Prey
PC, PS4, Xbox One
Should there be any lingering doubt that Arkane is the inheritor of the immersive sim, Prey puts it to rest. This ambitious sci-fi shooter captures the spirit of System Shock in the same way the Dishonored series takes after Thief. It’s a modern expression of an aspirational school of FPS design: the sort that gives you a set of tools, an intimidating foe, a mystery to solve, and the freedom to solve it in your own way.
As scientist Morgan Yu, you explore a translunar space station called Talos I in the aftermath of an attack by an extraterrestrial force, the Typhon. These shadowy creatures can, in their most basic form, mimic inanimate matter, an idea that encapsulates many of Prey’s best qualities. It’s an inventive and well-implemented sci-fi concept that encourages creativity in the player. Prey’s well-paced introduction teaches you to apply real-world logic to the otherworldly challenge you face: if it seems unlikely a small office cubicle would have two desk chairs, one of them probably isn’t what it seems.
Prey’s headier ideas are built on top of a strong basic simulation. Physical objects have weight and interact with one another and the environment in believable ways, fuel pipes rupture to create jets of flame, and EMP blasts short out electrical equipment. You’re quickly given a gun that fires rapidly hardening blobs of glue, which can be used to pin enemies, create blockades, and build staircases. This is the first in a series of tools that enable more and more elaborate eureka moments – instances when you circumvent obstacles using your own creativity rather than prescribed game logic. In another game, the presence of a nerf crossbow thatat fires utterly non-lethal foam bolts would be a joke. Here re it’s just another tool, a means for distracting creatures, es, setting off proximity-triggered mines, or testing the veracity of a suspicious-looking ammo pack.
Morgan’s skillset can be expanded by installing g Neuromods – memories recorded from master athletes, hletes, engineers and scientists and distilled into a form that can be injected into a new host. Initially, these follow llow relatively terrestrial upgrade paths: engineering, hacking, crafting, combat. Later, you’re given a scanner anner that allows you to harvest data from living Typhon n and appropriate their powers for yourself. This is wherere Prey comes alive. You can learn to mimic inanimate objectsjects to sneak into rooms in the guise of a roll of tape, animate nimate corpses to fight on your behalf, or create gravity wells that suspend objects and enemies in the air.
While some upgrades are less exciting than othershers – nobody is going to be thrilled to halve fire damage e – the satisfaction of Prey, as with Dishonored, is the way y the logic of all of these different elements fits together. er. The downside is the way your Neuromod decisions lock ck you into an approach. Prey suits repeat play, but even ven so it’d be well served by giving the player more freedom eedom to experiment in the span of a single run.
As in Dishonored, Prey pairs systemic complexity with phenomenal art direction. Talos I is the product of an alternate timeline where Kennedy’s assassination failed and the space race never halted, and as such its 2030s corridors are infused with ’70s design sensibility. Flatscreen computers inspired by old architectural drafting boards sit in offices panelled in ochre wood and trimmed with gold. Bioshock’s influence is felt throughout – not least in those Neuromod injectors – but Talos I is a far more believable space than Rapture.
After a relatively linear introduction, Prey opens up substantially. Talos I’s various sections are gated off, but for every area that you’re introduced to along the critical path there’s another waiting to be discovered in your own time. The survival-horror overtures of your first tentative encounters with the Typhon give way to more confident engagement later on, when you have the gear and expertise to take on tougher foes directly. At this point Prey becomes more of an improvisational action game than a survival horror, and your interest shifts to the game’s well-conceived central mystery.
But the degree of improvisational freedom that Prey provides comes at a cost. Arkane has attempted to anticipate all the ways in which you might circumvent challenges or solve problems out of sequence, but it’s still possible – even likely – that you’ll encounter issues due to the freedom you’re given. This includes discovering new enemies or environments in a way the designersd didn’t expect, which is less impactful than if youy had approached the game the ‘right’ way. You can sometimes get the better of the quest system, too. While ArkaneA laudably allows you to skip ahead in quests if youy perform the right actions or find the right items of youry own accord, it’ll fill in Morgan’s journal as if you’d doned the steps you missed. This risks making you nervousn about expressing your agency, and in a few rare casesc your choices are simply ignored. Given Prey’s best momentsm come when you play creatively, these rough edgese prevent the game from reaching its full potential.
The alien nature of the Typhon conceals some AI flaws,f too. They can struggle to pursue you across anythinga other than open terrain, and it can often be hardh to predict how they’ll move or what they can see. WhileW much of this is justified in the plot, it does weakenw Prey as a pure stealth and combat game. When you’rey using a nerf dart to detonate a matter-recycling singularity in the midst of a group of prowling shadowcreatures,c you won’t care. When you’re in a straight-up shotgun fight, you will.
Despite these issues, Prey is an accomplished game ini an under-served genre. Its problems are those of a gameg that tries to do more, and give the player more, thant most shooters aspire to – and to that extent, they’ret forgivable.
If it seems unlikely a small office cubicle would have two desk chairs, one of them probably isn’t what it seems