Prey
Released: May 4, 2017
Game Length: 16 Hours
Grade: A
Expectations: Back in 2006, Human Head Studios developed a game revolved around a man trying to save his girlfriend from aliens. They called it Prey. At the time, I heard from a lot of people how disgusting the plot was regarding their motive of invading Earth. So I obviously avoided the game entirely. Later, Bethesda obtained the rights to the game while a sequel was being produced but it was ultimately canned in the end. Then they came out with a "new" game - with absolutely no connection to the original - and decided to call it Prey... because it sounded cool. After watching the trailer, I was terrified of what it had to offer. However, my friends reassured me that the game isn't as scary as it appears from the promotional content. I decided to play the demo on Steam without spoiling myself by watching any Youtube videos and found it really intriguing. It reminded me a lot of Bethesda's other RPGs to the point where it felt like I was playing another Outer Worlds. So how did the game hold-up?
Reality: There was much of the game that filled me up with joy. The introduction from the demo was definitely a blast to play, but I also liked the idea of exploring areas at my own pace without being berated or punished like in the beginning of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I enjoyed how they included little touches in the game like how you can die from the helicopter blades within the first hour of the game. How they designed the "Looking Glass" to be 3-Dimensional really sold me to the illusions persistent through the story. I might have been paranoid for the first 5 hours of the game, but it isn't like the enemy started pouring out of the ceiling or overwhelmed in massive swarms (at least not on Normal difficulty). You merely had to adapt to your surroundings and watch out for any of their nasty projectiles. Ammunition can get pretty sparse if you decided to use both your security weapons against everything that moves. I'd recommend trying to flesh out all the included tools at your disposal. Nothing is worse than trying to go against a powerful enemy with a wrench. Upgrading your weapon damage would be a good start. Learning how to surprise phantoms and knocking them down to the ground with a fully-upgraded wrench will help smooth-over any difficulty the game may pose.
Your office in the Talos I Lobby will always be safe. You can visit there to recycle, fabricate, talk, store items, and sometimes receive gifts. Every other place on the station will always be vulnerable to respawns. You can build up to 3 operators from any operator dispenser. Medical will remove radiation poisoning and restore your health to full with no stipulations attached. Engineers will restore your suit to maximum. Turrents are very good in the early stages against mimics, but are generally terrible once you encounter your first phantom. Not only do they have the issue of being instantly destroyed once you leave an area (since they seem to fly around like paper when struck), but they will also consider you as a threat when plugging in more than a couple of Typhon abilities into your head. You can try fortifying them, placing them in a crossfire pattern, and elevating them on top of furniture for better positioning and protection.
About ten hours in, I was relatively calm in my experience. The occasional mimic still spooked me and the Phantoms still reminded me a little of Slenderman, but the "horror" aspect of a station full of dead bodies didn't fill me with dread. There is a "Nightmare" Typhon that will occasionally spawn to hunt you down. You can choose to fight it (as I did with a good number of shotgun blasts) and gain a lot of exotic materials in the process, or you can choose to save your ammo while hiding in a corner for 3 minutes. I generally used this time to take a quick break to the restroom or to get a drink of water. Although it's possible to fight every Typhon that stands in your way, by the end of the game you might just be running like a maniac to avoid wasting your time with confrontations. However, I will admit there are two instances that broke my constitution - a dead body falling down in front of me while opening a door and a small calibration test.
Options: The game practically throws you in the center of the monstrous space station and let's you run amok as you see fit. Although some areas do not become highlighted until you visit a certain section of the ship, it is entirely possible to bypass the intended route of the main questline and explore areas without the game's guidance. Did you find a safe or a secured door with no way of inputting numbers? Then you probably need to hack it. Find a locked door but don't have the access code? See if you can punch a hole through the window and launch a foam dart at the button that opens the door. You could also look above and below for maintenance hatches that might lead you inside. There is also the possibility you could squeeze yourself through the safety glass if you managed to obtain a certain ability in your playthrough. If none of that works, you can always use a security terminal and track down the access card from the room's owner. Is there something broken shooting out electricity all over the place? One shot from the GLOO gun will give you a few seconds to run past the electric surge. Other options include shutting down the power, repairing the conduit with spare parts in your inventory, or replacing the part with another one from the storage room when applicable. Even after 20 hours into my playthrough, I was still learning of new unique ways to adapt to certain situations.
Arsenal: Another thing I enjoyed was how balanced they made all the tools you had at your disposal. The Pistol was good for rapid firing from a distance. The Shotgun mowed down enemies that came close to you with its wide spread fire. A Foam Boltcaster was made for distracting cysts while causing them to explode, shooting buttons that opened doors, or pressing specific options on computer monitors too far to reach. The bullets are incredibly inexpensive to make and can be easily retrieved from how much they squeak when rolling around on the floor. The Q-Beam is great for taking out weavers and ethereal phantoms. The stun gun is used for knocking people unconscious without killing them or disabling those nasty operators that are totally unhelpful in performing their duties. Although the GLOO gun is helpful in immobilizing enemies (which can be fun to watch when they fall down), it can only hold certain types for a short period of time. The foam can tear apart easily when struck with something like the wrench. Instead, I preferred using the gun in creating physical barriers and leverage to climb for those high-to-reach places. There was also a wide-range of grenades that recycle spare parts, attract enemies with a shiny light, nullify psychic abilities, or create an EMP for those pesky electric-types.
Settings: There are a few things behind-the-scenes I like to comment on. If you decided to pre-order the game, you would be supplied with a Golden Shotgun. They did supply a number of fixes to the game, including a FOV Slider in Version 1.03. For some silly reason, I found the wrench being twirled in your hand every time you accessed the menu to be incredibly annoying. Holding down the 'X' button will set your hands down without viewing whatever you are wielding. Out of all the people you can find on the ship, there are three individuals stuck in an IT supply closet that will only open pending a quest through rare circumstances. There is a photosensitive warning in every known language when you first boot up the game. Though I'm not sure what exactly they are referring to, it didn't take me long to notice how the game's flashlight super-imposed the environment to a ridiculously high bright setting. You are allowed 20 manual save files along with a handful of quick saves and auto saves. There is one final page shown after the epilogue that displayed a good sum of stats from how many people you saved to the number neuromods used. It also showed me that it took me a total of 28 Hours to complete. Then after all was said and done, I realized that I somehow managed to play the entire game without any interactive objects shimmering a shade of white. Apparantly not having Anti-Aliasing on disabled this feature.
Typhon Hunter DLC: This add-on breaks down into two small packages. If there was enough people to play with, I probably wouldn't mind trying out the new Morgan vs 5 Mimics mode. Of course you are always welcome to the VR Portion of the update too. Although there doesn't seem to be a lot going for it content-wise, it is a free update to the original game.
Moonbase DLC: When I did a search to see why this particular add-on was $20, all I could see was a bunch of glorified posts of how it was the best DLC ever and how it was better than the main game. Then how come 25% of the Steam reviews are negative? Maybe it has to do with how drastically different it is compared to the original game. The story involves you playing the perspective of 5 different members - all with different abilities - through a base on the moon. You can decide in which order to play them and what means of escape they will undergo, but their actions in the map will persist as you continue from one character to the next. You cannot save. Weapon degradation is in effect. There are also a few new enemy types like the Moon Shark and the Harvester that can be annoying. The actual concept of the game is nice, but it gets very repetitive really fast when you are racing against a "corruption timer" constantly putting pressure on you to race to the finish. Nothing about this made me happy. So I simply decided to watch someone explain how it works on Youtube.
Opinion: Talos I is a wonderful space station filled with around 250 people you can actively seek out using their tracking devices from a security terminal. You are open to explore all 14 sections of the station through its elevator system, free-flying outside the ship, or simply by taking the stairs. The game gets creative with its large variety of options in cracking open safes, traversing maintenance tunnels, figuring out passwords for terminals, retrieving access cards to open secured rooms, restoring power to sections of the station, repairing turrets, utilizing operators, and attacking enemies. The story is phenomenal in providing you a list of choices between saving as many people as you can or killing them all. Although the few available endings felt rushed, the mind-blowing journey would make it all worthwhile. I definitely recommend this game.
12-31-2020