Prey
Posted July 20, 2006
I'm continually impressed with the filmic direction much of the video game industry is headed. Prey certainly falls into that category with its cinematic tale of alien abductions, homicidal creatures armed with gargantuan weaponry, and one man's quest to find his kidnapped lover in the fracas of it all. 3D Realms & Human Head Studios have given the gaming community an extremely polished first person shooter laden with an exceptional storyline and vivid presentation. Additionally, the multiplayer aspects are a brief breath of fresh air in the bulk of FPS games swelling in the 360 library.
The story centers around Tommy Tawodi, a modern-day Cherokee Indian feeling trapped inside his own society and environment. He longs for escape into the rest of the world with his girlfriend Jen, leaving behind the culture that his grandfather so adamantly promotes. Unfortunately for Tommy, Jen refuses to break ties from her community and denounces Tommy for his thoughts. As Tommy mulls over his next move in Jen's bar, the unthinkable happens. Tommy and Jen are sucked further away from the reservation than he could ever imagine.
Trapped in the belly of a massive alien contraption, Tommy and Jen struggle for escape from their alien captors. Tommy manages to free himself, but loses his grandfather in the process. Jen is whisked away to a different part of the facility and Tommy begins the impossible task of finding his beloved girlfriend to escape the madness together. Fortunately, Tommy will have spiritual help along the way from his recently deceased grandfather and the power of the ancients. If anyone has played the demo of Prey, the setup I just described is but a minutia of the story that awaits Tommy Tawodi.
Gameplay:
The single player game in Prey comes in two difficulty modes, Normal and Cherokee. Cherokee mode amps up the damage model, but does not alter the difficulty of the A.I. Normal seems a bit too simple for my tastes, but is enjoyable nonetheless. Most of the levels have a variety of puzzles which have to be solved before continuing any further. The majority is fairly straightforward, but there are several gravity-switching brain busters that will force creative thinking to escape from the situation. In my favorite puzzler, the game traps you inside a spinning cube and requires strategic planning to break out of the box successfully.
The weaponry holds many similarities to Quake or Doom, but there are a few unique weapons tossed into the mix. The de facto grenade is actually a live creepy crawler that emanates a bright green glow. It can be set to explode on impact or attach itself to a surface. Beyond that, there is also your trusty pipe wrench, the spirit bow, a recharging machine gun with sniper scope, a grenade launcher / ballistic shard gun, a rocket launcher, a shotgun that fires acid blasts, and my favorite, a charging weapon that leeches ammo from power ports. The leech gun has a variety of ammo derived from the elements. At the outset of the game, many ports will provide fire or ice ammo. In the later stages, lightning and pure energy ports will litter the game landscape.
The enemies in Prey are such horrific aberrations of twisted science; I'd wager they would make the evil baddies in Doom 3 squeamish. The majority of the time Tommy will be fighting off the lower enemies in the food chain such as hunters, hounds, harvesters, and mutates. Each attacks on foot and appears absolutely grotesque when slashing away at you. The bosses are no prettier with disgusting human parts grafted on in the worst places. Unfortunately, the developers spent more time working on the character design than the A.I. for the alien attackers. The majority of the A.I. doesn't use any flanking attempts nor do they traverse the landscape smartly. It's usually just a constant, direct attack with the exception of certain boss attacks.
If the enemies happen to take you out from time to time, you will be transported to Tommy's spirit world to pick off flying wraiths that will boost Tommy's life force. While this is an original idea, I fail to see how this isn't a blatant god mode. Tommy can essentially return from any combat situation, back to full health, without any negative effects. A player can avoid all tactics and adopt a run and gun approach which cheapens the experience. I will say load times are vastly reduced to this feature, as you return almost instantaneously. That's definitely a positive.
The multiplayer section of Prey is hopelessly barebones, but completely functional. The developers only included two gameplay modes that handle up to eight players, deathmatch and team deathmatch. The latter seems to be the more entertaining of the two if the lines of communication are open between teammates. I would have loved to see a capture the flag or objective based mode with all the gravity changes, but the developers seemingly left us wanting more. On the plus side, the lag is really nonexistent. Every session I participated in over Xbox Live was silky smooth. Additionally, Prey supports system link games, but excludes split screen play.
The achievements are broken into 44 tasks which award 1000 gamerscore points. The points are split 75% / 25% between single player and multiplayer. The majority of the points will be awarded as you roll through the single player campaign on normal difficulty in about 6 to 8 hours. The developer really didn't put much effort into creating a batch of tough achievements, not do they require a tremendous amount of time. Gamerscore purists will be revolted by the ease in the achievements, but the whores will rejoice with the quick 1K bump in their overall score. Sadly, the developer limited the replay value of the title due to these overly simple achievements.
Graphics:
The Doom 3 engine performs admirably, albeit a few minor slowdown issues. While the majority of the level design takes the claustrophobic corridor design from Doom 3, there are moments of awe-inspiring visual bliss when Tommy gets a chance to see how large the alien facility truly is. Since much of the levels are dimly lit, the lighting effects from incoming gunfire and crawler explosions are particularly colorful and exceptionally vivid. The fire and smoke effects aren't the best I've seen on the 360, but they are satisfactory.
The most impressive portion of the graphics engine is the modification of the physics system and the introduction of collapsing portals. The game uses a method of gravity flipping that will make your head spin and perhaps induce motion sickness. The Doom 3 engine seems more lifelike with the falling objects scattering around a room as a new field of gravity takes over. The portals are a welcome graphical addition that allows travel to separate locations of the ship. These portals have a lovely shimmering effect and pop up at the most opportune times. Overall, these graphical extras spruce up the aging engine for the high-powered 360 hardware.
Audio:
While I can't hum much of the musical score, it did an excellent job increasing the tempo of the game as well as warning of an upcoming battle when the music turned ominous. Additionally, quaint extras, such as the jukebox in Jen's bar full of classic rock, are a wonderful addition to the musical repertoire. The sound effects are accurate to the weaponry, but not overly bass heavy. My favorite is the high pitched auditory countdown of an exploding crawler "grenade".
Overall, the main character voiceovers are of high quality. Both Tommy and Jen are voiced by actors with Indian heritage which increases the authenticity dramatically. Tommy's quips throughout the arduous journey are quite humorous at the most inappropriate times. Also, the developers added an excellent sidebar to your gaming experience with random sections of the ship picking up the radio transmissions of Art Bell, the "King of Late-Night Radio". Art entertains various calls from people in Texas freaking out about the alien abductions. My favorite call was a man hiding in his bedroom from his possessed 8 year old daughter who subsequently ended the call for him forcefully. This is an excellent way to incorporate a convincing environment and suck the player further into the world of Prey. Plus, it's a nice little break in the action.
Conclusion:
Prey is a wonderful single player experience, but too short for my tastes. Additionally, the developers intentionally left a teaser at the finality of the game which didn't provide any closure. The multiplayer will slightly extend the life of Prey's existence in many 360 game collections. I only wish the achievements would have added a more extensive replay value.
Prey should be played by every Xbox 360 owner who enjoys a FPS game with a superb storyline. I should warn those who typically experience motion sickness in a FPS need to demo Prey first due to its dizzy gravity system. Even I got a little turned around occasionally. Due to the short single player game, Prey should be picked up around the $30 mark if interested in the multiplayer. Otherwise, rent Prey as soon as possible to delve into the intense single player action of Tommy's turmoil.
The story centers around Tommy Tawodi, a modern-day Cherokee Indian feeling trapped inside his own society and environment. He longs for escape into the rest of the world with his girlfriend Jen, leaving behind the culture that his grandfather so adamantly promotes. Unfortunately for Tommy, Jen refuses to break ties from her community and denounces Tommy for his thoughts. As Tommy mulls over his next move in Jen's bar, the unthinkable happens. Tommy and Jen are sucked further away from the reservation than he could ever imagine.
Trapped in the belly of a massive alien contraption, Tommy and Jen struggle for escape from their alien captors. Tommy manages to free himself, but loses his grandfather in the process. Jen is whisked away to a different part of the facility and Tommy begins the impossible task of finding his beloved girlfriend to escape the madness together. Fortunately, Tommy will have spiritual help along the way from his recently deceased grandfather and the power of the ancients. If anyone has played the demo of Prey, the setup I just described is but a minutia of the story that awaits Tommy Tawodi.
Gameplay:
The single player game in Prey comes in two difficulty modes, Normal and Cherokee. Cherokee mode amps up the damage model, but does not alter the difficulty of the A.I. Normal seems a bit too simple for my tastes, but is enjoyable nonetheless. Most of the levels have a variety of puzzles which have to be solved before continuing any further. The majority is fairly straightforward, but there are several gravity-switching brain busters that will force creative thinking to escape from the situation. In my favorite puzzler, the game traps you inside a spinning cube and requires strategic planning to break out of the box successfully.
The weaponry holds many similarities to Quake or Doom, but there are a few unique weapons tossed into the mix. The de facto grenade is actually a live creepy crawler that emanates a bright green glow. It can be set to explode on impact or attach itself to a surface. Beyond that, there is also your trusty pipe wrench, the spirit bow, a recharging machine gun with sniper scope, a grenade launcher / ballistic shard gun, a rocket launcher, a shotgun that fires acid blasts, and my favorite, a charging weapon that leeches ammo from power ports. The leech gun has a variety of ammo derived from the elements. At the outset of the game, many ports will provide fire or ice ammo. In the later stages, lightning and pure energy ports will litter the game landscape.
The enemies in Prey are such horrific aberrations of twisted science; I'd wager they would make the evil baddies in Doom 3 squeamish. The majority of the time Tommy will be fighting off the lower enemies in the food chain such as hunters, hounds, harvesters, and mutates. Each attacks on foot and appears absolutely grotesque when slashing away at you. The bosses are no prettier with disgusting human parts grafted on in the worst places. Unfortunately, the developers spent more time working on the character design than the A.I. for the alien attackers. The majority of the A.I. doesn't use any flanking attempts nor do they traverse the landscape smartly. It's usually just a constant, direct attack with the exception of certain boss attacks.
If the enemies happen to take you out from time to time, you will be transported to Tommy's spirit world to pick off flying wraiths that will boost Tommy's life force. While this is an original idea, I fail to see how this isn't a blatant god mode. Tommy can essentially return from any combat situation, back to full health, without any negative effects. A player can avoid all tactics and adopt a run and gun approach which cheapens the experience. I will say load times are vastly reduced to this feature, as you return almost instantaneously. That's definitely a positive.
The multiplayer section of Prey is hopelessly barebones, but completely functional. The developers only included two gameplay modes that handle up to eight players, deathmatch and team deathmatch. The latter seems to be the more entertaining of the two if the lines of communication are open between teammates. I would have loved to see a capture the flag or objective based mode with all the gravity changes, but the developers seemingly left us wanting more. On the plus side, the lag is really nonexistent. Every session I participated in over Xbox Live was silky smooth. Additionally, Prey supports system link games, but excludes split screen play.
The achievements are broken into 44 tasks which award 1000 gamerscore points. The points are split 75% / 25% between single player and multiplayer. The majority of the points will be awarded as you roll through the single player campaign on normal difficulty in about 6 to 8 hours. The developer really didn't put much effort into creating a batch of tough achievements, not do they require a tremendous amount of time. Gamerscore purists will be revolted by the ease in the achievements, but the whores will rejoice with the quick 1K bump in their overall score. Sadly, the developer limited the replay value of the title due to these overly simple achievements.
Graphics:
The Doom 3 engine performs admirably, albeit a few minor slowdown issues. While the majority of the level design takes the claustrophobic corridor design from Doom 3, there are moments of awe-inspiring visual bliss when Tommy gets a chance to see how large the alien facility truly is. Since much of the levels are dimly lit, the lighting effects from incoming gunfire and crawler explosions are particularly colorful and exceptionally vivid. The fire and smoke effects aren't the best I've seen on the 360, but they are satisfactory.
The most impressive portion of the graphics engine is the modification of the physics system and the introduction of collapsing portals. The game uses a method of gravity flipping that will make your head spin and perhaps induce motion sickness. The Doom 3 engine seems more lifelike with the falling objects scattering around a room as a new field of gravity takes over. The portals are a welcome graphical addition that allows travel to separate locations of the ship. These portals have a lovely shimmering effect and pop up at the most opportune times. Overall, these graphical extras spruce up the aging engine for the high-powered 360 hardware.
Audio:
While I can't hum much of the musical score, it did an excellent job increasing the tempo of the game as well as warning of an upcoming battle when the music turned ominous. Additionally, quaint extras, such as the jukebox in Jen's bar full of classic rock, are a wonderful addition to the musical repertoire. The sound effects are accurate to the weaponry, but not overly bass heavy. My favorite is the high pitched auditory countdown of an exploding crawler "grenade".
Overall, the main character voiceovers are of high quality. Both Tommy and Jen are voiced by actors with Indian heritage which increases the authenticity dramatically. Tommy's quips throughout the arduous journey are quite humorous at the most inappropriate times. Also, the developers added an excellent sidebar to your gaming experience with random sections of the ship picking up the radio transmissions of Art Bell, the "King of Late-Night Radio". Art entertains various calls from people in Texas freaking out about the alien abductions. My favorite call was a man hiding in his bedroom from his possessed 8 year old daughter who subsequently ended the call for him forcefully. This is an excellent way to incorporate a convincing environment and suck the player further into the world of Prey. Plus, it's a nice little break in the action.
Conclusion:
Prey is a wonderful single player experience, but too short for my tastes. Additionally, the developers intentionally left a teaser at the finality of the game which didn't provide any closure. The multiplayer will slightly extend the life of Prey's existence in many 360 game collections. I only wish the achievements would have added a more extensive replay value.
Prey should be played by every Xbox 360 owner who enjoys a FPS game with a superb storyline. I should warn those who typically experience motion sickness in a FPS need to demo Prey first due to its dizzy gravity system. Even I got a little turned around occasionally. Due to the short single player game, Prey should be picked up around the $30 mark if interested in the multiplayer. Otherwise, rent Prey as soon as possible to delve into the intense single player action of Tommy's turmoil.