Make no mistake Prey is a solid idea. Portals, Wall walking, and spirit walking are all good ideas.

It's a good engine; prey looks great on the doom 3 engine and runs flawlessly on the pc. I'll admit I have not touched the xbox 360 version so this review focuses on the pc version of this title.

First off let's make no mistakes Prey starts off on all the right notes as anyone who has played the demo will tell you. The story is introduced well and you will be on the alien spaceship before you know what hit you. However the bad note of this is that they sacrifice a lot of the character development (in fact you could say all of it) to pull the player into the shooting so fast.

Before long as well the player gains the ability to spirit walk where you can travel outside of your body. This effect is used often and unfortunately more often then not it's only to get past a forcefield to press a button. Needless to say this leave the idea feeling half done and not as special as it was intended to be. there are a few places where you have to move onto a platform and then hit a button but these cases are rare and far in-between bouts of the simple turn off the forcefield.

Also of note in the spirit walking is a disappointing aspect of never being able to die. Basically whenever you die by gunfire or a fall or whatever the case may be you are transported to a tiny rocky island where you shoot flying blue and red monsters for health with a bow and arrow. The idea being that you need to shoot enough red monsters to gain hp and blue monsters to gain spirit energy which lets you shoot your spirit bow when your in the real world. Even if you shoot no monsters at all you still come back with half health meaning that it's impossible to die in prey. This ultimately means that there is no real threat to any of the aliens or any satisfaction to killing an enemy.

The next idea of note in this game is of course the ability to alter gravity by shooting certain switches and walking on designated wall paths. This is in all honesty probably the games best idea and adds an element of disorientation to combat. Sadly though the AI seems lackluster in taking advantage of that and tends to only stay in one spot and blindly shoot at you. Again the idea is good but the overall ability to which it's used seems sub par and off base leaving you wanting more but feeling disappointed and quickly tiresome of another half baked gravity puzzle.

The games portals have their moments however and in the first two hours of the game this truly shines as enemies use the portals often as traps in the direction of the game to put you in some nice moments. However the games seems to quickly drop the use of portals as anything more of putting an enemy directly in front of you and as doorways to ammunition rooms. there was a lot of potential here but the lack of enemy AI to use the portals to their advantage and the lack of later on using the portals as anything but a simple cool looking doorway shine through as disappointing.

The guns in this game do come off as organic and have a nice look to them
but there really isn't anything special here in terms of actual performance. The shotgun now shoots acid and mini-guns and rocket launchers organic or not are nothing new either.

Sound wise and voice acting in this game sad to say are probably the worst i've seen in a first person shooter in a long time. the aliens don't really sound like they are the oppressors and evil beings they are supposed to be and the characters sound out of place and almost totally robotic at times.

Graphics however on this title are top notch. Everything looks like it should and lights well. There are some very nice looking moments and enemies. The portals themselves look good as do the explosions and animations. Everything runs smooth on a medium or better quality pc and can quickly be considered this games strong point.

Ultimately Prey is a nice looking be it short game with a lot of good ideas packed in. Unfortunately none of those ideas are used well and in some cases interfere with what could have been an excellent experience.

Prey is likely to be remembered more for it's ideas then as a game. For 50 dollars at this time you definitely are not getting enough good gaming for your dollar.

That said I would feel bad telling you to stay away without recommending something to go check out. If your looking for a good shooter at this time I can definitely recommend checking out the upcoming Team fortress 2 and Portal that will ship with Half-Life 2: episode 2.