These days FPS are a dime a dozen. Most of them try to have some type of "cool" factor, like Far Cry's landscape and predator mode, Doom 3's claustrophobic space marine vs hell demons, and Half-Life 2's gravity gun, storytelling, striders, and G-Man. Actually, Half-Life 2 was a hell of a game - you should go play that right now and read the rest of this when your done.
Prey tells the story of Tommy, a Native American gentleman, along with his girlfriend/crush, his grandfather and a little spaceship filled with hundreds of aliens who feed on human flesh and are powered by a mini-sun that rests at it's core. The plot is fairly predictable, but Prey pays attention to small details. For example: certain areas of the ship are broadcasting a radio station who is covering the alien invasion down on Earth. It doesn't impact gameplay at all, but it's a little extra that stands it above the rest of the competition in the already crowded FPS market.
Gravity plays an important part in Prey, despite the fact it takes place entirely on a ship in orbit of earth. Somehow, the aliens are able to create and maintain individual gravity fields that can span anywhere from an entire section of the ship to a single room. It's not unusual to walk from one room into the next to find yourself walking on the ceiling. The tricks the developers play with the gravity are very cool, and they seem to never run out of ideas for ways to change it up. They can be used as puzzle tools (such as a catwalk that was blown up; switch the gravity and now you can run above it) or used as strategic combat tools (enemy up ahead? Find a room that switches gravity, walk out on the ceiling and blast away before he sees you).
Another trick up Prey's sleeve is the hero Tommy, a Native American who draws on all the powers you've heard of from Native American lore. Fairly quickly in the game, Tommy dies and learns how to harness all his powers. First, he can spirit walk. That is, he can leave his body behind and walk around with his essence, soul, spirit, or whatever you want to call it. While doing this his body is vulnerable but his spirit is armed with a bow and arrow, able to do damage and interact with things in the real world. Mostly this is used as a way to bypass force fields and get to places he wouldn't normally be able to.
Second, when Tommy dies you don't have to load from your last save game. THANK YOU FOR THIS! In this age of save anywhere game play, we gamers are forced to save at least every few minutes in tough areas, sometimes every 30 seconds. When you die you have to wait for the game to load your save. In Prey, when you die, you enter a spirit world with these manta-ray looking things flying around you. You have a limited time to kill as many as you can. The more you kill, the more health or spirit you will have when you come back to life. Look, developers, take a note. Your characters might not be immortal but we gamers make them to be, with quick save and quick load. You might as well incorporate some type of feature that explains why a person can go up against an entire legion of undead/aliens/marines/unicorns and not even get a broken foot. This is a great feature of Prey and one every person who is making a FPS should think about.
Third, you get an animal companion. A little raven follows you around in the game, helping you when your stuck and distracting enemies so you don't get shot. This may seem like a little thing, but I love this bird. It has saved my ass quite a few times by pecking at a soldier long enough for me to finish the others off, then come back for him.
Now, the last trick that Prey has is it's famous "portal technology." Basically there are portals in space that will open and take you to another spot in the ship. This is really incredible and I was, and still am, amazed by it. Although it works exactly how it sounds, it's something you have to see in the game to appreciate. I'm trying to give an example of something I experienced in the game, but my words cannot do it justice.
Just take a look at this infinite portal loop (via YouTube.com). It's one of the first examples of portals in the game. There are 2 crates, each with a portal stuck onto the inside of the back wall. One portal leads to the next portal. Now the correct way of proceeding is to turn around and go through the portal behind you, but this is an example of how cool these are. And it only gets better from there.
In Prey, they take all of the above things (gravity, powers, portals) and combine them later on to make a game experience like nothing I've seen before. For example: I walk into a room, dispatch the enemy stationed there, and proceed into a portal. I come out to find myself in the same room, only now I'm walking on the wall. Some enemies portal in, and now I'm fighting them while I'm on the wall and they are on the ground. It's very surreal and almost Matrix style. I find the next portal and it sends me to the other side of the room, only I'm now on the ceiling. But the great thing is that the room is so well designed, the only reason I know it's the same room is because of a charging station right next to me.
Back to what I was saying in the beginning, Prey pays attention to small details. As your exploring this ship and trying to figure out what's going on, Tommy will actually start understanding the language of the aliens. When you look at a monitor for a second, English will superimpose itself on top of the alien text. Another thing is, one of the enemies in the game is a giant balloon shaped, flying thing, filled with gas. When you shoot these creatures with bullets, little puffs of gas escape where you shot them. It's not the greatest thing to ever be in a game, but it still impressed me.
I could go on and on about how many cool things there are in this game. I've left so many things out, like the weapons (fudging awesome), music, sound effects, scripted events (the battle with the huge horned guy is very fun) and immersion factor (even though I know that if I die I will come back, I still would get tense in some areas). My only complaint is the story and the main character.
The story is what it needs to be, I guess. Your character likes this girl and when you get abducted by aliens, you track her down, giving you enough purpose to begin exploring the giant ship. But the main character is so fudging stupid; I think he was crossbred with a redneck. He doesn't care about anything his grandfather is trying to tell him, even when it's obvious he knows what is going on and is helping. Tommy has such a one track mind about finding Jenny you would think she has two vaginas and looks like Aria Giovanni.
Secondly, the game has zero replay value. Of course you can play through the story mode again, but when you're playing a game like this, where you're exploring a spaceship, knowing what's coming up next takes all the fun out of it. I can't say i've tried multiplayer, although I'm sure it's the standard deathmatch and will add a few more hours, but that's it.
Overall, Prey is a great game. If you loved Half-Life 2, you will love this game as well. 9/10
