Prey

At first sight Prey might look similar to certain other sci-fi FPS games, i.e. BioShock and Half-life 2. However, Prey is considerably more complex than that, which this review will hopefully show. The only things Prey has in common with those games, is that they are all sci-fi FPS games. Prey is definitely its own unique thing.

To start things off though, let's start with the things I did not like:

Towards the end of the game you have to do far too much running backwards and forwards in both the main missions and the side missions. I don't mind doing that in the early or middle part of a game, since you are still exploring the game-world, but it's never that fun to do in the latter part of a game.

There are occasional glitches when you are outside spacewalking, where if you land on a wall you'll glitch right through it. It's rare, but it did happen a couple of times. One one occasion it prevented me from entering a ventilation tube of sorts, in order to get loot items.

Backtracking is a big part of the game, which I'll explain later, but towards the end I think they make this far too punishing for the player. I even gave up on certain side-missions because the backtracking was too harsh in the latter part of the game. On several occasions, upon exiting an elevator I was immediately faced by a really dangerous enemy right in front of me, who could easily kill me. I did not appreciate that they make enemies spawn so close to you, just as you enter a zone, since you have almost no time to react.

The game can also feel unbalanced at times, when it comes to finding ammo and materials. Even here, I had to abandon a few side-missions simply because I had no way of defeating the enemy who stood in my way, and could not get passed them otherwise. You can make your own ammo, but only on certain locations, which is an issue since the maps are quite large, and not all of them have "work benches" ... so you typically have to backtrack to another zone.

So if you decide to play this game, make sure you really stock up on ammo. The enemies themselves were not too difficult, not having ammo was the big struggle.

Let's move on to what makes this game great:

First of all, my playthrough took me almost 60 hours. It's been a very long time since I last played an FPS this lengthy. Granted, I did a great deal of backtracking in much of the game, but for good reason: new loot areas.

As a big sci-fi fan, the storyline was fascinating to me. It had a unique and interesting concept, something I can't recall reading about in a book or having seen in a movie. There's a tonne of lore do discover as well, in people's emails, notes, audio tapes, and so on. The sheer amount of it reminded me of Skyrim in some ways. The narrative was spread out quite well, there's a nice balance of side-mission and main mission stories. All of the side-missions had a character or purpose to them, they weren't just fetch-quests and similar. Every NPC, even the dead ones, have a name to them, they are not just 'dead person x'. As a result of all this I experienced the game-world as something cohesive and deep.

The level design is amazingly intricate and complex. It's like the sum of Dishonored, Thief, and Deus Ex. It reflects the different character builds you can focus on. There's all sorts of shortcuts and hidden rooms to find. As soon as I gained a new ability or upgraded an old one, I wanted to backtrack to see what else I could access, what treasures to find. The level variety is good as well, the biggest contrast being the spacewalking, which you can do whenever you want really, it's not just a short segment of the game. Prey then, becomes an explorative game as well, not just a shooter.

Special mention has to be made about the sheer amount of detail in the environments. Every item I saw in a room seems to have been placed there for a purpose, to contribute to the narrative: scribblings on a board, notes, a cookbook on the floor, and so on. It makes me wish the game had an exploration mode, where you could just walk around and look at things, in style of Everybody's Gone to the Rapture or Dear Esther.

As a player you get offered a very unique set of abilities to choose from. You have a Tech-focus and an Alien-focus, sort of speak. The techy one mainly includes engineering and science stuff: hacking, repairing, super strength, various vision abilities, upgrading weapons, and so on. The Alien focus is the really unique and trippy one; transform into things (cups, chairs, books etc.), gravity manipulation, create an Alien to fight for you, mind-hacking, and so on. You can mix and match any way you like, you don't have to stick to either Human or Alien abilities. However the game does emphasize that you should focus your points and not spread them out too thinly.

A couple of the weapon types were very unique, things you won't see elsewhere in an FPS: a Gloo-gun, which shoots blobs of glue, that serves not only as a weapon but also as an aid for platforming; a Ghost-busters like energy weapon, for taking down tougher enemies; a matter-bomb, that turns enemies and objects into materials for crafting.

Lastly, I enjoyed the music, the vocie acting was good, and graphically the game looks very good on a regular PS4. I also really liked the art-style, with its Art Deco Steampunk theme.

So if you enjoy a good sci-fi story, can appreciate some unique gameplay elements, and want a deep immersive game-world to dive into, you should consider playing this. I have far from played every single FPS that's out there, but I would easily place Prey alongside my favourite FPS games.