After playing more than half of Prey, I feel like it's and overrated underrated game.
I was sold at first on its immersive sim premise. It was supposed to be a mechanically rich game, where every system connects with another in order to give the player a huge breadth of choice in how they approach every situation.
While there was this feeling of systemic combat/puzzle-solving, the main thing that kept bugging me down is how stiff and inelegant everything feels. Maybe playing this on the PS4 didn't help, but framerate and loading times were terrible and really discouraged exploring the station. Opening a door to another level afforded me about enough time to go make myself a coffee.
The gameplay on its own was so cluncky that it got me killed up to 10 times in certain encounters. I'm not expecting Call of Duty levels of flow in the first-person shooting here, but being able to escape enemy attacks would have been appreciated. The player's health drains at such a speed that one hit K.O.s are frequent, and it never gets out of that rhythm. You either throw everything you have at enemies to annihilate them, or die trying to be more cautious with your resources.
The story is not much to write home about either. It starts off with an amazing premise, then forgets to elaborate on it while making you go on various fetch quests until the end reveals a quite cliché twist to top everything off.
In the end, I wasn't charmed that much by Prey. I did love the enemy design and the mimic's mechanic of hiding as plain objects. I liked the promise of systemic gameplay that could be felt in the multi-use weapons and powers you were given. I still could never get into the game that much. Constantly getting killed for no reason and waiting in interminable loading screens did Prey in for me.
I was sold at first on its immersive sim premise. It was supposed to be a mechanically rich game, where every system connects with another in order to give the player a huge breadth of choice in how they approach every situation.
While there was this feeling of systemic combat/puzzle-solving, the main thing that kept bugging me down is how stiff and inelegant everything feels. Maybe playing this on the PS4 didn't help, but framerate and loading times were terrible and really discouraged exploring the station. Opening a door to another level afforded me about enough time to go make myself a coffee.
The gameplay on its own was so cluncky that it got me killed up to 10 times in certain encounters. I'm not expecting Call of Duty levels of flow in the first-person shooting here, but being able to escape enemy attacks would have been appreciated. The player's health drains at such a speed that one hit K.O.s are frequent, and it never gets out of that rhythm. You either throw everything you have at enemies to annihilate them, or die trying to be more cautious with your resources.
The story is not much to write home about either. It starts off with an amazing premise, then forgets to elaborate on it while making you go on various fetch quests until the end reveals a quite cliché twist to top everything off.
In the end, I wasn't charmed that much by Prey. I did love the enemy design and the mimic's mechanic of hiding as plain objects. I liked the promise of systemic gameplay that could be felt in the multi-use weapons and powers you were given. I still could never get into the game that much. Constantly getting killed for no reason and waiting in interminable loading screens did Prey in for me.
Moni
2 months ago