The 6 Ways Prey Will Change Gaming

How do we love Prey? Let us count the ways. Here's why Prey is the greatest thing to happen to first-person shooters since Duke Nukem 3D.

Dying is almost as fun as living in Prey

Dying is almost as fun as living in Prey

Death is No Longer an End

For years, first-person shooters have been slave to a style of gameplay called "save crawling," in which the player quick-saves as frequently as possible to avoid replaying vast sections of a level after dying. Games like Halo offer auto-save "checkpoints," but these are a band-aid solution at best.

Prey does away with these crusty conventions. If Tommy is killed, his spirit "death walks" to a sort of nightmarish nirvana. In this out-of-body state, you can blast apparitions with your spiritual bow and arrow to restore your vitality. After you've recovered you'll find yourself back in action, no worse the wear. The death-walking process is almost instantaneous -- no load times! -- and completely painless to the player. And besides, blasting lost souls is often just as fun as playing through the current level, which turns death into a kind of amusing mini-game. It's incredibly innovative.

Skewed Perspectives
If you think <i>this</i> is trippy, just wait 'til you see the whole game

If you think this is trippy, just wait 'til you see the whole game

Wall walking. Wormholes. And gravity-distorting fields that would make Stephen Hawking upchuck on his physics books. Prey's perspective-warping level design has no equal, but it's more than just a vertigo-inducing gimmick. In a wise move, Prey doesn't squander its unconventional play mechanics on mimic the played-out Matrix movies. Here, walking on the walls actually means something, elevating the game whether it's used to gain a tactical advantage on enemies or merely navigate a tricky corridor.

Story Glory
Yeah, it's an alien abduction. But it's unlike any abduction you've ever seen

Yeah, it's an alien abduction. But it's unlike any abduction you've ever seen

Originality is not a strong suit for most action games. From Doom to Half-Life 2, the storyline of most FPS games can be boiled down to "baddies have arrived -- kill them all!" Though Prey borrows one of the most shopworn storyline conceits -- an alien abduction -- the execution is radically different and infinitely more sophisticated.

We won't give away any secrets, but Prey's storyline excels at shattering your pre-conceived notions and subverting your assumptions. Will Tommy track down his girlfriend? Who is behind the abduction? And have the aliens abducted anyone -- or anything -- else? Take it from us: Prey has a surprisingly smart, well-crafted story that's as good as anything on The X-Files.

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staticfive

Can you take your mouths off of the developers' *!&$ for a moment while I say something? Yes, portals and changing orientations are very nifty--it kinda reminds me of the game that came on the original playstation demo disc where you hit the button to change the orientation of the level. That said, this game just is NOT revolutionary. Story? Meh. Spirit walking? Makes it too easy. I mean, what kind of super-advanced alien species posts door codes in plain text through a transparent forcefield?

The only reason I find myself at this article is because the f^*&^ing game deleted all of my save files and I'm looking for an autosave that's near where I was. If I can't find it, I'm not going to bother starting over--this game just isn't fun nor dynamic enough to warrant the extra time.

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