Prey (2017) — Review
Fresh out of the success of Dishonored 2, Arkane Studios’ Prey is the latest attempt of the Franco-American developer to merge Immersive Sims with the modern Open World FPS. This time, the player driven gameplay brings you to find your own way across a lovingly detailed, interconnected space station, brimming with danger and possibilities: morph into a teacup to hide from powerful enemies, climb trough an air ducts to pass by undetected or set up a desperate ambush with some well-placed explosives and a tank of radioactive waste.
The set up is simple, your space home has been overrun by a hostile alien species and you, R&D director Morgan Yu, are one of the lucky survivors, perhaps the very last one. None of this is new, this same premise has been in use ever since the original System Shock, but the classic formula has definitely seen some improvements: the setup now feeds into the main story much more organically and the setting stays interesting from beginning to end. Sound design and music are excellent and the environments look stunning thanks to some great dynamic lighting, and while the animations can be quite janky you will rarely find yourself staring at something unnatural for too long.
Of course, Prey isn’t just about to rehash basic Immersive Sim design without adding a couple twists of its own. The first twist takes place in the first few hours, which aren’t just an excellent introduction but also work towards tying the alien threat — the gameplay challenge — with the internal journey of the protagonist, making it so every fight feels like a struggle and every decision desperate well after the repetition starts setting in.
That sense of desperation is really what that carries the whole experience, forcing you to use every tool at your disposal and always keeping you on the lookout for any kind of advantage. This is the sort of game where realizing you can climb up to the next floor by just stacking boxes and glitching trough the balcony feels like discovering a proper new mechanic.
The second innovation is in the Neuromods, pieces of technology that mechanically replace experience points. Those can either be found or crafted and are used to unlock new abilities, most of which will also need to be “stolen” from the enemies that already posses them. Not only is there a wide range of those powers but many of them also have a secondary function: breathing fire will activate sprinklers, transforming into thin objects will let you squeeze trough small passages and so on.
In conclusion, Prey is great if you like stealth games, it is blessing if you’re a fan of Immersive Sims and it has some of the most playful design to be found in modern AAAs. I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention Mooncrash, a standalone DLC for Prey that mixes Immersive Sims and Roguelikes in a really creative way and elegant way, especially for such a novel concept.
