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Tommy wants to leave the reservation and take his reluctant girlfriend Jen with him. His wish comes true in a bizarre way that carries him to places he never imagined. Prey is a first person shooter that explores old and new territory for the genre, introduces some new concepts without feeling gimmicky, and never loses its focus on intense action and firefights. For shooter fans, this is one of the most enjoyable and innovative games in quite a while.
Fueled by tremendous visuals, the game is filled with exploration and interesting puzzles. Yet it's also story-driven, linear and structured enough that you never get lost for long. There are three new features in the gameﾗﾑspirit walking' which lets your spirit go where your body can't, ﾑdeath walking' which is a mini-game where you battle the shamed spirits of your ancestors to return to the mortal plane and ﾑwall walking' on powered areas that blows away the norm of up and down. None of these feel out of place, and by the end of the game you are naturally looking for enemies on the ceiling hanging upside down and aiming at you. There is the usual variety of weapons but each has been twisted to suit the alien environment, making them seem familiar yet fresh. Enemies are also variations on the types you've fought for years in shooters, but each enemy takes massive damage from some weapons and little from others, making you constantly adapt your strategy to survive.  Prey proves that there is plenty of fun left in shooting aliens, and also that there is still room for innovation in the genre without resorting to gimmicks that get tiresome quickly. The campaign takes between six and ten hours to complete depending on how many radio broadcasts you listen to, how long you spend figuring out some of the more challenging puzzles, and how often you find yourself ﾑdeath walking'. Coupled with a simple deathmatch mode that is entertaining just for having truly three-dimensional battles against other people, this is the most original shooter of the year. While the combat mechanics of the underlying DOOM 3 engine are not up to the level of SiN Episodes: Emergence or Half-Life 2: Episode One, this is a solid shooter that adult fans of the genre should check out!  
By their very nature, first person shooters tend to be violent and visceral, and appropriate only for teens and adults. Depictions of realistic killings full of blood, gore and mutilation are pretty common in M-rated games, as is frequent use of strong language. Yet even by that measure, Prey is a brutal shooter filled with some of the most disturbing images of any game in recent memory.
Some of the most disturbing things involved children. Given the brutality you witness early on, the first sighting of kids in the alien structure causes Tommy to say, "Oh, this can't be good", and your thoughts echo that sentiment. A couple of hours into the game you come upon a horrific scene of the disembodied spirits of children coming to viciously attack living children that had also been abducted. Later you must face those same spirit children in combat more than once. It remorsefully reinforces the brutality of the enemy you are facing. Living up to every element in its ESRB rating, Prey is full of strong language and contains some partial nudity. Harsh language comes mainly from the protagonist who has a tendency to hurl profanities at his enemies and in response to some of the unbelievable situations he encounters. Partial nudity comes in the form of a major enemy you meet late in the game, but certainly can't be described as sexual. More disturbing pseudo-sexual imagery comes from much of the enemy area you are trapped in that functions like a body. You see pods coming through a fleshy tube by a peristaltic process, and see parts that function as veins and arteries and sphincters. Perhaps the strangest image is one of spider-monsters coming through what clearly appears to be female genitalia. Since most other parts seem to match form to function this seems out of place and perhaps a bit gratuitous. However these occasional images are not so shocking that they should be the deciding factor on the appropriateness of a game clearly aimed at adults. Apart from all of these things, the game seems respectful of Native American culture and traditions. While the characters might be seen as stereotypes, they are all portrayed in a positive light as people of great strength and resolve. Some may question placing the ﾑsacred land' in an area that looks like the desert southwest, but it was clearly shown to be a place of great power and importance. The developers seemed to take pains to balance the quickly identifiable items and characters needed for the plot-lite nature of a shooter with actions and imagery that indicate respect for those items and traditions. For example, while Tommy is the protagonist, his disrespect of the Cherokee traditions meets with chiding from his strong and grounded girlfriend and traditionalist grandfather. This is certainly not aimed at being a history or culture lesson, but it is obvious at many points that the developers could have taken the easy out but instead chose to spend a bit more time emphasizing the strength of the Native American people and spirit. This review edited by Dave Long Comments? Chat about it in our forums! Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us | Buy This Game Browse Amazon.com's selection of "prey" themed games Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: Prey |
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