Prey
Nearly everything good about Prey is pulled from a game released in the decade before it. Well, four other games to be exact. As Morgan Yu, you are thrust into the aftermath of a failed research project with only a wrench for protection, just like Jack in BioShock. The desolate, ruined space station setting brings back memories of Dead Space, and the experimental gameplay takes cues from Dishonored, which was also developed by Franco-US studio Arkane. Then theres the fact that it re-imagines the original Prey, a well-received sci-fi shooter from 2006, which mixed extraterrestrial and Native American themes to compelling effect.
The new Prey takes the highlights of these games, but merely allows them to coexist in a single habitat, never doing anything new with the foundational building blocks it has borrowed. The game takes place in the year 2032, in an alternate reality where President John F Kennedy was never assassinated but instead worked with the Soviet Union to launch the Talos 1 space station. Waking up in the space station as either the male or female version of Morgan Yu, the player embarks on a journey to rediscover the past of a protagonist we are given no information about at first. This is a decidedly mundane storyline, in what should have been a race against time to stop the alien threat aboard Talos 1 from making its way back to Earth.
Instead of a full-throttle gauntlet against the Typhon aliens, Preys main narrative diverts the player at every turn, derailing the brilliant opening segment with a slow, drawn-out middle act. Fetch quests send Morgan back and forth across Talos 1, and characters are thrust into the plot as deus ex machinas, in an attempt to liven up the pacing. On top of this, it feels as though Preys main antagonist-of-sorts only rears their head when called upon, merely reacting to Morgan progressing further through Talos 1, rather than attempting to stop them at every turn.
But while the main story of Prey drags, the characters Morgan can meet in the side missions are an interesting, under-utilised bunch. These quests have you taking out a serial killer, avenging the dead lover of another character, and rapidly scouring Talos 1 for medical items before time runs out for an injured character. This is where Prey shines, giving the player an exciting, varied group of tasks that allows Morgan to meet a host of interesting characters. Perhaps if these sharper, better directed and more interesting strands had been pulled into the main narrative, instead of the meandering fetch-and-retrieve objectives we are required to complete, the campaign would have thrilled for longer.
Talos 1 itself is an absolute behemoth of a space station, and while its easy to get lost within its multitude of corridors and foyers, these side characters help pump life into the thin atmosphere of the narrative. Audio logs of deceased crew members paint a clear picture of what things were like before the Typhon alien outbreak, and the fact that you can later find crew members stalking Talos 1 in the form of a Typhon alien brings a spine-chilling horror aspect to Prey.
The Typhon aliens make for an interesting enemy, bringing an atmosphere of fear to Talos 1. The most interesting are the Mimics, which can transform into any object in the environment. Its a fascinating design concept, often rendering Morgan Yu a paranoid mess, as he frantically attempts to recall whether that mug had been on there on the desk just a second ago, or whether its about to turn into an alien and attempt to kill them.
Although the mimics are unique as video game enemies, they are largely sacrificed later in the game for the Phantoms hulking masses of strange, dark material and other less interesting monstrosities. While different varieties of Phantom can shoot bolts of energy, fire, or duplicate themselves entirely, all Phantoms can teleport with great speed, and this combined with their generous health pool and the scarcity of ammunition for the player often makes combat more frustrating than tense.
But the player has a variety of ways to fight back, utilising an impressive arsenal of weapons to keep the Typhon threat at bay. Every weapon Morgan comes across, from the shotgun or the pistol, to the Q-beam or the gloo cannon, all feel decidedly different to wield, bringing a nice mix to the combat of Prey. The shotgun packs a weighty punch to any Typhon alien, while the gloo cannon can be used to both freeze enemies in place, as well as forming makeshift platforms so Morgan can climb over walls and reach other heights in Talos 1. On top of this, Morgan can even harness Typhon abilities, allowing the player to teleport like a Phantom, or disguise themselves as an object like a Mimic.
These abilities come with a cost, however, as should the player inject too many of the Neuromod tools found around Talos 1 into any of the Typhon abilities, the automated turrets around Talos 1 will define Morgan as an alien threat, gunning down the player on sight. Although these Typhon abilities rapidly expand the way any individual player can take on an objective in Talos 1, the trade off of having double the enemies to face feels like Prey severely punishing the player for harnessing the abilities that are undoubtedly the most fun to use.
Prey might have the wrench in common with BioShock, but it doesnt have a Big Daddy of its own. Although Prey possesses an exciting arsenal of weaponry and abilities, and an attention-grabbing enemy in the Mimics, nothing ever becomes awe-inspiring or genuinely memorable in its borrowed offerings. What could have been a breakneck race around Talos 1 is hampered by constant plot detours, and an overly harsh kickback for investing in the best abilities in the game. The Arkane studios have an interesting approach to player empowerment: Dishonored provided an array of violent powers, but then asked us not to use them, while Prey dares the player to break the rules, but then punishes them for doing so.
In the latter game, as enjoyable as it is, this counter-intuitive approach has proved less successful.
Source: www.theguardian.com
