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Innovative

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 32 / 34
Date: July 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Those of you who followed the first person shooter genre back in 1998 probably vaguely remember a game called Prey that was in development at 3D Realms. The game featured a Native American theme and a unique portal technology that allows enemies to appear out of thin air among other things. Then the game suddenly disappeared for years only to recently resurface. This new game, developed by Human Head Studios, features many of the original ideas from 1998 as well as a state-of-the-art graphics engine and fierce combat. The amount of hype surrounding the game when it was shown at E3 was enormous. Luckily, Prey manages to deliver a solid and compelling first person shooter experience.

Prey opens with the main character of the game, a Native American named Tommy, talking to himself in a bathroom mirror. He wants to take his girlfriend and leave the Indian reservation. She on the other hand doesn't want to leave. While trying to talk her into leaving, his girlfriend and his grandfather are sucked up into an alien ship. Tommy manages to get free and then sets out to rescue his girlfriend. Of course along the way he will end up saving the world.

The plot in the game is actually pretty solid. The game starts out pretty intense and things rapidly escalate and get pretty desperate. It also does a pretty good job of explaining why you of all people are the one who has been chosen to save the world. While the Native American influences are not a major part of the gameplay, it is an interesting and recurring theme in the storyline. The last few levels in the game make up one of the most intense climaxes to any first person shooter in recent memory. The ending also leaves you feeling pretty satisfied, which is a relief considering many high profile games have had disappointing endings recently. The whole game will take most people between 8 to 12 hours.

Along with a compelling plot, the game features amazing visuals. The game is powered by the Doom 3 engine (which also powered Quake 4). So the game features completely real-time lighting and shadowing and interactive GUI surfaces (control panels) like those found in Doom 3 and Quake 4. The engine has also been modified to provide other great looking effects like light bloom. The environments themselves are very detailed and are constantly animating. You really get the feeling that you are in a living spaceship.

In a way, Prey has fallen victim of its own hype. The biggest complaint that most will have with the game is of its use of portals, gravity manipulation and spirit walking. Many were expecting some revolutionary new gameplay mechanics because of these three things. Unfortunately their use doesn't do anything to drastically change the way first person shooters are played. But even though the game comes pretty short of "revolutionary", the portals and gravity manipulation keeps the game pretty fresh throughout, which is more then what other first person shooters offer these days. So while it doesn't reinvent the first person shooter, those gameplay innovations keep it from tasting stale.

The portals serve a couple of purposes. First, they allow you to move from one 3d environment to another seamlessly. Second, portals provide an interesting and fresh way for enemies to enter the environment. For example, sometimes enemies will portal in and be walking on the ceiling.

Perhaps more interesting then the portal system is what the game does with gravity. In the game you will find glowing walkways that allow you to walk up walls and even completely upside down. Even more interesting is that sometimes you will walk around a corner and gravity will completely change directions. There are also times when you will walk through rooms you have already been in but you will be on what was previously the wall or the ceiling. This keeps the battles interesting as you will be shooting down at enemies that look like they are on the ceiling, but they are really on the floor. Also, in some rooms you will have the ability to change gravity by shooting wall panels. The portals and gravity are constantly used in combination for some fun (though not very difficult) puzzles.

Tommy, because of his Native American heritage, also has the ability to leave his body and spirit walk. While in spirit form you can do things that you normally wouldn't be able to do. For example you can walk through force fields and sometimes over large gaps that would have been impossible to jump. Unfortunately, most of these sequences boil down to walking through a force field and hitting a switch on the other side to turn it off. There are a few puzzles in the game when you have to leave your body someplace and then use your spirit to move you somewhere you normally would not be able to go. However, these types of puzzles are few and far between and don't pose much of a challenge. Though you can fight enemies while in spirit form, which can be helpful when you are low on health.

Since you have this spirit walk ability, when you die you are sent to the spirit realm. The spirit realm is basically a small mini-game where you must shoot down red and blue wraiths which recharge your health and spirit energy. After a short amount of time you are sucked back into the living world pretty much exactly where you died. The amount of spirit energy and health you have depends on how well you did in the mini-game. While this is pretty unique and interesting, it has the unfortunate negative effect of making the game pretty easy. You never have to worry about saving since you in essence can't die. Perhaps it would have been better if you could actually fail at the mini-game.

Prey has a pretty good selection of weapons. While your arsenal is actually pretty small, weapons have secondary functions. Some of the weapons are alien versions of familiar weapons while others are pretty unique. One of the weapons must be powered up at stations. How the weapon behaves depends on what type of station you powered it up at.

The enemy designs in the game are pretty good overall. While there are not a ton of different looking enemy types, they all require different strategies to defeat. The AI in the game won't win any awards, but it does a good job of keeping the firefights intense and fun.

The audio in the game is pretty good. The voice acting is of pretty high quality. Unlike other games like Doom 3 or Half-Life 2, the main character in the game speaks a lot. The music score in the game, which is done by Jeremy Soule, is also pretty good. The only somewhat disappointing aspect of the sound design is the weapons themselves. While they don't sound bad by any means, they somewhat lack the punch that you would expect.

In the end, a lot of what you will get out of Prey depends on what you go in expecting. If you expect to find a revolutionary experience you will be disappointed. But if you go in with reasonable expectations, you will find a sold first person shooter with some interesting gameplay innovations that keep the game fresh and makes it stand out compared to other first person shooters.

Play Prey

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 14
Date: July 11, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Prey is a bona-fide 5 star game. Play it soon because everyone is going to be raving about it. The SUMMER BLASTER for 2006 is HERE! Basically it is Turok meets Doom 3 on steroids. If you like first person shooters (fps), then getting Prey is probably the next best move you will make next to owning Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and F.E.A.R. The future of fps in space has not outlived its lifespan. If you liked Doom 3, which was the last good adrenaline pumping monster mash on Mars, then you will love Prey. Prey is back to basics again, whopping up the graphics considerably, brilliant lighting effects and a frightening story to boot that isn't afraid to have lots of gore and shocks around the corner. It has a certain feel of HALO about it too with its alien-type weapons. You play an Indian who has been beamed up off his reserve into a spaceship where the aliens are eating up the humans. Prey has awesome in-game action sequences and is quite shocking for the sum of its fiendish parts. You have an old Indian trick out-of-body-experience (OBE) which helps you to reach areas in the rooms you can't normally get to. The rooms also rotate when you shoot switches which offers various level puzzles to get through. Most of the time you totally loose your orientation which makes the play even more fun, especially when portals start opening after room rotations. Duke Nukem lovers will also enjoy the fun on display. An alien's severed hand to open doors is a nice touch. Art Bell's radio talk-show of the aliens invasion is broadcast at various junctions in the game. You don't die either. Well you do, but you are given unlimited chances to regenerate your blue or red health by shooting at blue or red birds in the land of your ancestors. It is a great idea and works. The Boss fights are massive. You even get to fly some aircraft with fire power. Running along anti-gravity tracks around rooms upside down and across walls while unloading your gun into the screaming aliens that have driven people insane who are crying banging on doors is probably reason enough to own the thing if it wasn't for the photorealistic gfx. Slime on the wall has never looked so real. The end boss battles are amazing. The graphics are simply outstanding. This is a high quality fps that deserves your time and CPU power. Prey it today.

*ADULTS ONLY*: contains VIOLENT GORE and BAD LANGUAGE.

Pray you can stop playing Prey.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: July 25, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Space portals, spirit walking, walking up walls, and coming back from the dead may all seem "gimmicky", but they are gimmicks that work!

Any gamer can tell you how easy it is to loose track of time.
In any other shooter, when you die, you are forced to pick up at your last save spot - that could have been minutes ago!

But now you simply shoot for health and power in the spirit realm and come back where you left off. Never played a game that continues even when you die! The autosave is a big help too. It even loaded the "save file" from the demo version. So, I was able to continue playing without starting over. Awesome!

I liked the conveinence of the DVD version because it is a single disc, and installs faster due to better transfer rates than CD. The collector's tin has a nicely aged look, and two cool pewter figurines inside. The "Art of Prey" book is a leather-type covered book with B&W and full color artwork. A nice plus for the manual which is very easy to undersand.

While you will need a powerful computer and graphics card to maximize the visual feasts, there is enough to creep you out during game play. Who ever thought the spirits of a little girl would cause such angst!

I have even taken to playing the death matches online, something I NEVER used to do.

Great Tech, Interesting Puzzles, Disturbing Subject matter...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 12 / 21
Date: September 11, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Prey offers a ton of great gameplay, Great Tech, Stunning Production Value, and is something I would definitely consider "Next Generation".

Prey also offers some great twists. Setting wise I found the overall theme Gross for the sake of being Gross, lacking depth, or reason. This is usually something I can get over pretty fast and still enjoy the game for what it is. In the case of Prey, that was even easier than most, due to interesting Gravity Puzzles, Portal Tech, interesting alien weapons, and a lot of very fresh new ideas for FPSs.

** SPOILER ALERT **
The reason I gave this Prey only 2 Stars is because of a some situations that I felt were crossing the moral line for me personally.
There was a part where you witness 2 children captives (one little boy and a little girl about age 5-6) are brutally and graphically killed. I consider this very bad taste, and usually shrug it off as sensationalism, and go on with the game. However there is another point where the murdered children become Spirits, and to get past them you have to Shoot them (It takes less ammo to shoot them in the head).
Seeing scenes of children brutally murdered by an Evil Force is crossing the line for me, but it is a Line I can step back across with a little effort. Evil things do evil things to everyone, including children. That's what makes them evil, and can drive a story or make something villainous even more sinister.
However, having to personally shoot the children sprits myself (Preferably in the head) was just way too much for me personally. This was the point I stopped playing myself, so my review is only up to this point in the game. I have no idea what comes next.

I am not one to usually jump on the "Keep Violence out of my Video Games" bandwagon, but in the case of Prey I feel they went to a place that just felt was very wrong and I had a very big problem with being in a situation where I had to Shoot children or children like monsters (Spirits or other wise). For me that earned a very large Star reduction for what otherwise could have been a five star game for me.

I know that some people don't feel that something like this is a big deal, and that there are other people who feel much like I do on this topic. It is for the latter people I am writing this review.

** END SPOILER ALERT **

Don't get me wrong, Prey has some amazing parts as well, stunning situations, and some challenging puzzles. There is a Lot I do really like about Prey, but it is not a game for everyone. I feel it may not me for me.

If this is your type of game, The Limited DVD Edition is worth the extra $10-15. The Minis have a great amount of detail, the art book is small but still very nice, which to me it worth it right there.

Objective experienced reviewer

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: February 27, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Graphics: Excellent.
Sound: Great.
AI: Excellent. Good variety. Some enemies duck-and-cover, etc. Some are fearless and charge on sight. Some are mindless and pay no attention to you.
Physics: Excellent.
Maps: Excellent. Rich, creative unique environments. Derivative of but improvement over Doom3 engine. Walk on walls, ceilings, spirit-walk through walls and over nothingness. Portals appear anywhere. Just walking through the game maps becomes a very original, sometimes disorienting experience instead of the regular doldrum "just get me to the end of this boring level". Nice merging of the earth bar with the ship. Excellent nod to Art Bell (real-life talk radio host that used to talk about aliens a lot) by having his show broadcast throughout the ship/game. Very very well done.
Gameplay: Excellent. No frame-rate drops. Excellent load time. I was never lost or trapped to the point where I had to consult the internet to figure out where to go and no scripted events failed to activate. Game length was long. Save-anywhere ability. Good variety of enemies and challenges.
Items/Weapons/Vehicles: Excellent. Unique biomechanical alien weapons which are alive, spiritual weapons charged by souls - very creative. Lighter instead of flashlight (original).
Story: Excellent. Compelling, engrossing story, a sense of urgency to complete things, you care about the characters and want to see where the story is going. Acting/voice acting was good.
Multiplayer: Average. no offline. Offline people deserve more - don't soak us for more cash.
Overall: 5/5. Game is a unique standout with it's native American Indian theme meshed with Alien tech and 3-D gameplay. One of the best 360 games for 2006 - must have. Got a 8.1/10 on [...] and clearly deserves a higher (9+ rating). Currently ranked #35 of all xbox360 games on [...]. Clearly deserves better.

Fun... but nothing exceptional

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: August 18, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I bought Prey because the demo was interesting and it seemed like it could develop into more than your average run of the mill shooter. It had nice graphics, neat gravity/portal "tricks" and a lead character that seemed to exhibit some attitude.

The full version, while an entertaining game, never really me really fall in love with it. It's your pretty standard FPS fare w/ a few "tricks" thrown in the mix such as walking on walkways that defy gravity, portals to transport you to different parts of the map and a "spirit" mode which is basically used to just gather keys at best. I did not find any of the weapons particulary interesting either.

In the end I ended up just playing though the game to see through the whole story and sold the game. I won't dedicate more time to the review because much of what I am conveying is already on the other reviews posted here. I would recommend buying the game when it reaches the $20 pricepoint.

Great game, terrible Collector's Edition.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: August 01, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I loved Prey - the atmosphere, the art direction, the mood... it was all bang-on perfect. I love games that offer an excellent experience, as opposed to just more shooting bad guys. Prey had a story to tell, and it did it well while drawing you into it's world and it's mythos. That said, this is easily the WORST Collector's Edition I have ever had the misfortune to purchase. The metal tin is nice, and the figurines are interesting (if altogether useless)... but the big two sell points are the art book and the soundtrack. I've already said the art direction in the game is fantastic, and I love to get a peek at the concept art that goes into making the game world come alive. Unfortunately, the art is all spoiled by censorship boxes (yes, those little square boxes) that cover "offensive" bits of sketches and paintings. Mind you, this is a Mature game with all those anatomical bits readily present on the hideous and horrifying aliens. There is nothing explicit here, and the game isn't censored... so why ruin an otherwise excellent collection of art?

The second big problem is far worse than the first. Although the game is advertised as coming with a soundtrack (and what a fantastic soundtrack it is, too) - there is absolutely no CD. In fact, it's not even an iTunes coupon. What you get is a slip of paper with a web address and a code. Before you can listen to your soundtrack, you have to download and install a special music player. The music will only play with this special software. It's not MP3 format, and you can't put it on any kind of mobile music device (like an iPod or PSP). The DRM is entirely proprietary - meaning that fantastic soundtrack can only be listened to on your internet-connected computer using special software than can only be installed 5 times ever (regardless of whether you reformat, rebuild, or replace your current computer). It's absolutely worthless.

At the moment, the Limited Edition is pretty cheap here at Amazon, but it's still a terrible purchase. Save yourself the frustration and get the normal version instead: Prey.

I've been preying for a game like this!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: August 12, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The Limited Collector's Edition brings with it 2 figurines, and if you like collectibles as I do, then you'll probably already have the third and final "mutate" figurine.

There is an art book, rather fancy might I add, and inside are conceptual drawings and renderings of the monsters, environments, and atmosphere. Another book is simply installation and gameplay, or your usual computer game manual.

Prey comes (in this edition) on a single DVD. The installation is as straight forward as possible, making a quick and easy setup for those who are inexperienced at computer or even for the most avid fans of computer gaming. Using a highly optimized version of the DOOM 3 engine, Prey's revolutionary gameplay and portal technology is brought to life. It will abduct your game playing skills and pit you against an array of alien and mutate fiends alike to escape the labyrinth and save the world. Prey will turn your gameplay upside down, shrink you down to size, and change your idea of the first person shooter forever.

Short But Sweet

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: August 19, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Not just another "run of the mill" "Been there done that to death" First Person Shooter (aka. FPS), Prey adds a little bit to the FPS game.

The portals and gravity switching are cool and different and the story is a bit above the avrage FPS. It's nice how they handled your characters death and did not just spaw you back at the start of the level but insted let you fight ghosts to respawn at your body. The spirt walk is cool too but is missing something as it is mostly used to just "walk through force field push button to turn off said forcefield".

The graphics are a bit better than DOOM 3, the game Prey gets it's graphics engine from, and can still be played on modest hardware with some "eye candy" and playable framerates.

My system, once long ago very powerful, can play it with most settings on low at 1024x768 with no AA or AF. My system is as follows: CPU: XP 2700+ (2.1GHz), Memory: 2Gb PC3200, Video: ATI RADEON 9700 Pro (128Mb), and Sound: Soundblaster X-fi.

Prey brings a few nice changes but it's much the same as all other PFS at it's core. It is too short and could have been longer. I installed it and played it allmost nonstop and beat it in about 9 hours. Now that I've been through the game I could shave and hour or so off that time.

The limited Collector's Edition has some nice items and I really like the metal box it comes in. The small figurine is not very good though.

PS. I love the Coast To Coast AM with Art Bell raido show that they pop up from time to time during the game, thanks for adding that to the game.

Simply breathtaking!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: July 14, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I can't even begin to explain the amazing qualities this game possesses. There are some very unique elements in this game that set it apart from most other FPS's. Like the other reviewer says, its kind of a cross between Half Life 2, Doom 3, and FEAR all kinda mashed together. There were definitely many moments in the game where I jumped, laughed, and even moments I was just in awe at the visuals this game has, enough to make my jaw drop. I will tell you though, I have experienced this game on several different graphics cards, but expect to get the best experience if you have an nVidia 6800+ or an ATI x800+. This game by far has, in my opinion, THE best graphics to date. I think I was most impressed with the stunning glossy-like look to much of the organic materials in the game and the partical effects were just amazing (dust, smoke, debris, etc.). Overall, I had one of the greatest experiences with this game. The Collectors Edition is worth the extra $10 too, you get a free download of the soundtrack Vol. 1, and 2 of 3 collectors figurines. I'm an aspiring graphic artist and the concept art book was very interesting to look at. The only thing missing that I thought would've been included is some kind of "Making of Prey" dvd, considering they spent well over 6 years developing this game, but other than that, what I nice collectors item. Also, be sure not to use the LCE version with any sort of DVD burner to play it becuase it will not work due to anti-piracy software.

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