Shplay
2 reviews liked by Shplay
Prey: Mooncrash
2018
categorizing it as a DLC is simply insulting
Prey: Mooncrash
2018
Really really good. I know this gets compared (favorably) to Deathloop a lot but they're very different beasts - if all you come to Arkane for is gameplay, I guess this is mostly just a stronger version (since it has a backbone of Prey's incredible systems). Deathloop, however, has much more engaging characters, a charming world, great art design - things that I definitely missed in Mooncrash. Many of my favorite aspects of Arkane games are their lived-in worlds, exploring all their secrets, and admiring their incredible visual style. Mooncrash largely fails at all these since it's mostly just a rearranging and repurposing of Prey's assets, without the meticulous worldbuilding or story.
Mooncrash still fuckin bangs, though, because it's a fantastic way to utilize Prey's systems. The base game is a brilliant immersive sim with some of the most in-depth stim-and-response in any game - there's many ways to approach each obstacle, and many many branching paths with barriers to find. Depending on your build and your playstyle, however, this means that it's pretty easy to default to a few ways of traversing through the world - forgoing the gloo gun for the leverage skill, taking hacking where the huntress boltcaster may have been more rewarding.
Mooncrash makes the wonderful decision to separate out Morgan's skill set from the base game into 5 separate characters, which really forces you to understand and use the entirety of each character's skillset. You have to escape the moonbase with each character, so you really do have to learn each of them - which rooms they can get into, and how. Which enemies to take out and which to run from. Add to this some new and improved enemies, new weapon upgrades, and an ever-increasing timer that spawns harder and harder enemies as you progress, and Mooncrash really feels like a puzzle that you have to solve. As you progress what story there is, even more systems reveal themselves, too - more ways for the station to fuck itself up, forcing you to find ways to power doors, or avoid radiation, or get past a fire. It almost makes me wish I had played Mooncrash first, so that I'd go into Prey primed with the knowledge and the creativity necessary to really enjoy and exploit its systems to the fullest.
Mooncrash still fuckin bangs, though, because it's a fantastic way to utilize Prey's systems. The base game is a brilliant immersive sim with some of the most in-depth stim-and-response in any game - there's many ways to approach each obstacle, and many many branching paths with barriers to find. Depending on your build and your playstyle, however, this means that it's pretty easy to default to a few ways of traversing through the world - forgoing the gloo gun for the leverage skill, taking hacking where the huntress boltcaster may have been more rewarding.
Mooncrash makes the wonderful decision to separate out Morgan's skill set from the base game into 5 separate characters, which really forces you to understand and use the entirety of each character's skillset. You have to escape the moonbase with each character, so you really do have to learn each of them - which rooms they can get into, and how. Which enemies to take out and which to run from. Add to this some new and improved enemies, new weapon upgrades, and an ever-increasing timer that spawns harder and harder enemies as you progress, and Mooncrash really feels like a puzzle that you have to solve. As you progress what story there is, even more systems reveal themselves, too - more ways for the station to fuck itself up, forcing you to find ways to power doors, or avoid radiation, or get past a fire. It almost makes me wish I had played Mooncrash first, so that I'd go into Prey primed with the knowledge and the creativity necessary to really enjoy and exploit its systems to the fullest.