The sales of Prey probably were not that great. And yet I think that this game is one of the most enjoyable first person games in recent years. The level design is fantastic, the mechanics are beautifully integrated in the game world and the story is thought provoking. This may well be a cult classic in the making.

I think the sales will be decent - the chatter around the game was generally positive but I agree, I really liked what I played. I wasn't prepared for it to be so closely aligned with Bioshock/System Shock/Dishonored - idk what I expected but I really enjoyed almost every part of it. I hope it at least comes up in GOTY talk, don't think it'll win anything but I really like the direction and the stab they took in general for a game/franchise that was basically abandoned years ago. I also wholly underestimated how terrifying some of the enemies can be - the nightmare in particular

NO!

But sure... I feel like I see it on sale every other week. Still probably my fav game this year behind Zelda. I get the people that say the game is too difficult tho. Almost gave up on it until I started getting overpowered with the abilities.

You can change the title of the thread to "Hey you should really play games by Arkane" and it would be just as true.

Prey is like Bioshock in space - or basically the sequel to System Shock 2 that some have been waiting for. Unfortunately like most Arkane games people seem to have bounced off it for one reason or another.

Same thing with Dishonored. An absolutely brilliant spiritual successor to Thief that most people just didn't get into.

I really had mixed feelings on the game. To the extent that even after 15-20 hour playthrough I still can't decide whether I actually liked it or not. Like most other people, I thought that the level design was fantastic, which is sort of what you would come to expect from Arkane, and I thought the central premise of the plot was pretty cool.

On the other hand, I really didn't like a lot of the actual gameplay. The character movement was really clunky on consoles and the shooting felt bad. Not necessarily that it was hard to do or didn't feel snappy enough, but that the weapons felt like they had zero impact on enemies - you hit them and their health bars just sort of went down. It was really unsatisfying. I also thought the game was about 1/3 too long, particularly given the interminable load times on consoles. For as interesting a concept as it was, they definitely had 1-2 completely unnecessary plot twists towards the end that sort of killed the pacing.

So yeah. There are some things I'd like games to take from Prey going forward, but I think it'll be the game after Prey that benefits from those design decisions.

I'm having a lot of fun with it on PC. (I can see how tracking mimics would be tough on a controller.) The story didn't grab me quite like System Shock 2 did, though. It feels like there should be more living people around, at least one or two. I think SS2 had a couple of people you interacted with through windows, or at least talked at you, which made the stakes feel a bit higher than they are on the Prey station, where everyone pretty much seems to be dead. But I'm digging the game a lot.

I'm pretty lukewarm on what I've played of it. It has some REALLY good ideas (the Mimics are feckin' brilliant), but it just hasn't grabbed me.

I got the platinum on PS4 and enjoyed my time with it but it didnt really stand out as all that memorable like Bioshock especially the story.

I love it. Played it at launch on PS4 and had a great time with it. I hugely enjoyed exploring the space station they created. It's right up with Zelda as my favourite game of the year so far.

I died a whole lot, but you can quicksave whenever so I never lost any progress. I generally play games cautiously though.

As for Bioshock, it's the obvious modern point of reference but I enjoyed PREY a whole lot more. Although maybe that's because by the time I played Bioshock it was a few years old.

@handlas: I never found any part of this game difficult. Like I was genuinely surprised that people were finding it difficult. I will say, however, that I imagine this game would be way more frustrating if played with a controller. But with a M+K I've never had trouble aiming at mimics or anything.

@rorie: you will start interacting with more humans towards the end of the game - not spoilers I hope.

I really liked the game when I was playing it, but I've soured on it since. That ending is a poop basket.
@joe_mccallister: The Nightmare is pretty scary at first, but then less so after it starts glitching out and clipping through stuff.

I just beat it 2 days ago and loved it. It and persona 5 are my 2 favorite games of this year. Prey is fantastic!

Edit: comparisons to bioshock are inevitable but it feels a lot more interesting from a moment to moment standpoint. Bioshock was more of a shooter with a couple of powers. Bioshocks story was better but Prey is more interesting from a gameplay standpoint.

@rorie: I don't want to spoil anything but there are some more living humans in Prey.

I finished and wrote a review for this game. It's really good but the ending might be a hit or miss for some people.

Prey in the end was very disappointing the story fizzles out before it even gets going then kicks you in the balls with such a godawful ending, the boring one note combat throughout gets very tiresome in the end. At first Talos 1 is simply marvelous a joy to explore but in the end I was sick of the place the amount of loading screens turned Talos 1 into a chore to navigate especially so during the final acts.

The best part about Prey is simply exploring Talos 1. After I was done with that in the (surprisingly long) fifty plus hours I put into it, I was done with the game and mad-dashed it to the end. By the time I got to the end, I was so over whatever the story was telling I was getting a bit frustrated, nor did it help that in the end they just throw a multitude of enemies your way. It seemed a lot of people said the shooting was bad, but I thought what was there felt pretty good. It's definitely a great game from this year mainly due to Talos 1, but it's a game I feel that'll get buried by other good games from this year for me. The fact that it was giving a bad impression in the last five or so hours (since I had done everything else other than the story), and I was fed up with it, then after the credits rolled I immediately uninstalled it off the PS4, that's not a good sign for how I partially remember the game. I don't even have any interest in going back to the game either.

@matatat: I had difficulty with guys early on. I ran into one of those big floating guys blocking an elevator and he probably killed me 50 times. Looking back Im pretty sure I wasn't suppose to fight it yet. But once I got the ability to throw heavy objects at enemies the game became a breeze.

Oh, and I somehow missed the gloo gun fabrication thing early in the game so I was not able to make ammo for it until much later.

@handlas: Yeah, I also found that guy after wandering off for a bit. It was definitely a mistake to try fighting him, but what're you gonna do? This game's all about player agency, and I was just expressing my agency.

Poor Arkane. All of their games are fucking excellent but are maybe too hard or complex or something because they never get the huge buzz they deserve. I hope they don't end up dumbing down or straying from their current vision.

The game has some cool ideas like the gloo gun and the mimics and the atomsphere is pretty effective early on but it doesnt take long before the loading times, boring enemies and shallow story drag the game down and make it a chore to play. (also yeah the ending really sucks but i've come to expect that from Arkane)

I think my favourite thing to do in the game was recycling a bunch of junk into glowing balls. It made the videogame hoarder in me very happy.

I'm excited to play it, picked it up for 20 bones!

I thought this game was great as well. It surprised me in a number of ways. The overarching story for instance was very good, especially if you buy into the notion that it attempts to deconstruct the trolley problem. Arkane made some incredibly smart and bold design decisions with respect to morality and player choice. I thought even the ending was well-done. The combat too turned out to be better than I expected: it's tactical like the best role-playing games, and the character progression is deeply satisfying. I'll echo what @humanity and @hayt have already said: Arkane have consistently made quality games that for some odd reason don't seem to resonate with a lot of people.

@militantfreudian: Immersive sims are traditionally poor sellers and have never been a popular genre, Arkane's games will never sell Dishonord having stealth just compounds the problem. Immersive sims strong aren't there moment to moment gameplay Prey, Dishonord and Deus Ex all suffer from this as a result they often generate very poor word of mouth, Doom 2016 had the same muted launch as Prey but 5 min of Doom is all you need to shout about the game to get the same reaction from Prey you would need a few hours, and Prey doesn't have any cool moments to make Battlefied style trailers so Prey will never sell on hype either.

I will almost certainly never, ever play Prey.

I think they are learning and making smart decisions already. The new Dishonored 2 DLC for example has some drastic changes to the core mechanics of that game that simplify it for the better. From what I read, the biggest and in my opinion most welcome change is that they've completely done away with the chaos system which more often than not punished you for not sticking to a pure pacifist playthrough which I thought was counter-intuitive to the entire "play how you want" sandbox appeal of the game. And second: they discarded "mana" flasks, putting the abilities on a cooldown instead which was another system that while cool in theory would usually lead people to never use their powers for fear of running out of the blue juice.

Of course those are changes that will more likely appeal to their core audience rather than draw new blood in. If you don't like slinking about, hiding in shadows and systematically dismantling guards in a given location then Dishonored will never appeal to you. Likewise Prey is a game that requires patience and commitment. You start out weak and it takes a while before you truly feel like you can take the enemy on in a one on one fight. I suppose some people just don't have the patience to go through the phase when you're the (sorry) prey rather than the hunter, or maybe they just don't like that it's not a Doom style action shooter. Who knows - people keep asking for games to stop holding our hand, but then when that happens most of the gaming populace "bounces off," sales tank, and the genre goes with the wind. When is the last time we've had a really good character action game? DmC, and then Bayonetta before that.. thats not an awesome lineup. People rather put 1000 hours into Fallout 4, go figure, it's a tough market.

Sorry for the overly long response, but man am I forever bummed out when I hear another great, meticulously crafted Arkane game failed to sell well, and then see Shadow of Mordor with it's amazing "go convert 5 orcs" mission design and beautiful brown-grey color palette win the hearts and minds all over the internet. It's a real bummer.

No, thanks.

Played the demo when it came out, the only thing I enjoyed was the environment design and the opening sequence. Didn't care about the rest, strongly disliked the artstyle, couldn't stand the skill tree and the whole resources thing, combat was frustrating and the audio and controller issues made me want to throw the PS4 out of the window. A lot of the game just feels unsatisfying.

To me Prey was a really good concept poorly executed on multiple aspects. I'd rather play the original Prey from 2006 again, to be honest.

I did, years ago, it was great.

It's not without its flaws, especially in regards to occasionally fiddly combat and inconsistent pacing, but Prey is definitely one of my favorite games of this year. Even beyond the whole "They made a new System Shock" thing, there's an obsessive level of detail to the way Talos 1 is set up that I think straight up exceeds any other video game of this type. I even like the weird meta ending. I totally understand why people aren't super into this game, but it does the "run around carefully crafted mundane environments while looting the hell out of everything and listening to audio logs of people who are probably dead" thing for me so, so well.

It's been kind of amusing seeing how almost every single member of the Giant Bomb crew has tried out the game and been mildly positive about it before bouncing off after a few hours. Meanwhile, everyone at Waypoint seemingly loves it to death. I guess Patrick and Austin were the big fans of "Immersive Sims" (I hate that name, but it's easier than saying "A game like those games that Looking Glass used to make") on staff.

The moral of the story seems to be scummy and/or shameless marketing works. WB had the huge influencer scandal with that game if memory serves

Seen this for the new Mordor game?

https://totinos.promo.eprize.com/shadowofwar/

That kinda crap is an instant turnoff for me

TBF I think marketing is half the battle these days in AAA. e.g. Overwatch imo is very good game, but there is no question imo that a huge % of its' success is having the blizzard name and hype machine behind it.

Games like Battleborn, Lawbreaker etc may not be as good as OW but they certainly aren't anywhere as bad as the online vibe make them out to be. But when you are going up against a marketing juggernaut, what can you do?

Prey didn't feel like it had a ton of oomph behind it in terms of marketing.

I bought it when it came out but i haven't had the time to play it.

It looks very damn interesting though.

I've played about 25 hours of the game and while I've enjoyed my time it has not grabbed the same way like the games (System/Bioshocks) its trying to "mimic".

I just picked it up on Xbox. Looking forward to diving in when I can free up some time!

I tried it and refunded it day 1 I just didn't feel it I like the original Prey from 2006 a million times more.

Nothing I've seen has appealed to me so far, the most fun the game looked was when vinny played it but that doesn't seem like how it's meant to be played lol.

Just here to reiterate the point that more people should play Prey. Prey is great, play it damn it!

I put the game to easy and I really became addicted to it now, I'm up to the shuttle part of the story. I actually reached the joke ending, of sorts. If you've been there you know what I'm talking about. The dialogue after that ending was really curious, and I'm sure if I reach one of the real endings I'll get more context to that. Still looking for a 2nd Corrupted device to scan as well.

@handlas: Ah yeah, those dudes are pretty annoying at any given point I feel like. I also boosted the shotgun quite a bit and can fabricate ammo for it so for tough enemies you just get right up in their shit and let off 3-4 shots and they're down.

So far it's just been trash enemies and pretty uninteresting storytelling with another mute protagonist. When it finally showed me the upgrade menus a few minutes ago, I saved and quit. I don't like looking at upgrade menus. I've done it so much in other games. I have an idea: If your game needs to have upgrades, then just make them automatic, according to how you play the game. I don't wanna look at menus and try to figure out which of these options I need.

Prey is my favorite Shock-alike to date, frankly. I had a phenomenally good time seeing out the stories of every crew member on the station, and seeing the believable way Talos 1 fits together. If folks like seeing from one level of Dark Souls to another for world immersion, they ought to check out Prey. The inside (and outside) fits together in an interesting and consistent way, with both tons of little detail as well as grand scope. It's fantastic.

I was whizzing around Talos I with a maxed-out shotgun like a badass within a few hours of firing it up for the first time. It was exhilarating. I died a bunch before that -- a phantom in the medical area surrounded by flammable stuff proved difficult -- but then I decided to specialize with the shotgun, only fabricating shotgun ammo and neuromods, putting all of those into hacking, physical attributes (speed, aim, etc), and security weapon efficacy.

It is a brilliant game with a few too many stolen ideas. Not genre tropes, but literal thievery from BioShock; moments from BioShock, even. But that's okay, I forgive it, simply for how utterly fascinating the story is. It has the only audio logs that don't annoy me in any game so far, because where they are found makes perfect sense, as does why they were recorded.

They also explain why you don't "talk." They even find a genius way for you to talk that you don't even realize. Your protagonist is not mute, they just speak in a different context. They programmed the robot to mimic their voice and personality perfectly, which talks to you a lot. It's you talking to yourself. To brush that off as another mute protagonist is pretty inaccurate in my view.

It has one of the best jump scares ever weaved, also. It's designed perfectly and the opposite of a cheap thrill. Def in my top five of the year, with Breath of the Wild and Persona 5.

Interesting note: I hated the PS4 demo. It's a bad demo, and a bad version of that game. I'm not one of those people who say PC or nothing, but for this game, I'm kind of saying that. No offence to those who enjoyed or are enjoying the console version just fine, that's music to my ears (if so), but the experiences are almost night and day, feel-wise. Have they fixed it completely yet?

@brunothethird: Yup supposedly , at least on ps4pro, they fixed the inputs but fucked up the framepacing in the patch before and now finally fixed that very recently. Haven't tested that latest update yet though.

I already finished it before the introduction of the framepacing issues and as someone who cant stand inputlag etc I'd say it wasnt THAT bad. Never had trouble hitting the mimics or anything really, despite it feeling less than optimal. There are plenty of shooters on ps4 that imo feel just as bad/worse in that regard that strangely nobody seems to complain about (Wolfenstein the new order comes to mind, still love that game). The demo was also worse inputwise than the launch build on ps4 by a fair amount in my experience.

I sadly did, and it's one of the worst games i have played this year. So i personally can't advocate people getting it.

@brunothethird said:

I'm curious, did you mean the one in Psychotronics, involving calibrating the Looking Glass?

It's definitely going to be somewhere in my top 5 this year for sure.

I've already said my piece why I really liked the game in other threads. The exploration being rewarded, power progression and ending execution are some of the chief things among them. But this thread got me thinking about it a bit again.

Prey is basically the successor to System Shock. Even more so then Bioshock, like yea Bioshock was the official spiritual successor, but it was also so far removed mechanically. While Prey might as well just be a sequel to System Shock in all but name. And this might be heresy but I'll go ahead and say it anyway. Prey is better then System Shock 2 imo. There.

@militantfreudian: Yes, just the way they framed it and how focused you are on the task was a genius way of catching you off guard in my opinion, especially as it isn't a horror game per se. So many times you can miss a good scare if you aren't looking in the right place, and they made sure you were without forcing it at all. A completely justified 'holy shit' moment. I hardly ever get scared by games, so it stuck out to me.

@brunothethird: That one definitely got me. It reminded me of that old browser maze prank. Thought it was pretty funny.

Prey is a really good game! My wife played it and I watched and it was a good time.

Does the Cosmonaut Shotgun Pack that come with a new copy ruin the experience of the game? I think I heard this mentioned on Waypoint radio when it came out, is this true? Should I play the game vanilla without redeeming it?

On an unrelated note, another loose disc in a PS4 box! This happens too often.

I think Prey will be one of the more controversial games this year. I really liked it, but I can also see a lot of areas that could bother people.

@liquiddragon: Honestly, it's pretty inconsequential in the long run. And the Margrave Shotgun looks pretty great. You may as well redeem it; It's certainly not something that breaks the game, and you can easily get a regular shotgun fairly early on anyway.