Prey

I have been anticipating Prey ever since it was first shown in it's new form a couple E3's ago. The demo was released a couple weeks before the game came out, and it just solidified my hype. Then the sad truth came out. The game is not as amazing as we all thought.

First off it's probably nice to talk about the good. Well the technology that has always been associated with the game works perfect. Portals, weird gravity etc all show up as promised. Without them the game would be very mediocre. Another feature in Prey is death. There basically is none. When you lose all of your health you play a short minigame where you shoot creatures to get your health back. In about 10 seconds your done and back right where you were. An interesting feature that makes the game a little too easy. The graphics are among the best on the PC and Xbox360 at this time, and the sound effects are hard hitting and fit well. The voice acting is good as well.

One aspect of the game that was reported on often was the main character Tommy. Who just happens to be Native American. That's just another innovation in the game. It's pretty rare to see a video game use Native Americans as main characters (despite the fact that its an alien invasion game). The story is nothing special. Tommy doesn't want to live on the reservation, but his girlfriend wants to stay. Out of nowhere aliens abduct Tommy, his girlfriend, and his grandfather. Tommy must set out to rescue them. Fairly straightforward, but it does have a few unique twists (that take their cue from some very good games) that some may not expect.

Despite the unique twists in the gameplay the feels like it's missing something. It could be because its very short, and very easy. The portals never really do anything really amazing beyond the first hour in the game. It really shows that this game could've used another 4 or 5 hours added on with some more unique puzzles. There isn't a ton of character interaction (Half-Life 2 any one?), so you don't really care for the character as much as you could. If what happens in this game involved the Half-Life 2 character it would've been far more effective (for example).

Another disappointing aspect is the multiplayer. It only allows for one player on screen and is extremely laggy with anymore than 5 players in one room. Precision can be very difficult even with only 2 people playing. There are few maps and only deathmatch modes. I don't want to dump on it anymore, but it would have been nice if they put time into developing a unique multiplayer that took advantage of the portal and gravity tech that they obviously worked a lot on.

Overall Prey is still a fun and unique game that will obviously spawn many similar games. For me it just goes to show how much Halo benefits from having a good multiplayer mode. Yes the game could've used some more time in the oven, but that shouldn't deter anyone from at least giving it a look.

PROS
+ Interesting and unique gameplay ideas
+ Solid graphics
+ Story has some unique ideas

CONS
- Portals not used to full potential
- Gameplay becomes stale
- Boring multiplayer