its best inventions and something I hope other developers have seen and been influenced by. Overall, Preys writing shines brightest when it comes to portraying the relationships between characters and creating a compelling mystery for players to unravel, and it makes some important strides when it comes to storytelling techniques to achieve these ends.
Prey does have some philosophical and political aspirations, and while these don’t fall flat in a juvenile “makes you think” kind of way (cough Bioshock Infinite) they’re not terribly complex. The big questions and moral dilemmas that Prey interrogates don’t go much deeper than the trolley problem and the question of how much we’re willing to sacrifice in the name of progress. This isn’t really a bad thing though. Prey successfully engages with these topics in a way that organically encourages players to think critically about them. I always appreciate it when games try to engage players in this way, and I think Prey deserves some praise for its efforts.
Overall this is a fantastic game and one of the very few contemporary titles that can stand along side the classics of the immersive sim genre. (It’s honestly the only one I’ve played so far but I’ve heard very good things about ctrl+alt+ego and don’t want to discount it before playing). Prey also does quite a lot to advance storytelling techniques and gameplay mechanics in this genre, and I hope it can serve as an inspiration for future designers.
This freedom can be a bit of a double edged sword however. Prey tells you at the very beginning that you can “play your way,” and as a result it is possible to play in a way that ultimately ends up being kind of boring.This isn’t necessarily a criticism but more of a warning to future players.
This is a game primarily concerned with how the player inhabits and manipulates their environment. The entire concept of the Mimics and the fact you can learn to use their copying ability is a testament to this. Accordingly, the most enjoyable part of Prey is the act of exploring Talos 1 for the first time and discovering what you can do with that space. Once you’ve fully explored the station and settled into which gameplay mechanics you want to use the game starts to lose steam. By the end you’ll probably be mindlessly traveling from level to level to finish off remaining objectives and sitting through very long loading screens in the process. This thankfully only happens in the last hour or two of the game, so it doesn’t spoil the overall experience. In a similar vein it’s also very likely that players will become overpowered by the end of the game unless they impose their own difficulty increasing limitations on gameplay to counter this. For example the player has the option to avoid installing any neuromods (abilities and upgrades) during their playthrough which would certainly make the endgame much more difficult and rewarding. If you attempt to upgrade your character as much as possible, however, your endgame very well could be jumping and gliding past every single enemy with ease, which can be a bit boring. This - again - is more of a warning than a criticism. It’s a testament to Prey’s openness that you can pretty easily break the game by the end if you want to. System Shock 2 - Prey’s most obvious influence - is quite similar in this sense and can fittingly be broken in almost exactly the same way. (Brief spoiler alert: on standard difficulty if you fully spec into ballistic weapons, health, and mobility increasing abilities you can turn both of these games into the easiest Doom levels you’ve ever seen)
Story and writing - like with System Shock 2 - isn’t the deepest or most critical, but works really well for a sci-fi horror experience. Piecing together what happened on Talos 1 and the different relationships between characters is incredibly engaging. The fact the 200+ NPCs are all actual named characters with jobs and email correspondence that can be located in the game world is a stroke of genius for this kind of audiolog and environmental based story telling. This kind of story telling in other games - Bioshock for instance - can often be engaging but very artificial feeling. (A lot of digital ink has been spilled commenting on how ridiculous and nonsensical the existence of audio logs is for Bioshock’s world). Prey’s take on this story telling - in line with its immersive sim gameplay - feels incredibly real and adds to the feeling of Talos 1 as an actual place that can be interacted with as such. The way Prey handles its NPCs is IMO one of its best inventions and something I hope other developers have seen and been influenced by. Overall, Preys writing shines brightest when it comes to portraying the relationships between characters and creating a compelling mystery for players to unravel, and it makes some important strides when it comes to storytelling techniques to achieve these ends.
Prey does have some philosophical and political aspirations, and while these don’t fall flat in a juvenile “makes you think” kind of way (cough Bioshock Infinite) they’re not terribly complex. The big questions and moral dilemmas that Prey interrogates don’t go much deeper than the trolley problem and the question of how much we’re willing to sacrifice in the name of progress. This isn’t really a bad thing though. Prey successfully engages with these topics in a way that organically encourages players to think critically about them. I always appreciate it when games try to engage players in this way, and I think Prey deserves some praise for its efforts.
Overall this is a fantastic game and one of the very few contemporary titles that can stand along side the classics of the immersive sim genre. (It’s honestly the only one I’ve played so far but I’ve heard very good things about ctrl+alt+ego and don’t want to discount it before playing). Prey also does quite a lot to advance storytelling techniques and gameplay mechanics in this genre, and I hope it can serve as an inspiration for future designers.