Prey: $5 on Steam

Not a bad game for $10, but yes the combat does stink and you are invincible from the start which kind of sucks the tension out of the game. Still not bad. I would recommend playing it on Xbox 360. An easy 650-700 achievement points to be had there.

I never tried multi-player in Prey. I’ve been playing a ton of multi-player shooters lately though and would be willing to give this a try if people recommend it. And yeah, I’d only play a game like this on the PC.

Why are we even having a PC vs. console version discussion? The idea is that Steam is offering it for just $5. Is the 360 version similarly priced?

Thanks for the heads up. I bought it. It’s definitely worth more than $5, and besides which, PC games use the keyboard and a mouse!

Console FPS Games! LOLOLOLOLOL!

not showing up for me, fuck 'em

I don’t know what version of Prey you were playing, but on the PC these weren’t instakill and the aliens did, in fact, use them. I recall several instances of upside down wallwalkers as well as enemies coming in via portals.

Bruce

Monsters who spawn on wall pads don’t seem to be able to walk off them, same if they spawn off them and don’t seem to move on them. Basically they are “rooted”.

as well as enemies coming in via portals.

Via scripting. It’s the same as Doom’s cool Imps walking on walls.

But only when manually scripted, not because monsters are coded with that competency.

also: there’s no fall damage and if you gravity flip with a monster in a room, or deactivate their pads, they die automatically.

Sure, but many of the actions of NPCs in FEAR were scripted too. So yeah, I see your point, but I think you overstated your case just a tad.

Bruce

In FEAR a lot was scripted dynamically. In the sense NPCs had some competencies to use as a reaction to what the player did. They also knew how to throw grenades without always blow themselves up.

Prey (but also Doom) just had scripts to introduce monsters, but not really giving them interesting combat skills. They are just dumb targets. A spawn portal isn’t nothing different than a monster closet.

It’s $10 used at Gamestop. But 360 games usually dry up quicker on multiplay.

I’m not really frustrated. Its not like there’s a lack of games to buy. I’m way passed the times when I had to play a game. If 2k or any other publisher doesn’t want to sell me his games its their right.

Well that was a nice five bucks spent, though the game was really only good during the first and final parts - everything else was just bland; there were some really good sequences in the game, however. These Human Head and 3DRealms guys, they got potential; would like to see them tackle something bigger and more original.

Original. Yes, I’d like that. So much of it felt not only ‘lifted’ but also as a game designed from the mid-to-late 90’s. Though that can’t be the case, seeing as the game was released only in mid-2006; probably chalk that part up to the inexperience of the development teams.

I see that Whitta wrote the screenplay. To Whitta: Oh God I am so sorry you had to do this. Adapting that story to fit this game, it must’ve been pain after pain. I hope you got, and continue to get, paid well for that…thing.

Final note: whoever decided to use that song for the end credits needs to die, preferably in the same matter as the end game occurred. Damn me for my habit of waiting through the end credits of movies and games, as this was pretty fucking painful. Then again, if I hadn’t, then I wouldn’t have seen the really big Half-Life rip-off that followed it up.

tl;dr: was worth the five bucks and time to play; here’s to hoping there isn’t a sequel.

Actually, Prey began development in the mid-90s, just horribly delayed, so that’s probably why it felt that way. And 3DRealms is a old-time player in the FPS genre.

And, a sequel is in the works.

Bruce

Nah, the Prey of 2006 bore almost no relation to the Prey being pitched in the 90s, outside of the portal concept and the main character’s ethnic background.

One feature this game really needs is the ability to shoot your regular-self in the face with your spirit-self’s bow, so your regular-self will shut the fuck up.

It’s OK. Glad I didn’t pay more than $5.

Yeah. Crying out every once in a while “JENN, OH NO JENN, I MUST SAVE HER” gave me Titanic flashbacks.

The predictable Jenn boss fight was a bit cliche, I admit.

I also disliked the fact that 80% of the way through the game, when you find out just how far away you are from the top of the ship, it made me think, “Wow, awesome! I’ve got a zillion more levels to go through!” And then it’s like when they ran out of time to stop making levels, they inserted the convenient, “Hey, here’s a teleport, you don’t have to do all those levels after all!” And the game was over in 2 hours when I was expecting 20 hours more.

Bruce

I thought the length was a good thing because it made the combat less grating. I’m not sure I would have survived another 5 hours of monotonous firefights.

It’s a bit like Serious Sam. Having played SS2 recently, I realized that a lot of my SS1 nostalgia was built out of perfect pacing - the game was quite short and didn’t overstay its welcome. SS2, in contrast, was vastly long and tedious.

Well certainly I was expecting that additional content to be interesting. If it was going to be monotnous, then yeah, I’d prefer to skip it, but then you risk the problem of a game that’s too short (i.e. Prey). But for $5, it’s a good deal.

I really liked the Art Bell radio clips too. But I wonder how many players really knew who Art Bell is.

Bruce