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.