Prey is the opposite of American lives

(This review was written for one of my Patreon review requests. Since Prey has been out for a while, I wrote specifically for people who have finished the game. It contains spoilers. Lots of spoilers.)


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2017/11/15/prey-opposite-american-lives/

Typo: These creature are the subject of

Ha ha, Tom’s an achievement whore! Anyway, I haven’t played Prey, just kind of kept an interested eye cocked in its direction. But the review does make me more interested in trying it out somewhere down the line.

I was waiting until I had more time and finished a few games in my backlog first. It will be tempting to get it on Black Friday though. It will be $19 at Walmart. That alone is maybe not tempting enough, because $19 is irrelevant if I don’t have time to get to the game yet. But if they offer that kind of price through the digital Store on Xbox Live? That might be too tempting to skip.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you came away with two of your favorite complaints: no score multiplier for playing on hard and no reason to engage with the systems. It sounds like you had an overall positive experience, though, so I’m pleased about that.

I agree that the third act all happens pretty abruptly and largely without consequence. After watching your stream the other day, I was surprised that you didn’t complain more about the introduction of the new enemy toward the end. I found them to be a huge pain.

Bizarrely, my first and only playthrough was using no Typhon powers (just for, like, roleplaying reasons, I guess?). You mentioned several times that you did not feel compelled to even spend all your neuromods, which I find surprising.

Anyway, those guys at Arkane have been doing some interesting things. Thanks for taking a look at this.

I thought it was a pretty fair setup. Especially the discussions during the Psychotropic section are about as blatant a Chekhov’s Gun as they come.

Prey seem to not have been a huge success, and that’s the greatest injustice in gaming this year. But might still be Bethesda’s biggest hit for the year :-( Wolfenstein looks like it’ll end up selling half what Prey did, Evil Within 2 another half of that, and Dishonored: Death of the Outsider even less despite being a half-price title.

It’s too bad hearing about Prey’s third act. I’d have trouble investing that much time in a game only to find there isn’t much of a payoff.

Corrections:
“the second act develops how you’re [g]oing to confront those challenges”
“humans and typhon’s [sic] fighting each other”
“It certainly felt more meaningful tha[n] anything I decided during the game.”

Hey Tom,

This was an awesome review thank you. Your several months later take on a game seems an idea that has some merit actually.

Wait till it’s been patched and there’s no stress to complete under a time barrier.

Yes, well said. I’d also like to add that this was a very well-written review.