Aside from those annoying frickin’ mimics it’s fantastic.
I mean, the primary enemy in the game hides as a coffee cup or a lamp. You’re constantly bashing the Skyrim-clutter with your wrench. It’s just waaaaay overused. This was a bad call.
Oh, and when they aren’t shaped like an innocent-looking trashcan they’re tiny little black spiders that jump all over the place. So annoying!
So far the mimic thing has been used well only once-- at one point early in the game you enter a room and see a dead dude with a shiny new gun next to his hand. Yeah, that one’s a mimic.
This detail from Paul Schuytema on the 1997-1998 iteration of Prey is my favorite.
Timing and industry changes turned to trouble for Prey. It was mostly developed on the 3DFX card and the Glide API (“It was the hot shit API of the day,” Schuytema says) but internal troubles at 3DFX hit just as the Prey team was ready to go all-in with Glide. Meanwhile, Microsoft was getting its Direct X API off the ground. The team moved away from Glide, and ended up going with Direct X instead.
“It was the right call, but boy did it cost us,” Schuytema says. “That was when William Scarboro (Head Engineer) had to essentially rebuild the engine, so it was non or semi-functional for a long time. There was just too much work to do and at that time, it was essentially only William working on the engine code”. Schuytema very much credits the death of the first version of Prey to the stalled progress of the Direct X switch. And in 1998, George and Scott “pulled the plug,” according to Schuytema. “It was a painful decision, but they had to make it”. Schuytema left in 1998 too, and Prey sat unfinished and unreleased. “When I left, the game looked sort of like a Lamborghini that was getting its engine rebuilt - it was gorgeous and amazing, but it had parts all over the place!,” Schuytema says.
This is amazing, too:
One of Prey’s concepts even came from past projects that Human Head had worked on. The idea of wall-walk boots originally came up during initial work the studio did for Daikatana 2. That game never happened, and after that, Human Head started talking to Epic about handling Unreal 2. One of its ideas for that project: yup, those wall-walk boots. Human Head didn’t end up doing Unreal 2 either, which was Prey’s gain. “Fast forward to Prey, we were like ‘Alright, we would love to be able to do wall-walk boots,’” Rhinehart says. “So I’m glad that we finally managed to get that particular tech in the game.”
Apparently they’re fixing bugs related to changing FoV, and a menu option is yet to come:
Steam :: Prey :: Prey - Updating FOV via Config File
FOV can be adjusted via a config file and will be accessible via the Options menu in a coming update. During the final phases of testing, we found some bugs we would like to address before officially supporting it
So I picked this up when it seemed 'all clear' that it wasn't a technical disaster, and it does run very well - possibly because it's indoors and all looks somewhat dated. :)
I am noticing some issues with the audio though, like surround doesn’t quite work properly. Some stuff seems stereo, some sounds that should be in front seem to come from behind, and the standard annoying helper thing’s voice is really soft.
I broke down and got it, and so far it’s pretty damn cool. But on normal, it’s hard as hell! The freakin’ Goo Gun only temporarily immobilizes the mimics, and the wrench, well, I end up dead if I’m fighting multiple mimics or even one phantom.
Feels like Bioshock more than Bioshock. Like it. Is also surprising old-school but still works in 2017.
Sometimes it feels like the devs where paying attention to all the good games in the genre released in the last 15 years. Theres a bit of … homage?, is game that use a lot of good ideas.
Apparently I’m still shell-shocked by apocalyptic sci-fi games with audio logs and conversations with detached characters. Do you have to align a communications dish in this one, or bring a reactor online?
Just played roughly an hour so far, very entertaining. Not too big of a fan of the art style for this type of game. The enemies are super creepy. And I love how, if you pay attention, you can actually detect the morphs before they attack you and sneak-attack them. Still, so many jump scares from the things. And yes, I found it challenging in Normal so far as well. But not unfairly so I currently still prefer the Wrench. The little ones are so damn fast it is easiest to hit em with a powered up wrench strike when they attack you. Only have the preorder Shotgun and the goo gun atm, The former has a major damage drop off after just a few feet it feels like. The skill system seems to sooner or later force you on a certain path as skills get expensive. So far so good. Oh and it runs at 144 FPS with all things on max on my 1080TI at 2K resolution. Not too many bells and whistles here.
I have put only one point but creatures don’t seems to notice me much. Its a better setup than before, these small creatures seems to have omniscient 360 degrees vision.
I have put most my poinst into repairing and crafting.
If find the idea of a grenade that breaks everything into mats hilarious, too bad you can’t spam them. I would in a different type of game.
