Prey for the Xbox 360 is the best idea for a first person shooter to date. Too bad all the wrong people developed it!
GAMEPLAY
There are two basic options for gameplay, online and offline.
OFFLINE, is a fairly short single player campaign which gets you into the action really quickly. Unlike some other first person shooters out there, there appears to be a story during the course of the entire game. it would have been nice if the story was more in depth and sadly the attempt in the game to make the main character intresting and allow you to feel what he is going through is more of a miss then a hit. Two major problems with this is the fact that although he is in a alien world and is aided by others he never really gets the hint that there is more involved and than his girlfriend. Also as he learns more and sees things in the game he makes comments, but these comments don't have the sense of dread that should be present in a character in his situation.
There are 22 Single Player levels and they are short and not memerable at all. The key features that are noted to the game such as portal usage and gravity tricks are cool but not used nearly to the depth that they could have been. Puzzles in the game are almost always spirit mode to hit a switch. The biggest problem with the level design is the linear gameplay. You can't go the wrong way or off track no matter what. The portals in the game are nicely done clearly visable in the game, but there is really not much to them at all in the game. I felt like I was going through doors instead of portals because there was no sense of warping in the game. Although gravity tricks are used throughout the game, there is no real usage of it in creative ways. The most creative use I saw was switches on the walls that you would shoot to change the gravity of the room, this would cause you to maybe walk on what was once a wall.
Overall the most disappointing aspect to the single player is the lack of dying. It doesn't matter if you die in the game, you just do a minigame to get health and spirit energy and your back where your body died to begin with. Because of this there is no challenge at all to the one player game and that is very disappointing.
ONLINE
Online is really disappointing and not memorable what so ever, there are only two modes team deathmatch and deathmatch. For those that don't know what those are deathmatch puts you against up to 7 other players and you battle it out to see who can get the most kills. Team death match put you in a team of up to 4 players on each side and as a team you try to get the most kills.
A couple of big annoyances with the online are the fact there are only 8 maps and there aren't many modes at all. Most people that appear to play the online modes do it to rank up and as such ruin the fun for the other players. Aside from that to play in a ranked game you have to re create rooms after every match, the interface is done to make you feel like they want you to disconnect or something. Really badly done.
GRAPHICS
The game looks beautiful and is well detailed. I thought there could have been more choices in scenery in the game but it does make sense considering the storyline for the game. In spirit mode the graphics blur too much for my liking and I found puzzle solving in spirit mode was harder at times especially when you had to hit code numbers in to gain access to something. I am playing on a HDTV as well, so I imagine SDTV's will show this even more.
I barely ever noticed a framerate drop at all. The game looks tailored to the system and is pretty smooth. It is easy to identify things and the organic looking textures stand out and gross you out as they should. Portals look good and show no slowdown or loading time in levels.
SOUND
The sound in the game was good but not great, the music isn't memorable and the sounds of the weapons although are good they don't get the feeling off of destruction that you would want get out of this type of game. There is no intense moments that music compliments.
Voice acting in the game is bad. There is no sense of urgency or panic in their voices as there should be. The game tries too hard and delivers nothing in the end in this category. Sometimes I think if it was reading text instead of hearing their voices I would have liked the game more. Since the game is over relatively quick, there isn't enough time to get really annoyed by it though, so you will survive.
VALUE
You can pretty much see everything there is to see in a weekend or two. There are about 1000 achievement points to unlock for point lovers. The game is fun on first play through, but there really is no reason to go back to it. The multiplayer doesn't compliment the game's unique take on the FPS genre and could have used more modes of gameplay. This is not a $60 game.
TILT
It is really hard to say rather this game is worth picking up or passing by. The single player isn't strong enough to warrant the purchase, and the multiplayer isn't either. Sometimes I wonder if developers actually play the games before they ship them, because a casual gamer would catch most of these flaws right away.
There is a chance that Xbox Live Market Place could save this title if more maps and modes are made available for the online side. But that yet remains to be seen.
Because of the weak storyline, short playthrough, uneventful multiplayer and under use of what could have easily set the bar for a game in the genre, I give Prey a very disappointing 7.3 out of 10.