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.

Beginnings... at a pinch.

It's 3:36 am,and I'm starting my first blog. Fantastic, eh?

Purpose of this blog? To give a rundown of my Xbox 360 experiences.

I ultimately aim to get 1000 gamerscore on all the games I own. It should be easy, as long as none of the games require skill (*cough* Geometry Wars *cough*). So far I've completed 13 (inc. Oblivion to 1000GS) Retail, and 5 Live Arcade games - mainly the easy ones, and a couple of others (like Phantasy Star, Enchanted Arms).

I will also be posting news items I see and read online that interest me greatly, so keep your eyes peeled for those.

At the time of writing, I own 80 *box games (out of ~130), as well as 12 XBLA games. Also, my *box broke about a month ago, and has been repaired. I'm expecting it back on Monday, though in reality it only took 10 days to fix - a combination of university exams, and the *box registered address was with my parents. Since then I've purchased ~50 new games, and 5500 XBLA points to spend on games and DLC.

A little about me:

borandi is a Chemistry student at the University of Hull, currently on a Masters degree. Despite this, lots of free time is used trolling the internet, playing games, and participating in the Computer Society on campus. In current possession, with the 360, borandi owns a PS2, and a self-built PC (specs to follow). When not gaming, borandi runs a BOINC team, known as BOINC@Hull, that utilises idle cpu time for scientific research. borandi's own goals include computational chemistry, hopefully as a PhD at either Oxford or Cambridge.

borandi is currently running a Facebook group known as XBLA-A: Xbox Live Arcade Addicts. This group is open to all, and be a central point for all XBLA updates.

Completed *box retail games:
Fuzion Frenzy 2
Madden 06
NBA 2k6
King Kong
NBA Live 2006
NHL 2k6
NHL® 07
Prey
Viva Piñata
Fifa 06 RTFWC
Elder Scrolls: Oblivion
Enchanted Arms
Phantasy Star Universe

Completed XBLA Games:
Uno
Worms
Backgammon
Gauntlet
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

PC Specs:
Core 2 Duo E6400 @ 2.4Ghz
2GB RAM, OCZ Platinum Ed.
MSI Powerup Ed. Rev. 2 Motherboard
ATi X1900XT 256MB Graphics Card
Hiper 550W PSU
Thermaltake Armor
Zalman 9500 CPU cooler
Logitech G7 Mouse
Logitech G15 Keyboard
Digimate 19" LCD Monitor