Nothing we didn’t already know or suspect. I even think this particular game would have been better served with a better name that wasn’t Prey anyway.
It wasn’t “adapted into the IP”. The original Prey was a FPS about a native american dude who was abducted by aliens, and key mechanics were portals, variable gravity, and astral projection. It wasn’t particularly memorable.
Arkane’s game just took the name and told the rest to bugger off.
I already wrote about this in the thread, but the System Shock IP was sold for a song during Prey’s development. By branding this as “System Shock 3” Bethesda would have easily made back the cost of the rights and made a lot more on top of that. Massive bag fumbling because they wanted to mine their valueless IP catalog.
The rights instead went to Night Dive, who didn’t make a sequel because they couldn’t fund a game at Prey’s scale, and the rights eventually got sold to Tencent.
Well, it wasn’t any more a System Shock sequel than Prey, but SS is certainly a more well known IP.
I remember that game. The best part was the opening scene with Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear The Reaper”.
The gameplay is fairly similar – if somebody asked me for a modern System Shock 2, I’d point them right at Prey. They would have had to rework parts of the story, but I think the SS3 name would have communicated the experience better than a new name, and be much, much better than just Prey.
The whole story would need to be reworked, yes. The mechanics were evolved from SS and no relation to Prey, but everything else was its own thing.
I would have called it StemShock, to celebrate the mindfuck that starts the game.
Yeah, honestly them just shoving the word “Shock” into the title would probably have boosted sales.
Goo Shock
Grey Shock
Moon Shock
I was thinking BrainShock but the alliteration in StemShock is a winner. Moon Shock doesn’t really work for the base game.
Anyway, I wish they were developing a sequel. Not enthusiastic about Redfall.
This is why I clicked on the thread, hoping there was news of a new game. Still one of my favorite games.
My name for the game is Neuroshock! Just stumbled across my screenshots showing I played it 3 years ago. I would have likely bought the game earlier had it had a different name - I’d heard good things about Prey but mistakenly thought it was similar to the 2006 Prey, which I didn’t enjoy.
I loved this new Prey but it’s also one of my top examples of a great game where the actual gameplay is the weakest point. The atmosphere was fantastic, very System Shock, with an oppressive environment where nothing feels safe. The spacewalk segments had a different but equally great atmosphere. And of course the opening sequence is among the all-time bests.
The gameplay itself… as a shooter, the game is poor. There’s just a couple of substantially different enemy types and all enemies have simple behavior. That, to me, undermined the whole neuromods aspect because the various abilities are redundant. You max out hacking as in any similar game to open doors, and pick any of the many “do extra damage” skills. Feels like the System Shocks did a better job of character building, Bioshock made environments a part of the combat in a fun way, and Prey just falls flat on that point. That’s why I’m still to replay Prey - I’d enjoy experiencing the atmosphere again but every enemy encounter is so repetitive.
Also, very unusually for me, I’d figured out the ending in advance. I’m rarely able to predict twist endings but Prey’s twist - you’re actually playing as an experimental Typhon - became clear to me through in-game documents and dialogue.
I was burned out with the two-stage, Freeze/Shock with one weapon, then Smash/Shoot with another weapon, used by the many Bioshocks. I found it cumbersome in Prey, and never played it to the end. The atmosphere was great, the game play not so much.
It sometimes feels like a pattern with the Shock-like games.
Bioshock gameplay was okay but no more than that, as a FPS game. Bioshock Infinite had even weaker gameplay and is, in my opinion, the game where gameplay is the most lacking compared to every other aspect being outstanding. Bioshock 2 is the only in the series to have good gameplay.
Prey is very deliberately a Shock-like and suffers from the same gameplay problems. System Shock 2 is probably still the best Shock gameplay-wise!
I beat all the Shock games (except SS1, which was too dated for me to finish, and including Arkane’s Prey) and SS2 is still the best, one of the greatest games ever made.
Same for me. Ss2 is my favorite game of all time. I’m looking forward to finally playing all of the original with the remake.
Finished Mooncrash last night. What a ride! There I was doing the engineering story objective when I realized I could do the 5 person escape and proceeded to do just that one by one.
I only found about this game in the Autumn sale because it was £4 with Dishonoured 2, and I wanted to play D2 as I liked Dishonoured so much. I’d been ignoring this game because it was called Prey, and I knew that as some FPS game from the HL2 eta.
What an awful title and brand to use. Neuroshock is a good suggestion. I was thinking Psychoshock myself, but Neruoshock is much more apt!
Anyway, I’ve just played through it and I completely agree with what you say here. It’s clearly a good game, but the gameplay itself is probably the least interesting part of it. Due to that I didn’t find it as magical as most of the other Arkane [specifically Dishonoured] or Looking Glass games. I wish it had leant into more of the sneaking and problem solving stuff, and philosophical stuff, as the shooting was rather mundane.
I played it for nearly 60 hours, so feel a bit worn out. Should I bother with the DLC? Tom seems to be a big fan!
I enjoyed the DLC more than the base game and it is all one big problem to solve. Pick it up after a break :)
I’ll second that, go for the DLC after a break.
It’s different. It’s not a more-of-the-same DLC, it mixes things up as sort of an FPS roguelike, and it’s definitely fun. Mooncrash is also different from the base game in that the gameplay is good. The shooting mechanics are still meh but in Mooncrash, the gameplay is fun and the story is secondary, which is the opposite of the main game.