Fresh gaming experience and a fun romp with another Alien invasion based game.
You play as Tommy, a Cherokee native American who has turned his back on all of his peoples beliefs. Tired of the reservation he lives on, wanting to runaway with Jen his girlfriend and start a new life but Jen’s tied to her bar and her people. You start off in a dank and some what soiled men’s facilities (not the best place to kick off a game but what the heck!). You make your way down the hall to the bar and you meet Tommy’s Grandfather warning you of change and in order to survive he must embrace his heritage. It’s also here you find some of the games little features, intractable casino machines like poker, black jack and slot machines. With the howling of wolves the bar is ripped apart by alien beams of light and it’s the Start of Tommy’s fight for earth, the exploration of the alien “Sphere” and to rescue his love Jen.
Let’s get into game play. It’s innovative but there’s just not enough of it to really sway you. Portals that bend space and time to take you to your next destination. Found in hallways or in the most unlikely of places behind a stack of crates and the openings of air vents. You’ll see an empty crate on the floor walk around the other side to find a whole new room inside it. There are also gravity stairs that allow you to walk up the wall, across the ceiling and any which way they run as long as they have power. There are gravity wells that when shot will flip you round to the direction it pulls gravity. You’ll find these throughout the game creating obstacles and puzzles, some easy and some you will need to think about. Most of them cant be completed without Tommy’s Spirit walk ability. This allows his spirit to leave his body and allow him to go places his physical body can not. When your character dies (that’s if the appalling AI can kill you) you a sent to a spiritual plain, where you need to shoot arrows at spirits to revitalise yourself before being sent back. It makes the game way to easy with no real fear of the “Game Over” screen it allows you to run around with the feeling of immortality.
Plenty of eye candy in this game, it really lets the 360 flex its muscles and gives you an idea of what games will be like when developers get the grips of the machine. The levels are gorgeous you’ll catch yourself staring at the walls and genuinely sight seeing rather then killing alien scum. But when you do fire upon the aliens you realise just how awesome they look. It’s a shame the same detail didn’t go into the human characters. The weapons are detailed but just don’t satisfy. It really feels like your shooting spit wads. Uninspiring sound and design for the weapons really leaves you wanting more. The sound effects and music for the rest of the game is really quite good. You really got to love Judas Priest cranking in the bar and the soundtrack by Jeremy Soule known for his work in Oblivion and Guild Wars.
Prey allows for up to 8 players to duke it out online or by system link, much like the death match game play of Doom and Quake 4. Whilst I haven’t been able to really enjoy the multiplayer of this game on Xbox Live due to lag it should satisfy the appetite for any FPS online gamer long enough till something better comes along. There’s really not a lot to this game online.
It’s a very solid title giving enough to satisfy your Xbox 360 gaming needs. With great level design and challenging puzzles. A very fresh feel and if graphics float your boat it’s probably one of the best looking games on 360 at the moment. The lack of decent AI and a difficulty level aimed at casual gamers may deter some and severely shorten the life of this game but the story and game play is still captivating and enjoying enough to warrant you handing over your hard earned cash to play this game. Just don’t expect a stellar multiplayer experience.