Arkane Austin's System Shock-Inspired Prey (2017) Reboot

Have you played System Shock 2 or Bioshock?
If so, did you like/love it?
If so, it’s a buy.
For me, it feels like it could be better than either of those classics, but I’m not far enough along to state that unequivocally. I’m maybe 2 or 3 hours in.

Anyway, as I loved SS2 in spite of its difficulty (Prey has been less difficult for me), it was an instabuy for me. I’m early on in Prey, but I’m totally getting the SS2 vibe (and some Bioshock), and love what I’m playing thus far. Really loving it. Atmospheric, emergent gameplay. Transports me to a different place. Makes me forget everything else while I’m playing. No regrets here. I recommend long play sessions if you can, which is the only reason I haven’t as yet progressed further. It’s a special enough game that I want to have large playing blocks of time to fully appreciate it.

I’ve enjoyed it immensely so far.

Its basically the successor to System Shock 2. Its a massive, sprawling world, where you are given a ton of different tools to do things the way you like. Instead of classes like in SS2, you have skilllines that basically make the same choices, but you can mix it up as you wish.
Its a very well made, very well written, extremely consistent game, that requires a little patience, since you will die if you treat it like a shooter, and just and run - just like in System Shock 2.

Oh, and by consistent I mean in terms of the gameworld - There is a ton of lore in various emails, logs and so on, and all of those who wrote those, can be found somewhere on the station.

Its also a game filled with secrets - I’ve talked with 3 different people i know who made it to the “Office”, and all three had different weapons, but none of them found the specific one I found. Of course, some of that is based on your first few skill point choices.

Anyways - its a solid recommendation from me, unless you are looking for a run-and-gun shooter, that is.

Oh, and I never really enjoyed Bioshock - but LOVED system shock 2. This is a lot more SS2 than Bioshock.

I did enjoy Bioshock, but yeah SS2 was much better.[quote=“Razgon, post:485, topic:78708”]
This is a lot more SS2 than Bioshock.
[/quote]

Yeah, I’ll buy that.[quote=“Razgon, post:484, topic:78708”]
…unless you are looking for a run-and-gun shooter, that is.
[/quote]

Also agreed. Another reason I love it.

New record, a 7 minute speed run. So no reason anyone shouldn’t be able to finish this game. :p

I started playing this over the weekend. I started off trying to be stealthy, but that doesn’t seem to be working out too well. There are just too many situations where I need to fight. I think I need to switch my focus to a more offensive build. That means points into gunsmith and maybe points into the combat damage with guns skills.

As far as recycling, I picked up the perk that lets me harvest extra organs, which supposedly let me craft more neuromods. However, the real limit is not this exotic material, but metal. Is there some strategy for getting lots of metal?

Are certain skills mandatory or are there ways around not having such skills? For example, there is a quest to repair a satellite to get the nightmare off my back. However, early one when I was down where it the satellite was, there was a machine that said to open a door (I presume this opens the way to the satellite), but requires repair II to do so. Is there a workaround or do I need to buy that skill?

No idea on the limitations but usually there is a way around.

For recycling: [details=Summary]yes metal is a problem. What can work is just piling furniture and other stuff in a corner and then use a recycler grenade on it… But the yield is not amazing.[/details]

I found a chamber I filled with stuff and did that with. The question is, are the resources gained > than the resources spent?

Metal never stopped being a bottleneck for me, every single scrap I could find was being turned straight into bullets. Finished the game with something like 100 exotic materials and 5 metal. That necropsy skill turns out not to be a great investment for a gun-based build. I suspect it’s there for players who rely on Typhon mods.

As for the satellite, it’s not a mandatory mission in any sense. (I didn’t find Nightmares to be anything but a minor nuisance). That said, some hints of increasing specificity behind spoilers:

  • You can get in with no skills at all

  • Do you have a way to interact with anything on the other side of the door?

  • There’s an item that can push buttons remotely

  • The door opening button is visible through a little slot. Shoot the button with a crossbow.

I’m 8 hours in now and it’s just not grabbing me at all. It’s especially disappointing as I’m a huge fan of the System Shock games. I don’t know if I’ve just chosen very poorly with my upgrade points, but I haven’t found any that seem to help much yet. I do have the ability to fabricate more, but resources seem relatively scarce and I’m finding that exploration has a pretty high cost in terms of ammo and health so farming for upgrades doesn’t seem practical either.

I’m really bummed out I’m not enjoying this more. It seems like something that would be right up my alley.

Part of what is frustrating me about the game is that it’s clear from the distribution of resources that it doesn’t want to be a shooter, but I don’t feel like I have any other viable options. I can’t really sneak past enemies or hide from them once they’ve been alerted and I don’t have any means of dispatching/neutralizing enemies aside from guns/grenades/melee.

When I encounter an enemy, it seems like the only thing I can do is either attack, or run back to a loading point.

Also: god I wish they’d tone down the enemy respawns.

Hmm… Except for a few scripted occasions, I’m pretty sure respawns only happen when you change areas. So the respawns really should be a non-issue; the first time through an area should just have the initial spawns and be the hard part. After that you’ll already know the layout and have a clear mission you’re trying to achieve in that area. Which should make it a lot easier to just achieve that specific objective while avoiding enemies.

Are you constantly leaving and re-entering the same areas, rather than entering an area and then thoroughly exploring it in one go?

I don’t know about “constantly” but several times I’ve felt like I needed to retreat to a previous area because I didn’t have the equipment/resources/skills to deal with a situation, or to use new skills to try and access places I hadn’t been able to get to before.

Respawning aside, it certainly felt like the game intended me to do this, with the open hub layout.

You’re absolutely supposed to revisit areas, but the revisits should be very different in nature. This is why the respawns never bothered me. I can see it’d really be frustrating if you can’t clear the area out the first time around, and have to retreat and waste resources fighting the “same” enemies without getting much in return.

So I don’t know what the root cause could be :( The game is unforgiving about combat early on, but it shouldn’t be so hard that you’re completely driven out from the areas accessible from the lobby.

Yeah, I don’t know what’s going on with this… I have no problem with System Shock 2 or Bioshock or most other games, but even on Easy I’m barely struggling to get by with this. I’m currently in the maintenance tunnels, but I have very little health, and no ammo except for the little Nerf crossbow.

Maybe I just need to find a trainer or something… the story itself is pretty interesting.

I’m not sure why you are having problems. Early on I took the upgrades that increase my health, gave me more healing from medpacks (huge increase in first level) and increase from recycling, then increased weapons damage. It’s also pretty easy to hide from many enemies. There are vents all over the place which are great to hide in, and they will eventually lose interest. Mimics, the most common enemy are easy to gloo and wrench. You can also gloo phantoms, then run and hide. You don’t have to kill everything and shouldn’t try until you get stronger. It’s also easier to kill them if you duck in a room, then hit/shoot them from the side as they come door. Early on you have to pick your battles, later on you can pretty much take on anything. Also use turrets to your advantage, a couple of them will kill mimics, and distract phantoms while you attack.

Yeah, I dunno. Maybe the problem is that I didn’t upgrade the health packs, which probably would dan’ helped some. But I haven’t had much luck even with the glue/wrench combo if there’s more than one enemy to deal with, or if I encounter a phantom.

I can’t recall the last time I’ve had such difficulty with a game. Maybe I’ll just delete it and write the purchase off as a loss.

Sorry if these are stupid questions, just trying to puzzle out what this could be about.

  • You do have a shotgun by now, right? A single standard phantom should just require a couple of shotgun hits, not be a desperate fight to the death.
  • Are you keeping your suit fixed up, or letting it fall all the way to 0?
  • Are you taking advantage of free health/suit refills from operators?

I’ve got a shotgun, but currently out of ammo.

I’ve been trying to keep my suit up, but I’m at about 10 at the moment.

Yes, I’ve been taking advantage of operators when available, but things don’t seem to last long once I’ve filled up.