Prey: Review

Review: Prey

I originally bought Prey when it was first released on the PC. It looked fun and entertaining - using portals, variable wall gravity, aliens etc. I played it for a couple of hours and it felt like any other First Person Shooter - fairly linear, not too hard (on the easiest setting). It also had one special feature - after less than 30 minutes, you get infinite lives. Every time you die, you get half your life force back and respawn at the same point. This one fact, makes this an easy game.

The premise of the story (for PC and 360, I'll continue from here purely from the 360) is that you, are Tommy. A cherokee on the reservation, who desperately wants to leave with his girlfriend, Jen. But Jen is cherokee through and through, and wont leave her family, her home, or her bar.

One evening, late at night, Tommy is still trying to convince Jen to join him, and leave the reservation. The night is pitch black, with rain thundering down very hard. In the distance, wild dogs start to bark, followed by the noise of car alarms. The TV switches to the test card, and then into emergency transmission mode. Green lights start to appear through the windows of the bar. One glance skyward shows a UFO through the windows, seemingly desintegrating the roof around them. Tractor beam style, Tommy, Jen, and Tommy's grandfather are tractored into the UFO above.

The story continues from there, along the lines of saving girlfriends, and Tommy finding out about his heritage. During your course of Tommy, you'll be shooting, flying, and battling with which way is up, with variable direction gravity.

Single player story line takes around 8 hours when you play the first time. After this, you can play on the harder, Cherokee setting. With infinite lives, the only bit that is hard is when you dont have the infinite lives.

Multiplayer can be fun, if you can find anyone online. Usually around 8pm-12pm UK time (GMT, UTC) you'll find maybe a gorup of 2 or 3 on normal deathmatch. Once there was 8 online when I was playing.

Achievements: 750 Gamerscore from completing the main story mode, twice. Second time shouldnt take more than 5 hours. 250 GS from multiplayer - For the team deathmatch, it might be worth getting a buddy from http://achieve360points.com. Overall, probably 15 hours for the full 1000.

Rating: 2.5 stars out of 5.
Difficulty: 1.0 stars out of 5

Conclusion: An OK game. Very innovative, just needed more storyline, and to add something else to the genre. New ideas are great, but if they dont capture the public's attention like Gears of War, nothing much will come of it.

To end, this game can be bought for around 12GBP now.