The reason why I have 40 hours of playtime isn't because I've done multiple complete playthroughs of this game, but rather because I started 2 playthroughs which I gave up on 10 hours in. The game starts off amazing, but then the same thing always happens: I become impatient to get to the end so I can find out the truth about Talos I. So I start rushing through the game and play it like an action first-person shooter until I get to a point where I'm out of resources and am surrounded by high level enemies, at which point I rage quit. Unlike other games, I always quit with the intention of starting over and doing things differently, because it always feels like there's something wrong with the way I'm playing and not the game itself.
This is not a game that you can rush through, at least not in the first 10 hours or so. While in my previous playthroughs I was barely scraping by with enough ammo to count on one hand, in my latest playthrough my inventory was always overflowing with resources. All I had to do was ignore the main story (which usually makes the most sense in other games) and take the time to explore every area that was available to me. Not only did I discover many powerful weapons hours before I did in the previous playthroughs, but I became much more invested in the story since I collected the emails and audio logs of the unfortunate employees on the space station. Before, I wanted to uncover the truth of Talos I by getting to the end of the game, but this wasn't really necessary: the truth was all around me, all I had to do was look.
I also realized that combat in this game does not rely on mobility and reflexes alone, but rather knowing the correct "counter" to each enemy. Enemies in the early parts of the game feel so difficult because they're still unknown entities. You have to learn their attacks (which actually aren't too complicated) by observing them, and then figuring out which tools you can use to exploit their weaknesses. People have described the combat as being more like a puzzle, since once you figure out the correct "counter" for each enemy the combat becomes much easier. Having the enemies become trivial might seem like a bad thing, but I loved this since it made exploration much easier and and gives the player that feeling of having mastered the space station, becoming the unstoppable force that even the monsters fear.
The game has been labelled as an immersive sim, but I can't really tell this from just one completed playthrough. For me, it seems like the best way to play the game is to slowly explore every area and invest in skills that help you unlock more of the space station (e.g. hacking, repair), which kind of goes against the whole "there is no right way to play" philosophy of immersive sims. But there are so many other possible ways that I've never even tried yet. I didn't touch any of the alien abilities, didn't commit to a single playstyle (I ended up with a mixture of stealth and combat skills that definitely gave me an unfair advantage) and left a lot of side quests unfinished. Games like this are designed to be played more than once, which I definitely look forward to doing.
The only major flaw with this game (it's not the ending, which I thought tied the whole thing together rather nicely) is the loading screens and how they factor into the endgame. The entire space station is made up of several interconnected areas, but they are all separated by a loading screen. It's not bad in the first 10 hours of the game, when you spend a lot of time in each area. But in the final hour of the game, you have to quickly go through several of these areas to complete objectives (in fact, there are even timers on some objectives) which means you'll be seeing loading screens every minute! It really hurt the intense energy of the climax and made the finale feel more tedious than exciting. I know that the loading screens are simply a hardware limitation, but I wish that the finale could have been designed in a way that reduced the need to have to see so many of them in such quick succession.
Overall, Prey is a terrific game that I am sure will only become better with subsequent playthroughs. If this ever gets remade in the future without loading screens between areas, it will be pretty much perfect.
This is not a game that you can rush through, at least not in the first 10 hours or so. While in my previous playthroughs I was barely scraping by with enough ammo to count on one hand, in my latest playthrough my inventory was always overflowing with resources. All I had to do was ignore the main story (which usually makes the most sense in other games) and take the time to explore every area that was available to me. Not only did I discover many powerful weapons hours before I did in the previous playthroughs, but I became much more invested in the story since I collected the emails and audio logs of the unfortunate employees on the space station. Before, I wanted to uncover the truth of Talos I by getting to the end of the game, but this wasn't really necessary: the truth was all around me, all I had to do was look.
I also realized that combat in this game does not rely on mobility and reflexes alone, but rather knowing the correct "counter" to each enemy. Enemies in the early parts of the game feel so difficult because they're still unknown entities. You have to learn their attacks (which actually aren't too complicated) by observing them, and then figuring out which tools you can use to exploit their weaknesses. People have described the combat as being more like a puzzle, since once you figure out the correct "counter" for each enemy the combat becomes much easier. Having the enemies become trivial might seem like a bad thing, but I loved this since it made exploration much easier and and gives the player that feeling of having mastered the space station, becoming the unstoppable force that even the monsters fear.
The game has been labelled as an immersive sim, but I can't really tell this from just one completed playthrough. For me, it seems like the best way to play the game is to slowly explore every area and invest in skills that help you unlock more of the space station (e.g. hacking, repair), which kind of goes against the whole "there is no right way to play" philosophy of immersive sims. But there are so many other possible ways that I've never even tried yet. I didn't touch any of the alien abilities, didn't commit to a single playstyle (I ended up with a mixture of stealth and combat skills that definitely gave me an unfair advantage) and left a lot of side quests unfinished. Games like this are designed to be played more than once, which I definitely look forward to doing.
The only major flaw with this game (it's not the ending, which I thought tied the whole thing together rather nicely) is the loading screens and how they factor into the endgame. The entire space station is made up of several interconnected areas, but they are all separated by a loading screen. It's not bad in the first 10 hours of the game, when you spend a lot of time in each area. But in the final hour of the game, you have to quickly go through several of these areas to complete objectives (in fact, there are even timers on some objectives) which means you'll be seeing loading screens every minute! It really hurt the intense energy of the climax and made the finale feel more tedious than exciting. I know that the loading screens are simply a hardware limitation, but I wish that the finale could have been designed in a way that reduced the need to have to see so many of them in such quick succession.
Overall, Prey is a terrific game that I am sure will only become better with subsequent playthroughs. If this ever gets remade in the future without loading screens between areas, it will be pretty much perfect.