first off - you need to play with the restored content mod for the optimal experience. this is a great game with even greater potential unfortunately hampered a bit by rushed development. There are some bugs and storylines that dont get fleshed out all the way. If they had time to finish it this game would be a legit 10/10. although even in its imperfect state the story and characters are far more nuanced and complex than those in KOTOR 1. The combat is also smoother and more enjoyable to boot.

The Jedi being painted in a negative or ambiguous light almost always signals a promising piece of Star Wars media to me. Anyone who isn’t a raving fan boy or a small child can see that Jedi are a little bit off. They’re a reclusive and supremacist cult of celibate and emotionless space monks who abduct children and force them to abandon all outside relationships. There are however, also good things about the Jedi - they’re very well intentioned and truly want to create peace in the universe, they’re wise in many ways, and they’re also amazing fighters with really cool tech. KOTOR 2 is partially a story about the failure of the Jedi. It earnestly examines the ideology of the Jedi as if they were real and interrogates why they would fail to affect positive change. This is a level of care and thoughtfulness that is practically unheard of in the Star Wars universe. While I love the classic Star Wars films because they’re a fun time, they’re certainly not thoughtful, nuanced, and critical in the way KOTOR 2 is. It’s truly a shame we don’t get more stories that are really trying to interrogate the tropes and conventions of the Star Wars universe.

It’s makes me really sad that this game wasn’t totally finished and that we never got an Obsidian developed KOTOR 3. Obsidian has the somewhat hilarious tendency to helm the sequels to series created by other developers and pretty handily out do them in almost every way. I’m so glad they started (?) that trend with this game.

Nowhere near the deepest or most challenging or most artistically rendered game I’ve ever played, but it’s definitely the most fun.

This game, like only a few others I’ve played, ate my soul. Similarly to my experience with the Witcher 3, playing Yakuza 0 felt like going on a stimulant binge. The experience was so fun and so engaging and so addictive that it felt like time had skipped forward a week when I started playing. When I came to, so to speak, I realized I had sunk over 20 hours into a hostess club management mini game and over 150 hours in Yakuza 0 in general.

This is, from what I’ve heard, a common experience. Be careful with this game. Like I said, it’ll eat your soul.

So yeah the movement in this game is absolutely insane and feels like trying to steer a car with your feet. Booting it up for the first time was such a shock that I just started laughing and muttering “what the fuck is this”.

That said this is still an enjoyable game that’s dramatically enhanced by the weird movement scheme - that’s basically what makes this game fun. Without it this would be an incredibly easy and boring little maze game.

Biggest critique is that the gameplay gets boring relatively quickly. Each level is pretty much the same with incredibly slow and gradual difficulty progression after approx level 4. Before this, Bubbles - the player character, who is constantly moving - gets faster each level, which ramps up the difficulty very quickly. After this point, however, the game is basically just the same thing over and over again. There are only four level layouts and having a different picture to reveal each time doesn’t do much to change the experience of the levels. I think it’s a testament to the brilliant design of games like Pac Man or Space Invaders or Tetris that they can give the player the same thing over and over again and still remain incredibly fun and addictive. I’m not sure why this isn’t the case with Clu Clu Land, but it just isn’t - not for me at least. Would recommend this to basically anyone to play once if it’s readily available e.g if you have Nintendo Switch Online or already own it. It’s honestly a hilarious experience and one of the most joyfully unhinged movement schemes I’ve ever seen in a game. Would probably make for a good laugh if you play it with a friend.

I don’t have a lot to say about this game but feeling compelled to post a review to perhaps draw more attention to it. Only NES game I’ve played where someone could tell me this was a recent release and I’d believe them. Not really a game to marathon but incredibly satisfying and fun puzzles in relatively short bursts (playing maybe a world or two a sitting for instance). Really cute art style that makes use of the NES’s graphical capabilities and actually feels enhanced by it. A lot of NES games (Castlevania or any of the black box sports games for instance) look like their gameplay would be better served by a console with superior graphics like the SNES but not this one. NES feels like the perfect home for this game. Don’t let the terrible title and box art fool you; this game is an absolute treat to play. Would recommend to anyone who enjoys simple but challenging puzzle games.

First some criticisms of TOTK: the story isn’t terribly engaging and certainly not as good as BOTW’s. TOTK doesn’t benefit from BOTW’s novelty and overall feels a bit less special because of it. About half the boss fights are too easy and not terribly interesting. The dungeons aren’t anything special (as was the case with BOTW) and overall pale in comparison to those of earlier Zelda games.

TOTK is a game with quite a few flaws. So why does it deserve such a high score? Despite everything wrong with it, TOTK offers players unparalleled freedom for sequence breaking, emergent gameplay, and unanticipated uses of the game’s systems. TOTK does these things to such an extreme degree and so successfully that it’s worth playing and praising for that reason alone. These systems won’t be enjoyable for everyone, and they don’t always complement the game’s method of storytelling and level design but they do create an experience that is undeniably unique and unforgettable. So many AAA games are a fun time, but they’re experiences that play it too safe and that players will likely forget mere weeks after finishing. It’s so refreshing to see TOTK commit so hard to its chosen design philosophy of player freedom. If this player freedom were woven perfectly with the story and level design TOTK would be an easy 10/10.

Apart from this TOTK is just a really fun time and absolutely recaptures the sense of exploration and adventure that BOTW did.

A note to anyone who hasn’t played the game yet: please do not look up tips for using the games mechanics or how to build perfect vehicles with ultrahand before playing the game. So much of what makes this game special comes from figuring those things out on your own. The game will likely still be fun for players that look these things up but they’ll be doing themselves a disservice. They’ll be downgrading a truly special and memorable game to one that has to settle for being merely entertaining and fun.

Easily my favorite 2-D platformer. Absolutely beautiful and unique art style. Yoshis Island IMO is definitely a contender for best looking game on the SNES.

One of the things about this game that really strikes me looking back on it is just how memorable it’s levels are. I’ve played through this game twice - most recently a few years ago - and I can still remember and describe several levels and bosses like I played it yesterday. For comparison - I just finished playing Super Mario Bros. 3 for the second time yesterday and while I can remember the theming for all the different worlds I definitely couldn’t describe any levels in detail. The only exception to this is the first level but that’s only because I played it countless times trying to beat the game as a kid. In case it seems like punching down to compare this to an NES game here’s another example. When I played New Super Mario Bros for the DS a couple years ago I would have struggled to describe any levels just a couple of days after beating it (this is in spite of my enjoying the game quite a bit).

This is a bit of a scatterbrained review but if you haven’t please look up a 100% speedrun of this game. It’s one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen and really makes you appreciate how versatile and dynamic yoshi’s movement is in this game.

Would tbh recommend this game to anyone. It’s forgiving enough that a little kid or someone who’s never played a video game before could have a fun time with it but still challenging if you try to 100% all the levels.

The only thing I really knew about this game going in was that it’s considered an excellent return to form for the Resident Evil series. As someone who loves the classic RE games I was of course very excited to play this one and had pretty high expectations. This is definitely a good and at times truly excellent game that unfortunately fails to live up to the survival horror standards set by classic resident evil. The atmosphere, writing, and environmental design is top notch throughout the entirety of RE7, but it’s ultimately let down by hollow survival mechanics and level design that starts off great but quickly declines in quality.

Let’s start with what this game does well. This is a beautifully designed game from a visual standpoint. I love the mostly grounded approach taken in regard to the environments, which makes the Baker property feel like a real place. The spookiness of the environments is also nicely restrained and mostly shies away from over the top creepiness. We’re not immediately confronted with pagan shrines made of human bones or piles of headless dolls the second we walk into the house. When we do see things like this, it’s generally in areas that are hard to access, making it feel like we’ve stumbled upon a dark secret in the bowels of the Baker estate. The trappings of a pleasant domestic life can still be seen throughout the entirety of the house just now with the obvious sickness and decay brought about by the mold. This sort of realism adds to the creepiness of the environments and plays in nicely with the tragedy of the Bakers being a normal and kind-hearted family unit before being infected.

Writing in this game is also excellent. The overarching plot is fairly standard for a Resident Evil game but is delivered very effectively. The game sets up the mystery surrounding Mia’s disappearance and what exactly is happening at the Baker house very early on and then slowly reveals details about this as the game progresses. This all works really well in RE7 and keeps the player invested up until the very end of the game. Dialogue is also fantastic and while playing into various horror cliches is genuinely creepy as opposed to campy and funny, which fits the serious tone of the game well. This game also subtly invokes themes of abuse and intergenerational trauma with the relationships between the infected Baker family, which is a level of subtextual depth I didn’t expect from a Resident Evil game. I’ll let players discover this subtext for themselves, but it pops up all over the place - even with something as simple as the infection being labeled the Mold. Actual mold is an insidious and hidden toxin that eats away at homes and is sometimes invoked as a symbol for a hidden sickness eating away at the heart of a family unit in various pieces of media. The Virgin Suicides is an example that comes to mind where the physical rotting away of a house is symbolically used in this way. People who have a more academic understanding of abusive family dynamics could probably give some truly creative and insightful readings of this game.

On to the bad, which mostly concerns the level design and gameplay systems in RE7. Level design starts out great in the first two areas of the game - the guest house and the truly excellent main house and then slowly degrades in quality from there. The main house is very open, which allows for varied route selection and plenty of options when it comes to evading Jack Baker or the Molded. It’s also a blast to explore with different rooms being visually distinct and memorable. There’s also a tremendous feeling of tension due to the constant stalking of Jack Baker, who poses a legitimate threat to players due to Ethan being rather weak and ill-equipped at this point. Gameplay and balancing actually works really well in this level, but this unfortunately isn’t the case for the rest of the game.

As the game progresses level design becomes increasingly linear and visually repetitive. The Old House is pretty open and exploring it is propped up by the tension involved in avoiding the powerful Magueritte, but the rooms are visually very bland. The testing facility is entirely linear and only kept entertaining by the challenge of looking out for traps. This all comes to a head with the dreadful mine level, which is essentially a linear enemy gauntlet where the player is showered with resources and highly encouraged to fight every enemy. The music ramps up at this point but you’ll probably end up strolling through the level and easily blowing Molded to bits with your shotgun.

Gameplay mechanics and balance in RE7 is also deeply flawed. Due to the game’s top notch presentation and horror atmosphere as well it’s excellently designed early levels this isn’t noticeable at first but becomes increasingly obvious as the player progresses. On the surface the gameplay in RE7 is largely a modern adaptation of classic Resident Evil gameplay consisting of puzzles, exploration, route selection, item management, and combat. All of this, however, is undone by the balance in RE7, which is all wrong for a survival horror game. On normal difficulty resources in this game are more plentiful than almost any other Resident Evil game. I didn’t try too hard to conserve resources in RE7, and I was never hurting for ammo or healing items. Even the action oriented RE games have stricter item balancing than this. By the time I got to the Old House my item box had accumulated more supplies than I could ever need, and the tension needed for a survival horror game evaporated immediately as a result. This issue is compounded by RE7 not scaling the difficulty of encounters with the strength of the player. There are quite literally four enemy types in this game and none of them are remotely threatening once you get the shotgun and flamethrower, which happens relatively early on in the game. The lack of enemy variety is (to my surprise) a very intentional design choice on the part of the developers, who didn’t want a menagerie of different monsters to draw attention away from the Baker family. I understand the reasoning behind this, but I think this was the wrong decision. The Baker family, who really are threatening from a gameplay perspective, stop pursuing the player by the halfway point and therefore can’t be used to increase late game difficulty. Once they’re out of the picture, you’re left with three very similar enemy types to carry the rest of the game, and they unfortunately fail to do so. The save system in this game also serves to lessen the tension once you realize how it works. In the vein of classic Resident Evil there are safe rooms with item boxes and save points, which now have unlimited uses. When I first started playing I thought this would be like classic RE where saving and needing to potentially backtrack past enemies to save would be a strategic and tension building mechanic due to the risk of losing progress if you die. Instead, RE7 uses a very generous checkpoint system. This eliminates the purpose of the save point as anything other than a quality of life feature for players who want to go back and play a specific section again or go for a different ending. This lack of tension and difficultly is compounded by increasingly bland level design, which makes the last half of this game a kind to a slog to get through.

Playing RE7 felt like walking through a really high budget haunted house. The atmosphere and theming is great and initially creates genuine tension and some really scary moments. However the longer you stay there, the less affect this atmosphere has, and you begin to realize that there’s little more aside from it on display. Maybe you touch a prop and can feel that it’s actually made of rubber or instead of cowering from an actor you stare them down and are reminded of the reality that they can’t actually touch you. You’re no longer immersed in the experience and now walking through the haunted house becomes nothing more than a scenic tour through a very well themed environment. Similarly, the longer I played RE7 the less effect it’s truly stellar atmosphere and writing had on me, and I quickly realized that the game didn’t have much else to offer past the first few levels.

This is overall an enjoyable game and one I would certainly recommend for people who are curious to try out. There are things about this game that are truly fantastic. I just wish the gameplay on offer was as strong as the writing and atmosphere.

postscript: having now played every mainline RE game and remake, I’ve come to the conclusion that this is definitely the most disappointing for me. I can’t exaggerate just how fantastic the early levels of this game are in basically every way. If the entire game kept up this pace this would be in contention for the best RE game IMO. Just a shame that’s not the game we got because the potential was definitely there.

This game is similar in a lot of ways to Resident Evil (2002) which is one of the few games I’ve ever given a perfect score. Same movement scheme, same unbelievably gorgeous pre-rendered backgrounds, same classic RE survival horror combat, etc. RE0, however, is the first mainline RE entry to introduce significant changes to gameplay despite having essentially the same DNA as other classic RE titles. RE0 introduces simultaneous control of two player characters and also removes item boxes. Both of these changes, especially the latter, impact the game significantly.

First let’s talk about the use of two player characters. I actually didn’t mind this mechanic and thought it provided a nice change of pace from previous Resident Evil entries. Billy and Rebecca are different enough that choosing which character to use for different scenarios or whether to use both in tandem allows for some fun strategizing. Billy is more resilient than Rebecca and thus more suited to combat encounters. Most players will probably spend the majority of their time playing as Billy because of this. A lot of the strategy of the 2 character mechanic comes from deciding whether or not to bring Rebecca along to take advantage of her inventory space and perhaps to have a second attacker to take on enemies. Health pickups - especially at the beginning of the game - are sparse and having to characters exploring means having two characters that can get hurt and need to heal. This dilemma - weighing the pros and cons of having Rebecca tag along during exploration - was fun to navigate.

As for the second change - the removal of item boxes: this is an absolutely baffling design decision that almost single-handedly brings this games score down from a 7 or 8 to a 6. To compensate for the removal of item boxes characters are now able to drop items, which is a nice quality of life change that would arguably improve any classic RE title, but doesn’t nearly make up for the hassle created by not having item boxes. Most players that are familiar with RE games will attempt to circumvent the removal of item boxes by just dropping all their extra resources in a save room, which is exactly what I did. The big problem with this, however, is the need to move all of these resources to new save rooms as you advance through the game lest you need to backtrack across the whole map to grab an item you need. This process of moving items easily took up two hours of my playthrough and was one of the most unnecessary chores I’ve ever endured in a video game. One of your key items - the hookshot - goes from an inoffensive tool to one of the most annoying items in the series because of this. You’re probably going to have to backtrack across the whole map at least once to schlep this thing to a puzzle that needs it. To try to compensate for the removal of item boxes, the designers generally place the specific ammo you’re going to need for tough encounters in the room right before these encounters happen. This certainly makes playing through the game easier and more convenient but had the unfortunate side effect of removing most of the strategy and tension involved in load out selection. The stress of not knowing when you’d be facing a tough enemy and weighing the pros and cons of using up valuable items slots for a full heal and your most powerful weapons just in case was one of the things that makes the other OG RE games so strategic and tense and engaging. Why should I try to strategize and plan ahead if the ammo I need for a fight is given to me right before it. Why would I ever worry about unexpectedly running into a tough enemy if their presence is always signposted with treasure troves of ammo and healing items in adjoining room. A huge amount of RE 0’s tension dissolves the instant you realize the game is doing this. The removal of item boxes and the cascading design choices that result from it are honestly baffling to me. I can’t think of a single gameplay benefit that could possibly have resulted from it. Was it to make the game harder and more tense? On paper it seems like this would be the case, but in reality it makes the game easier, less tense, and downright tedious at times for the reasons I stated before.

Difficulty in this game is also very front loaded, which is something I pretty much always think is a negative even if it doesn’t spoil my enjoyment of a game. I’ve gotten pretty decent at classic RE gameplay and because of this found the pretty difficult opening act of RE 0 to be a nice challenge, but for people unfamiliar with the series this could easily cause them to put down the game for good. I actually couldn’t help but laugh on several occasions at how many tough enemies this game throws at you in the beginning and the relative lack of resources to help with this. RE 0 is actually one of the harder games in the series overall. Unlike Code Veronica, which was difficult mostly due to scarcity of resources and the need for good player strategy, RE 0 is difficulty due to enemy design. There are some particularly nasty standard enemies in this game that are very fast and difficulty to hit even if you’re packing the optimal weapon to take them out. The monkeys in this game are infamous for being lightning fast, hard to hit, and often appearing in groups that can easily swarm and overwhelm players. The bat boss is also one of the hardest bosses I’ve fought in an RE game simply due to how difficult it is to hit. It can be killed with direct hits from flame grenades which are hilariously provided to the player along with a typewriter and a full heal in the adjacent room. As a result this should be a super easy boss. However the boss is so hard to hit you can easily use up all of your best ammo and healing items without damaging it once. I had to reload a couple times because by the time I had actually killed the boss I had wasted all my best resources. For any prospective players: definitely don’t try to go through the RE series in timeline order and accordingly pick this as the first game you play in the series; you probably won’t have a good time with it.

Puzzles in Resident Evil games are somewhat famously easy - especially when compared to puzzles in adventure games for instance. Each individual player will have their opinion on whether or not this is a good thing but at the very least Resident Evil’s puzzles are almost never cryptic and never require the use of moon logic. There are also occasionally some legitimately fun and somewhat challenging puzzles like the portrait one in Code Veronica. RE 0 mostly follows this pattern but unfortunately contains the first couple of puzzles in the series that I ever found to be legitimately cryptic and poorly implemented. I’m talking specifically about the animal statue puzzle and Rebecca’s ability to carry random chemicals in the key item she uses to mix herbs, which is never hinted at and will likely cause a lot of confusion for players who are primarily interacting with objects in the game world with Billy. Other than that the puzzles are fine, and I enjoyed the ones requiring both characters to work together from a purely puzzle design standpoint. Switching back and forth between characters and trading items for puzzles when they’re separated, however, is very tedious, which can make these puzzles a huge slog even if they’re designed well and provide one or two nice “aha!” moments.

As for story, writing, and acting: the story of RE 0 is relatively mid as far as RE stories go but works well enough. Writing and acting however is actually some of the best in the series up to this point. The tried and true premise of a nice girl and a cocksure bad boy forced to work together and going from openly hostile to having a deep bond and understanding has been successfully used in film since the advent of the “talkies” and is utilized here in a formulaic but nonetheless successful way. Billy’s voice actor also really hit it out of the park and added a lot of humanity to his character, which could have wound up feeling cartoonish and cliched with a worse performance. I wish there were more cutscenes showcasing and developing Billy and Rebecca’s relationship in this game because the dynamic is very engaging and at times surprisingly touching if not a bit cheesy. The rest of the writing and performances are just okay. Wesker appears in this title and is surprisingly bland and poorly acted. Wesker is usually the highlight of the games he appears in due to how delightfully campy he is, but he’s strangely flat and reserved here. It almost seems like the voice actor didn’t receive any proper direction due to how out of character the performance is and how Wesker’s voice bizarrely vacillates between a British and American accent. Wesker thankfully plays a very small role in this game, so the underwhelming performance doesn’t end up being too disappointing or distracting.

Being a prequel, Resident Evil 0 seeks to flesh out the lore of the series and does so in a successful but disappointingly limited way. We get to find out who released the T-Virus in the Arklay Lab, why Umbrella was founded and by whom, and we get to witness their early research into B.O.Ws. All of this is fun to learn about, but I wish it was all more fleshed out. We mostly learn about these things from files scattered around the map, which are all very short. I can’t help but feel like this expansion of the lore would have been more interesting if the files were longer or ideally if we were actually shown Umbrella’s origins and the start of the T-Virus outbreak through cutscenes and gameplay.

Overall an enjoyable game that could have been a really good one were it not for some small but ultimately very impactful design and writing choices. Worth playing for RE fans and definitely not near-unplayable like some people say but be prepared for tedium and frustration if you decide to give this one a try.

Definitely my least favorite of the Resident Evil games I’ve played so far and the first one to just feel quite bland and tedious to me despite having decent potential and some great moments.

The good: aquatic horror setting and theming is fantastic with some genuinely creepy and creative enemy designs. I love the horrifying tube sucker thing that emerges from enemies’ mouths and latches on your head when you get grabbed. Combat can also be quite fun at times - functioning as a somewhat simplified version of RE5’s combat. I also enjoyed being able to mod weapons which allowed me to make an absurd 8000 dps magnum to use against the final boss (for reference standard pistol has around 300dps and the bolt action rifle has around 1300). This surprisingly didn’t destroy the balance of the game due to this sort of upgrade only being available in the last hour or so and the scarcity of magnum rounds. The final boss fight is also fantastic in this game. Definitely one of the most creative and difficult boss fights in the series - even with my illegally modded burst fire murder cannon.

The bad: this game switches back and forth between characters and settings 15+ times and it absolutely destroys the pacing of this game. The moment you start to feel immersed in the process of exploring the wonderfully creepy queen zenobia as Jill Valentine, you’re forced into a flash back with a different character or a largely on rails segment with Chris Redfield three days earlier or a cutscene featuring the inane banter and quips of two of the most annoying characters I’ve ever seen in a video game. (I can’t even be bothered to remember their names - Skeeter and Streeter or something. My best description of these two would be Jar Jar Binks meets the Property Brothers.) All of this switching back and forth is in service of the story, which uses these different character perspectives to set up cliff hangers and slowly reveal the details of the conspiracy surrounding the events of the game. None of this is particularly engaging and certainly not engaging enough to justify design decisions that disrupt the flow and pacing of gameplay.

The story in this game is generally serviceable but bland and pointlessly convoluted - bordering on nonsensical at times. The nicest thing I can say about the story is that it’s weird in a mildly interesting way. The story is a full on techno-thriller, and it was somewhat entertaining to see how this genre was applied to the lore of Resident Evil. Overall, however, the story was just kind of boring and at times kind of pretentious (the various inane allusions to Dante Alighieri), which is something I never thought I’d be saying about a Resident Evil game.

Can’t say id recommend this game even to Resident Evil fans. With other games in the series that are severely flawed like RE5 and RE0 there’s typically a few things they do that make them worth playing in spite of their flaws. This is definitely a functional game and one that’s weird and unique enough that there are probably some people out there that will love its idiosyncrasies, but these people are likely few and far between.

What people generally say about this game is definitely true: an entry in a series famous for fast player movement that forces the player to go slow and punishes them for going fast. It’s a really baffling contradiction especially if you’re playing this after having played sonic 2 or 3 and knuckles. Game is also somewhat famous for hitting you with unforeseeable hazards that can only be avoided by proceeding very slowly and carefully. What a strange contradiction. Honestly can’t rec that anyone play this for any reason other than historical significance. Really not a very enjoyable game and pales in comparison to the other classic Sonic games.

This is obviously a historically significant game and one that was a technical marvel for the system it ran on. That said, it’s very rough around the edges and pales in comparison to Star Fox 64, which does everything this game tries to do but much much better. Don’t get me wrong, SF is a fun game, and it kept me entertained during my play through. Levels and bosses are challenging, and the feeling of flying through space and dodging obstacles all while frantically trying to hit enemies is really exhilarating. Pure gameplay design is something that Star Fox really nails, but the game as a whole is hurt by some pretty significant problems.

One of the biggest issues with this game is the frame rate, which is probably around 15-20fps but feels much lower. The visuals are the other major issue. While the SNES was obviously capable of producing SF’s 3D visuals, making a 3D space shooter for the SNES where tons of enemies, obstacles, and laser blasts need to be on the screen at the same time probably wasn’t such a good idea. One of the biggest challenges this game offers is actually being able to see and understand what’s happening on screen. This flaw does make for an interesting challenge, and some people might actually like that quality of SF but for me it definitely brings the game down overall.

I’m glad I played this so I could experience it at least once, but I can’t see myself ever willingly playing it again when Star Fox 64 is readily available and superior in every way.

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.