It’s hard to describe what felt off about this game as opposed to Arkane’s previous immersive sims. For all the great ideas and options, (including one of the best intro sequences of any game) the story is a dud, and the options for traversing the station don’t ever click together intuitively like in the Dishonored series. Prey is going for a different genre: sci fi horror, so it’s natural to never want to make the player feel like a superhero. The traversal challenges are fun enough. I once climbed an unpowered elevator shaft by shooting foam balls that I could mantle onto. But one feels unrewarded for clever solutions to combat challenges. One wonders if the devs understood this when they added the Psychoshock ability, which is a power that just, depletes an enemy’s hp. Not exactly the creative gameplay Arkane is known for. Sure there’s tons of other options, but part of design is teaching the player to take advantage of them and I never felt like this was happening for me.

All’s well that ends well, since the main game turned out to be a first draft for the Mooncrash DLC, which is the best immersive sim ever made and deserves recognition as a stand-alone game.

Está lejos, muy lejos, de ser algo hecho para mí, pero no puedo sino rendirme a la evidencia de un diseño de escenarios sublime.

Pros:
- Ya es marca de la casa, pero la cantidad de posibilidades a la hora de resolver cada situación es abrumadora.
- El árbol de habilidades permite darle enfoques completamente distintos a cada partida.
- La ambientación es opresora en su máximo exponente, tal y como buscan sus diseñadores.

Contras:
- Tanto respawneo de monstruos me acaba imposibilitando disfrutar de la exploración.
- Los inventarios limitados me llevan por la senda de la amargura.
- Hace muy poco por atraer al jugador ajeno a su propuesta.

Remember?

Il gioco ha una serie di immancabili problemi. Tra questi, l'inclusione di un sistema di hacking molto rudimentale e semplice che rende triviale l'apertura di casseforti e porte varie (nonché il trovare password e il prestare attenzione particolare all'ambiente, rendendo il tutto accessibile a tutti - il che ci sta visto il livello di libertà voluto dagli sviluppatori, ma secondo me, per l'appunto, l'hacking rende tutto troppo semplice), o la possibilità di costruire verso metà gioco una quantità spropositata di neuromod con il minimo sforzo (necessarie per la progressione delle skill del personaggio). Questi difetti impallidiscono però di fronte alla quasi totalità di scelte di game design e level design, alla scrittura, alla soundtrack, all'art direction. Le possibilità di approccio nel combattimento e nell'esplorazione sono notevolmente varie, e i segreti e le cazzatine da scoprire sono centinaia. Le sottotrame dei personaggi sulla stazione spaziale sono sempre interessanti nonostante la frequente normalità/mondanità, e danno l'impressione di un mondo molto vivo e realistico (in questo aiuta anche la possibilità di usare un sistema di tracciamento per cercare e trovare ogni singolo umano ufficialmente ospitato sulla stazione spaziale). La prima ora di gioco in particolare è brillante. Ci sarebbero anche un paio di problemi a mio avviso minori, quali i tempi di caricamento (effettivamente lunghini, e che possono restituire la sensazione di un mondo meno coeso di quanto sia in realtà) e l'IA e i modelli facciali degli NPC umani, ma sinceramente di questi non mi frega un cazzo

If you are thinking about playing this game and haven't already had story elements spoiled for you then I am very happy for you; going into this game uninformed is the way to do it. Nothing in the following will spoil anything story related other than the fact that hostiles exist in the game.

I love that lots of doors can be opened by hacking, finding keycards, hacking, or finding an alternate route and it's just as varied when it comes to ways to deal damage. You have a lot of combat options with different weapons and abilites. Hucking enormous objects at enemies is a wonderful and very ammo efficient way to get kills. The fact that a foam dart crossbow is a useful weapon is wild to me, whenever I end up using it to do something it just feels so awesome.

Usually getting through the current zone and into the next is intuitive, occasionally I get a little lost but the map can get me where I need to go eventually.

I like the npcs that are encountered and the environmental storytelling is great, to flesh out the world and characters. The journey the player goes on leads to many interesting situations with the environment and hostile npcs.

Yes to this whole thing! I love this game so much, is it something I will play through over and over again in short succession? no, probably not but I am currently half way through my 2nd playthrough and trying out a playstyle and abilities I hadn't before is a blast.

Playthrough: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLymbpuce_n7mvdMFx37KYnG3kOJ-Yp2Y4

Prey is one of the greatest love letters conceived towards the immersive sim genre, and a masterclass in environmental storytelling.

Talos I is one of the best and most fully realized locations I've visited in any game. Each environment is hand crafted to tell a story. From the sleek and modernist design of the game's living quarters that tell you about the person lives of each member, to the claustrophobic and eerie feel of the maintenance tunnels; every aspect of the station feels meticulously planned and executed.

The sense of scale is mind-blowing, exploring the interconnected station with it's different areas that boast open ended level design is already amazing; it's when you take your first spacewalk, however, that you realize the true size of the Talos I.

The freedom to explore this world and tackle challenges in many ways, in any order is where it shines. Whether it's setting up turrets and traps, using stealth to avoid detection, or engaging in direct combat, the player is given the freedom to choose their preferred approach. You want to get to that locked room? You can turn into a cup and roll under the gap in the window, you can shoot the security lock with a dart gun, you can explore and find the code somewhere around the station, you can hack the panel. Or maybe you make use of the game's fantastic implementation of verticality and build yourself an alternative path into the room with the GLOO cannon! Exploration is fun, enticing and rewarding in Prey.

Admittedly though, the game balance is questionable at times, Combat Focus + Shotgun is enough to make even the terrifying Nightmare melt in a few seconds. It didn't kill my enjoyment, but having a clear cut option for 99% of combat encounters is a bit of a downer. Typhon neuromods are also pretty damn strong, and the downsides to installing typhon neuromods is pretty easily worked around too that there's really no reason not to take them. It's still a great time despite these small shortcomings though.

For a while there I was really iffy on Prey. Sure it was an imsim that did everything right, but I just wasn't having much fun with it. I've warmed up to it now, after messing with some settings and turning the difficulty down, but I've still got some issues with it.

So, starting with the good, this really does feel a lot like system shock. Specifically the best parts of system shock 2, where you're hacking your way through a reclaimed station, reliving the lives that were lost before you got there. It's got the horror thing too. A different, more modern type of horror, but the lineage is there. Also, you can definitely feel Chris Avellone's hand in the writing, specifically when there's questions around identity and personality that I won't get into because honestly I thought they were the best part of the game. The other aspects of the plot, the bits dealing with morality in particular, work a bit less well, but still ask interesting enough questions. Beyond all that though, it really works just like System Shock.

Except, not quite. I think there's two ways it differs that kinda hamper the experience. First and more minor probably, it's objective marker-driven. I don't know why an imsim would be, but I tried playing with them turned off and it didn't seem particularly designed around it. Not enough signposting in places. Second and more major for me, especially before I turned the difficulty down: I really didn't click with the enemy design. The mimics are fine, but everything bigger either felt wildly spongy (compared to the amount of ammo you can obtain) or way too fast and long-ranged to take advantage of in that imsim kinda way. Even when I turned the difficulty down, they just became easier to deal with, not any more fun. And that sucks! Because a lot of this game has pretty mandatory combat!

Honestly I thought this was about as good as System Shock 1, which is really strange, because that game is a scattershot collection of ideas that would become the imsim genre, where Prey knows exactly what it wants to be, what kind of imsim and what kind of horror. Honestly I think part of it is just too much capitulating to modern game design values, both with the horror-enemy design and the objective structure. Only in the last hour did I really get to know the station as a place, and that's just because the objective markers glitched out on me occasionally, luckily never during a part that would've been impossible without them. It's a good game, but I don't think it's a great one