I would very much like to know this as well. I mean, I've heard good press on it, but is it something we'll likely be seeing talk of near GOTY?

Brad said last week they fixed the control issues on PS4. I haven't played it so I can't answer the other stuff.

I'm curious too. Did anyone on staff even bother to finish this game?

If you like sci-fi and Bioshock then this is definitely up your alley and one of the years best action RPGs. No one will talk about it during GOTY because no one will have played it and they'll just bring up that control issue as a reason why it's not a good game. I really loved it but like Dishonored I'm pretty sure it will somehow slip between the cracks into obscurity.

It's definitely my favourite game of this year so far, however it is very divisive. The combat seems to turn people off a lot, I played on PC and generally enjoyed engaging with the enemies, It's no DOOM but it's definitely better than the games it's more similar too (Bioshock/System Shock.)

However what you're most interested in is what got me into the game, the story. I'm not usually one to like audio log/email driven narratives but this one managed to dangle a carrot on a stick for me the whole time. It kept me reading and listening for any bit of info about what could possibly be going on in the game and to find out more about the staff and happenings of Talos-1. The game starts off with a fantastic introduction but then admittedly does fall flat for about 2 hours of play. Once you get past that hump its a steady trickle of information starting off with minor hints and progressively getting less subtle as the game nears its end. I thought it was very well paced and tread that line of keeping the player guessing but also giving them enough information to make educated guesses without spoiling it (other than one sequence which I won't say.) I will also say that I think it managed to stick the landing with its ending fantastically.

That being said, if you've waited this long I'd say wait until it gets a sale. Bethesda published games that aren't directly Bethesda developed seem to drastically drop in price rather quickly so if you're looking to save money for any reason I'd say it's worth waiting until you can get it for like $30.

I picked it up on a whim, and despite knowing the premise of the game from the trailers it still took me by surprise. It's a cool game. I've only played a bit of it and need to get back to playing more, but I was surprisingly hooked for the first hour or two.

I voted "depending what you like". System Shock 2 is a game I loved at the time of it's release and Prey is very obviously an attempt at a modern take on that, so I guess I'm predisposed to find that interesting. Anyone with a similar reverence for games like System Shock, Deus Ex, Half Life or similar first-person games from that era that had an emphasis on exploration and atmosphere would probably have a good time with Prey.

The setting and atmosphere are both excellent, and arguably the most enjoyable aspect of the game is just the experience of inhabiting the space-station, exploring and playing with the various systems. Story-wise the game is very low-key and understated for most of it's duration. There's not really a strong over-arching story arc to carry you along for long stretches of the game, and unlike something like Bio-Shock, it lacks an Andrew Ryan equivalent to serve as the ideological-basis for why things are the way they are. In fact, as Austin pointed out in his Waypoint article, there's kind of a lack of big characters generally. The game mostly relies on you doing some digging to put together the stories of the various inhabitants of the station, such that they are, and generally it all feels very small-scale. I didn't mind that stuff since taken together it paints a picture of life on the station in terms of smaller human interactions and moments, but I can see that others might not find that stuff interesting enough to bother scouring for audio logs and hacking computers just to read emails.

Prey has a lot of cool ideas, though, but it's not exactly surprising that it's release sneaked up on a lot of people. The game doesn't have a blockbuster, tent-pole release vibe about itself at all, so Bethesda releasing it with only a moderate marketing push and then just letting it find it's audience on its own probably suits the kind of game it is, honestly.

How is the sound design? For instance, I only ask because GameSpot said it was 'obnoxious', while Game Informer said it was 'phenomenal'. That's a bit different from one another.

@ivdamke: Actually, I'm most interested in how good the setting and exploring is; how immersed I'll get with the world, and then the story. As long as the story is adequate enough, I don't mind if it's not perfect. If it is really good, then that's a plus.

It thought it was OK. There's a lot of cool visual design going on. Like a lot of other Arkane games, they do a really good job of creating a sense of place, so if your in it purely for visual design, then it might be up your alley.

As far as gameplay goes, I was little turned off. The mimics are a cool idea at first, but you quickly get an ability that pretty much negates them as a threat. The combat was something I thought was in the outright "bad" territory, even after the fix. Melee feels imprecise and flail-y and the ranged combat doesn't have any sense of impact.

I think the bigger problem is that the game starts out fairly difficult, especially by modern standards, but by the end of the game you have more ability points than interesting things to spend them on.

The other big problem is that the game vastly overstays its welcome. It's easily 30% too long, with a lot of plot twists that start happening for what feel like no other reason than to pad the game length out. A lot of the end game side-quest stuff requires A LOT of passing between pretty interminable loading screens, and that gets real tedious, real quickly. I just starting running past combat encounters by the end because I was just ready to be done with the game.

I think Dan put out a tweet about a week ago that something to the effect of that he played it for a few hours, generally enjoyed it, and will completely forget it in a couple of months, which I feel like is an accurate assessment.

I was neutral on this point. Nothing stuck out as being particularly bad, but but it seemed like there was a limited pallet of sounds they were drawing from, so it got somewhat repetitive after awhile.

It's one of my favourites in an already tough year. I like it a lot more than the last Deux Ex, which I also liked a lot.

That basically sums up how useless reviews can be. You need to identify how the reviewer's opinions generically relate to yours as there is no truth to either of those statements.

I only played the demo, but the audio was extremely obnoxious. Poorly mixed, music cues starting and ending abruptly or playing out of place and quickly repetitive. Audio was one of the various reasons that made me lost my interest on the game.

My experience with the demo was mostly the same as the Gamespot review describes, I think.

@ntm: exploration and atmosphere are both top notch. The sound design has since release been "fiddled with" although you still get the occasional misfire of an action sting when no action is taking place.

Overall it's an amazing game but it requires patience and methodical approach. Despite outside appearances this isn't an action game and it definitely doesn't pay to play it like one. You're not really meant to run around mimics with your wrench and engage them in head on melee combat. The game tries to telegraph this by making the enemies so much faster than you. You're instead meant to engage them with your abilities by slowing down time, hypnotizing them, disabling their abilities etc. it's very tactical combat. Prey also requires you to get into the atmosphere so if the whole aesthetic and story doesn't grab you then it might be a lost cause.

@humanity: Yeah, I saw that in the Digital Foundry video.

@johnymyko: Yeah, I didn't even play the demo, but I hear it fixes, at least to some degree, the music cues so it doesn't ruin the atmosphere so much.

@alistercat: Agreed, I don't really take reviews to heart as everyone feels differently about... Well, everything, in even the most minute of details. Honestly, I'll read/watch reviews, but the (contrary to popular opinion it seems) scores are really the starting off point since it basically says whether it's worth playing or looking into, while nearly everything written is just a point of discussion to agree or disagree with and give an opposing opinion on, and I always ultimately decide if it interests me by looking at the game itself, and not someone else's opinion. I ask everyone here what they think because it gives a wider view of opinions, but I know I am not going to agree with everything everyone says here, but I like to see what you all have to say anyways.

I played on PC, and the demo on PS4. PC has none of the audio or control issues of the PS4 demo.

The world is definitely interesting, and there are some moments of awe. Just wish I had more fun playing it.

Like others said, flailing a wrench around isn't super engaging, and the ranged weapons have absolutely no impact, especially that laser cannon thing. There are cool abilities, but using them turns turrets against you.

And going for side missions just means you're going to sit through loading screen after loading screen, running passed enemies that the game decided to spawn even though you cleared it out 5 minutes ago.

Its an great game if you like other immersive sims like Deus Ex, System Shock 2 and Dishonored. Its a bit of a slow start since early on you're very weak and have limited resources but from start to finish the goo gun is your absolute best friend against enemies and finding ways into locked rooms. Later on though you get so many resources and powers that combat becomes a lot easier. I played most of the game with the goo gun, pistol and shotgun. The shooting is fine, its not good or bad, its serviceable. The only thing I ever used a wrench for is smashing windows and beating mimics that I froze with the goo gun. The story is decent but a bit predictable and the game has a great opening. I never played the demo so idk what sound issues there were but during my playthrough I thought the music and sound design were incredible. I believe the dude that did the Doom soundtrack also did Prey

Arkane has some of the best designers in the industry and it really shines through in this game. The space station looks and feels lived in and there are always multiple ways into an area you can't reach without beating you over the head with an obvious solution. There are little stories told throughout the space station that you can see through the environment and emails/audio logs and I thought most of them were really well done. The one real knock I have against the game is that on consoles loading takes fucking forever when you transition between areas. Late in the game you're forced into more combat and quickly moving from area to area where you'll run into a lot of loading screens which is annoying.

Overall I really loved Prey and it wears its influences on its sleeve. Its one of, if not my favorite game of the year. Im sure its gonna start going on sale pretty soon since it doesn't sound like it sold so well and Dishonored 2 was on sell soon after release so if you're on the fence and are a fan of other immersive sims I'd definitely recommend it.

@humanity: Your description makes me want to play it. It has sounded good from people I trust on Deus Ex - ish games but I never liked how the basic combat/ enemies looked. But if I am just seeing it wrong thinking of it as Bioshock combat that's great.

This game is very much about exploring and trying new things. I think the world in this game is very well crafted around the small narratives that it drives. There is a larger narrative of course, but I think it sort of takes a back seat to the smaller environmental ones and is primarily a means to progress you to the next area where you should most likely be. If you don't like exploring and experimentation in games like Deus Ex, Dishonored, or similar games, then this game is probably not for you. If you like all those things especially with some sci-fi horror thrown in, then it's a very good game in that regard.

Well if you consider it plays a lot like a very modern take on System Shock then that is basically it. Like you could be a soldier in System Shock but that game never played like Doom or anything remotely action oriented. You relied on stats and abilities, and in a very similar fashion Prey makes you rely on your character build to get through a lot of the encounters. Ammo is always sparse and everything is just so much faster and more nimble than you are that it's a necessity to be creative. You can for instance mod up your strength and throw giant crates at enemies to stun them and do a lot of damage. You can invest heavily in powers that let you stun them, electrocute them or even mind control them. You can become objects, buff up your HP and weapon damage to become a tank. So on and so forth. It's a game with very chess-like encounters where you can run into a room and possibly make it out, but it's much wiser to sneak up, peek around the corner and plan out a very concise attack that won't eat up all your medkits and ammo.

On top of this the exploration is amazing and nearly every problem has several different solutions that play into the different tech trees you invest points into. You almost never encounter a situation where you're locked out of a room because you invested into hacking instead of shape shifting. There is always going to be a data pad lying around, a back entrance, a grate or some creative off the wall use of the gloo gun to make accessing that place possible. I think thats what appealed to me most about it, this awesome sense of possibilities and how you're usually rewarded for exploring and using your wits.

I don't know if it's a must play for a general audience or whatever, but as a game geared towards my specific tastes, I enjoyed the hell out of it. Admittedly the combat is messy and it's a couple hours too long, but they basically made a modern System Shock, and more or less nailed it. As far as companies vying for the throne of Looking Glass Software are concerned, I think Arkane is probably the best, especially since it sounds like Deus Ex isn't going to happen again for a while.

I honestly think it's one of the single best examples of a game creating a cohesive "lived in" environment for the player to run around in while listening to audio logs and stealing everything. As mentioned by some other people, it's a slow burn and tracks in the subtle and the mundane instead of the over-the-top objectivist or jingoist theme parks of something like Bioshock, which I appreciated. I do wish there were more weapons and more enemy variety, but there's plenty of systemic interaction nonsense you can mess around with between that GLOO cannon, psionics, and the environment design.

@humanity: Yeah, to me it's it being environment, systems focused vs just direct teleport or power boosts or something that sets it apart. Some of these games just go that route too much.

The exploration is what sounded good to me. Well I definitely will check it out I think it may be pretty cheap soon too.

I tried the demo on PS4 and the control felt off. Apparently this was not just an issue with me and has been fixed since so I would like to go back and try it again but I am assuming they did not fix the demo, just the actual game.

I don't think I'd ever call it a "Must Play" in ANY context.

It's a good, if not great "one of those", but even if you like the bioshock formula, you don't NEED to play it.

I enjoyed my time with it a bunch though, for what that's worth. It's metascore is about right.

I haven't had the most positive experience with it on PC.

Crashed on me, multiple times, when I first tried to start it. Couldn't even get into a game. Haven't had that problem in awhile though.

My overall impressions in the 6 or so hours I have played: it's not that good. Maybe I went in with too much hype, but I haven't found anything too interesting. Combat is a downer, the story hasn't hooked me yet.

I will continue to play it, hopefully to the end, just to see if my opinion changes, but for now I would say it's a 5/10.

Not a must play, but it's an OK game. I liked exploring but the combat and enemies really turned me off.

@selfconfessedcynic: in all fairness they don't make a whole lot of "one of those" anymore. Also Prey is Bioshock mostly in terms of aesthetics while it plays a lot closer to the original Deus Ex, which granted, is not for everyone.

I kinda liked this game at the start, it make a strong first impression but by the end I was profoundly bored, so I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, the only reason I can think of for playing this game is for goty talks as I'm sure it will come up if not here than definitely elsewhere.

Well, I went ahead and got it. I'm too curious about the setting and want to be immersed in a sci-fi world, so I got it. Jeez, off topic but I'm finding myself buying a lot of games digitally lately. Horizon Zero Dawn and Nioh are the last games I got retail. The game should be playable in a little over an hour.

Its personally my goty so far. I'd echo most of what @Humanity said.

Play it, it's great.

I wrote a review on a popular gaming website for more elaboration on my thoughts if you care.

I really enjoyed playing through PREY to ending was meh.. but overall the game was good fun, took me around 15 hours so quite a bit of game there and i did over half the side quests. I'd recommend it! Definitely as the price it is now.

@fatalbanana: Yeah, played about three hours of it last night. It wears its inspirations on its sleeve, which isn't a bad thing, it's just surprising even though I heard it did. It is also harder than I expected, at least so far. I like it so far, but unfortunately, I was pretty tired when I got to playing it. Playing on PS4 and it's totally fine.

Not a must play but wait for it to get cheap and give it a shot. I had a really good time with it.

For me, this is the best immersive sim I have played since probably Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines. I had a phenomenally good time with Prey.

I got about 10 hours in and stopped playing. It has some great ideas but it just doesn't go far enough with any of them and I really hate the combat.

12 hours of fun, then the idea of launching it became a total chore. I played Bioshock over and over again for years, and it remains one of my all time favorites. This is literally just Bioshock in space without some of the charm. Same aesthetic, same type of loot, same gameplay, just less inspired. If you only played Bioshock once and have a hankering for some mediocre combat in a clone of a great game go for it, but i'd wait for a price drop.

It's a triple A sci-fi horror game on a space station.

There's precious few of these, and this one seems pretty good with lots and lots of little details and personal stories to find and enjoy.

Danielle over at Waypoint said she spent 50-ish hours on her first playthrough which is likely where we'll end up too since we love exploring the station; we're already planning a second playthrough due to choices.

Personally i don't think the money and time is worth it for the story by it self. I enjoyed the settings a lot, the artd eco/sci-fi look is really nice to look at, and the level design in general is great. But it's the stuff you do in those levels that was off putting to me. The general combat is not very fun, it feels clunky, and so did stealth. Enemies are not very imaginative they are all black blobs of sorts, and the whole mimic idea gets really annoying really fast, to the point in the last half of the game i found my self just jetting from objective to objective just to finish the game fast and get the rest of the story.

In short, story and look o the game great, but playing the game not very fun.

It's a great game. I just put what may have been ten straight hours into it. Also, I don't really agree; I like the gameplay just fine. Shooting feels good in my opinion.

@ntm: Glad you ended up enjoying it. I'm a bit of an evangelist for this game because it's so different in a sea of shooters.

I think it's pretty great. Vastly prefer it to Dishonored 2, which didn't have as rewarding of skill tree upgrades. I don't mind the combat, the pre-order shotgun feels just as satisfying and weighty to me as Doom (easily the most overrated game of last year in every respect). But yeah, it's not a shooter foremost and anyone expecting that will most likely not be amused.

I thought I commented on this already but nope. It's a very well made System Shock for 2017. So many cool little things in the game, great atmosphere, well realised world with a load of stuff you can explore and find. I understand if you're more into COD or Halo or something it's probably not your game, but if you want something that's essentially if System Shock was made now then bingo.

I see that you've already started playing it but I'll still respond! I'm not sure I would say any games are 'must plays' because people always have different preferences. If you don't like open world games then a ton of the most acclaimed games of recent times probably won't do much for you.

That said, PREY was like crack to me. I love first person exploration games so this was exactly on my wavelength. Looking for junk, reading terminals, exploring rooms one by one. It may sound like basic stuff but I really enjoyed it in PREY because it the junk feeds into the recycling/crafting system, the terminals feed into dozens of interesting interpersonal relationships and the room exploration feeds into how believable and well designed the TALOS space station is. I love the look of the game. I really enjoy the art direction and architecture of Arkane's games and I think they nailed it this time.

I know people have been down on the combat but I thought it was fine. I died a lot, probably over 100 times, but it never stopped me progressing. You can stop and heal whenever you like. And you can save whenever you want so if one plan of action fails you can just try again. I actually liked that almost all the enemies remained a threat throughout the game.

I'll stop my wall of praise but the last thing I'll say is that I enjoyed it more than Bioshock.

@paulmako: Yes, I am playing it, but it doesn't make your comment any less needed since someone else may ask the same thing. I agree with everything you said, except I don't think I enjoy it more than Bioshock overall (that's just one of my favorite games ever made) and since I am playing on easy - as I do with most games on the first playthrough - I am not dying over 100 times (haven't died yet, though came close), though even for a game on easy, it's more challenging than most games. I wonder how it is on hard, which is what I'd play it on if I play through it again. I love the design of each place. Visually the only thing that's a bit disappointing to me, and I don't know if it's 'fixed' on PC, is that many of the textures on walls and what have you is a bit flat, so tesselation or something would have been nice.

Lastly... I'm not a scientist, but the way Talos I, the moon and Earth revolve around one another doesn't seem right. Perhaps it's just the way Talos I moves through space. It seems awkward though when you're doing a spacewalk, and you can see the moon move past stars. Plus, is it even orbiting the moon? It doesn't seem so. That aspect doesn't make sense to me. About the spacewalking/floating around Talos I though; it's really cool. It's a bit slow, but it's immersive and feels like what I imagine floating in space might be like, with how the speed ramps up as you boost. It's cool that if you're going too fast and hit a surface, half your health might go down. Many fictions don't ever depict that but it's such a simple thing. One thing I'll mention which I only noticed last night after I switched controllers, since one way about to die, was that pushing right analog left, the sensitivity of looking around goes slower than when looking right. It's not a big issue, but it's weird.

Edit - Never mind, disregard the whole revolving around the moon, it looks like it is, though it's strange how even though Morgan isn't teathered to the station the station doesn't move away from him as he's out there.

@amuller: Yeah, I'm thoroughly enjoying this and I believe and hope I will to the end, but by the end of Dishonored 2 I just didn't enjoy that. This is a much better experience so far in my opinion. Also, I know it's contrary to popular opinion, but I was surprisingly not into Doom. It bored me to a degree I struggled to want to get through it, which is disappointing. There's a lot to like, but in actuality, the thing it's praised so much for is the thing that I disliked, which was the feeling of shooting and how the enemies reacted. Eh, there's more I can say about it but it's not relevant. This game mainly doesn't feel like a shooter because there's just not a lot of shooting, at least in comparison to typical first-person shooters, and there's not a large selection of weapons either, so yeah if you go in expecting to blast things in the face a bunch, this isn't that. It's about exploring first and foremost and discovering what's going on, and who inhabited Talos I, but since there's a threat, that's why there are weapons.

@humanity: Yep, I plan on playing it in a little while and probably putting a good long stretch of hours in again. It's pretty addictive to me. I can see the game not being nearly as good if you largely just run through the story, which seems kind of straight forward so far with not a lot going on, but that said, since I'm doing a lot of back and forth through the setting to see every nook and cranny (and it is really cool that you can run all the way back to the beginning of the game whenever you want), I don't feel like I've done a lot of the story, and I think a lot of the side tasks have been well implemented into the whole thing and adds to the mystery itself or just fleshes the setting out more and it's kind of what I want. I also think that the exploring is what you're supposed to do in the game, it's the whole point I feel.

@alexw00d: Yeah, I've seen that kind of comparison, and it is very much present, but I believe that System Shock/System Shock 2, as well as the first Deus Ex, are very slightly more complex in the systems they have. Prey doesn't have as much of a learning curve in my opinion and feels more akin to Bioshock or the latest Deus Ex games if you will. I should probably take the first System Shock out of that, that's kind of simple from what I remember.

Man, Talos I is huge! It's awesome how varied and how big it is, as well as being able to go anywhere at any time as long as it's unlocked is such a cool thing. I'm currently in air filtration control just because I wanted to go explore the opposite direction of the main task.

@paulmako: Agree with everything you said.

I've got one Typhon power, Morph Level 1, the rest are human.

An essential pro-tip for people struggling with the combat, or wanting to sort of "bypass" it; upgrade your Disruptor stun gun.

If you stun enemies while they are unaware of you, they remain unaware for the duration of the stun, so you can stack 200-250% bonus damage attacks for 10+ seconds. Stun and wrench Phantoms, stun Weavers, Nigthmares and Techno/Telepaths, pop Combat Focus and melt them with the Q-Beam.

Arkane really didn't pull any punches during the first few hours of the game, so I can definitely see people shelving it early because it feels too hard, or maybe even too scary. A few hours more, you've basically got unlimited neuromods, and the station, gameplay and story really opens up.

With that said, I'm pretty sure this title will be forgotten when Game of The Year deliberations rolls around. Best case scenario, maybe 1 or 2 gave it a shot but can't fight for it, so it ends up criminally underrated like The Witcher 3.

They never really discussed Dishonored 1 or 2 as contenders either, unless I'm misremembering. Even though I love both, they have their issues (mainly the combat for lethal playstyles) and I can understand why those two titles didn't gel with most FPS/stealth players. I feel like Arkane finally nailed it this time, it's one of my favorites of this year, and definitely one of my favorite immersive sims of all time.

Finished the game earlier today (around 10:50 AM PST). The game was largely great, but the last five to seven hours maybe was just a mad dash to the end it felt like, where they pile an amount of enemies in each area that I had no motivation to fight. It's not that I couldn't take the time to kill everyone in an area (I imagine they'd just come back anyways), but it would be a waste of ammo and a waste of time; the game is not primarily a shooter and by then you have everything you need to finish the game so it almost felt like the developers were trying to hurry the player along. Not only that but once all the areas are fully explored, with all emails read, all side missions completed, all transcripts picked up, etc. there's not much reason to stick around. I thought the game was going to be a ten to fifteen-hour experience at least/most, but it took me 35 hours. Thirty or so hours of it was great; when it was about to end with the main missions, it got tiresome and I was ready to be done with it since I did everything I wanted to, and as I ran through to the end any character motivation and agenda I pretty much stopped caring about. I wasn't and am not a big fan of the choices aspect of the game, but I did get the 'good' ending regardless since I did all the side content (except finish two that have you looking for treasure maps and drop points) and did everything morally.

@ntm: Seems like we had the exact same experience, except I did actually have some fun blowing trough all my ammo towards the end. I do agree it ends on a weak note compared to the rest of the game(And those loading times get really irksome by then too when backtracking all over the station). I think those 30 hours might be on us though, most reviews mention a playthrough taking 12-15 hours.

@lestephan: I only died once in the game (as stated above, I played on easy as I do with most games the first time through), so it had nothing to do with dying or difficulty. It was just a lot of backtracking, backtracking I enjoyed, but still a lot of backtracking to search out everything. Many people that say twelve to fifteen I imagine are ones that are mainly focused on the story and only a handful of side missions because it's not really possible to do all that I (and perhaps you) did in twelve to fifteen hours, even with a guide in hand I presume. Plus, reviewers are meant to simply get the gist of the game, not necessarily do every single thing since they pretty much have a deadline. I won't dispute that it's fun to blast dudes, wasting all the ammo at the end, but to me, it was really pointless so I didn't want to do that, and I wasn't quite sure what was to come so I wanted to save up at least some ammo.

I won't spoil it here, but did you find the end to be really obvious (at least partially)? The game itself even spoils it for you to a large degree if you end the game abruptly on the Who Is December? mission, or even before that it seemed predictable with just the way the story is presented and what it's all about as you read through books and emails. I guess it was decent at taking into account some of the things you did as a player, in how you treated characters and situations, but by the end, I just stopped caring, unfortunately. I should also say that I was playing the game in one long stretch (from around two in the morning to the end, which is eight hours or so), and I was called into work just around the time it was ending, so I especially wanted to hurry up, but before that, I was already wanting to be done. Great game, just didn't love the last several hours of it.