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Prey

"Regular" Edition

"Collector's Edition"

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Sometimes optimism is hard to come by, even when the glass is almost full. I mean; Prey is actually out; shouldn't there be game parties galore about this? I would like to think so...especially when this game that was originally promised around ten years ago (no joke) is actually very cool. One would have thought a game that was ten years in the making would be over a decade old in game technology. Yet here we all are, just a week after playing Prey, and suddenly, the creators of Half Life 2 are promising "portal technology" in their game this fall. How's that for evidence that this game has something everyone wants in their game?

Yet "portal technology" is just one of many buzz phrases that beat around the bush, when asked how good this game is. Allow me to be blunt. I've played a lot of games claiming to be played on "alien" landscapes. Prey delivers. Your character is kidnapped to a strange place where holes in time float in mid-air, and "roads" go up the wall and across the ceiling. At times you're actually fighting with an enemy who is on the ceiling...or are you on the ceiling, with them on the ground? It's all enjoyably disorienting, and the first novel approach to level design this "old" gamer has seen in years.

One may ask what's so cool about "portal technology." Agreed; warping from place to place in a level is nothing new, but I'm telling you; this is a sight to behold. Most portals in other games (up to this point, anyway) have cheesy looking low-resolution photos of the place you'll be heading to. These portals are "actual", 3D-accelerated holes to where you'll be heading. You can look up, down, and around a portal before entering, and see exactly who or what is on the other side, in real time. The level editors have had a lot of fun with this new technology, including at least two "portal mazes" where the portals are so intertwined, you might accidentally shoot "yourself" when seeing a distant figure seemingly entering or exiting a portal nearby.

In addition to portals are two types of "walking." Wall walking is simple enough to explain, in that this space station (?) can adjust gravity at will, and at times you'll find yourself suddenly in a room where the right wall is now the floor, or the ceiling. Lit pathways go up the wall and you can go right up the wall with them. As for spirit walking: your character has this special power in the spirit (no pun intended) of Native American folklore. That is, you can "spirit walk" and go straight through force fields and shut them off from the other side, or you can have fights with "spirit arrows" against unsuspecting, well...prey. Cool.

Ah, yes; then there's the story. Well, let's be fair. We've all heard the basic story behind Prey for ten years now. It's pretty unfair at this point to say we've "heard it"...though, yeah, we have heard it. We know all about the modern day Cherokee who was just about to confess his love to his girlfriend, only to have them whisked away by alien abduction of the worst kind. By "worst kind" we mean; you're a snack. That's the good news. The bad news: your girlfriend is seen as a tastier snack by the aliens, so you must move fast to save her from a dinner plate. Yes, the story is that simple. Maybe.

Is that a thumbs-down on the story? Sort of. You probably heard of one or two grumbles about this on other reviews, as well as game message boards...or maybe you haven't. Allow me to just get right to it: don't play this game for the story. By game's end there's a whole lot of loose ends and very few revelations. In fact, they all but flat out tell you to "get ready for Prey 2." Every question you want answered is left up in the air, or worse, you wish they'd never answered it. Play this game for game's sake, not for story's sake. We can only hope that by the inevitable Prey 2, we will get the cool story to go with the cool game. That's more than possible. The groundwork is surely there.

Does lack of good storytelling skills affect the game? It depends on who you ask, but I'd say the "right" answer is: no. Here's a gripe I've heard on many a message board: "How can this game have English speaking aliens"...? Answer: there aren't any. Your grandfather tells you in a tutorial session that the spirit of your pet hawk will be your "eyes and ears" at times. So when your hawk flies next to enemies, you can hear their grunts become macho talk like "Prepare to die human!" Likewise for the control panels, whose alien text becomes English when your hawk flies near them. This is a neat aspect of the game but the storytelling techniques are too cryptic for some casual gamers, which is bound to confuse some right into ridiculing this game for flaws that aren't even there. No, nitpickers; these aliens don't really speak English. Sorry.

If only the level editors helped with the story. While the storytellers clearly left the best stories for an inevitable sequel, the level designers had a field day. One level has this model of a moon in the center of a hallway. You enter a nondescript portal and you're suddenly on the model moon. You see the "giant" alien come into the room and notice you on the model, and enter the portal yourself, with others following suit. Suddenly you're in a shooting gallery on this small model moon. That's about the coolest piece of level editing I've seen since as far back as Dark Forces: Jedi Knight. Remember the level where you're on a ship that's about to crash, and each room rocks and quakes and tilts all around you? Few games since then have had anything but the clich� "jump across platforms over lava" level. Yawn.

That is perhaps the crowning achievement of Prey: originality. Who would have expected that a game anticipated for a decade would be so fresh and inspiring? Sure some of the story needs work, to the point where the supposedly emotional moments are not (if you're wondering who this woman bleeding to death is: we are barely told about her at all, so who knows?). Yet the game itself is top-notch, the new game technology is already being promised in other knockoff games, and...seriously, it's not like you really needed us to tell you any of this did you? Prey is finally out, and it rocks. The rumors are true. Now go out and buy it.

	Rating : Deep Impact. If someone tells you this isn't the coolest game on the planet this year, ask them where their spaceship is, because they aren't from around here!
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Prey

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