I’ve had prior experience with Arkane’s style of immersive sim via Deathloop, however it didn’t really grab my attention and I ended up shelving it. I picked Prey up while it was on sale a few months ago, and I certainly don’t regret it.

The game is gripping for the very beginning, with one of the most jaw dropping opening sequences ever. I ended up playing the game almost entirely on the Steam Deck while on vacation, and while the handheld formfactor diminished the punch of more tense encounters, I found the experience enjoyable enough with little compromise.

Talos-1 is an interesting setting, several sectors each wildly different from the last. There’s a sort of Metroidvania-esque approach to progression, however I found myself making use of the games GLOO gun to find roundabout entrances, which definitely made the experience unique (if not a bit tedious when I would later find the “proper” way to navigate). The alien creatures are varied in their design and a truly terrifying threat at times. The characters, particularly Alex Wu, are incredible, thanks in large part to the stellar voice work. Combat is incredibly similar to Arkane’s other titles, however I am a fan of their gun feel and so all I can really say if “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Should you decide to go out of your way and do side content, you are greatly rewarded with differing outcomes contributing to how the story unfolds.

Ultimately, for a game that only took a little over ten hours to make my way through, I’m incredibly happy with Prey. There isn’t a single bad aspect to this game, however, there are several flaws- such as slow skill progression and an overly restrictive ammo economy- which prevent me from giving it a higher score. However, a 4/5 is nothing to scoff at, and I truly recommend you give this game a shot.

My feelings regarding this game are complicated. On one hand, it is a masterpiece that innovates in storytelling, takes a violent character and turns the emotional vulnerability to an extreme, and adds a shocking amount of depth to the core cast of characters, to an extent that I had not expected going in. On the other hand, I see a story with contrived events, characters saved by plot armor and things happening just for the sake of it. The spectacle of said events is grand, yes, but they are mainly style-focused, lacking the substance that so many other parts of the game contain. Furthermore, nine times out of ten the combat system is boring, repetitive, and needlessly flashy. Having played on PC with keyboard and mouse controls (which worked surprisingly well), I was able to near-effortlessly left click my way through most encounters, putting little thought into my combos besides what they could kill faster. Combos felt nice to execute, but felt like something I was doing to make fights go by a little faster, rather than out of necessity. The enemies feel kind of spongy, so I'd recommend turning the difficulty down for most encounters, and then cranking it back up for boss fights.

While I have more nitpicks than you'd expect for a 4.5/5 star review, the one thing that keeps it so high is the story. It's so refreshing. While by now, we've all kind of soured on Sony's cinematic gameplay, there's something so special about taking a seemingly one-dimensional character like Kratos, and flipping everything on its head. It's masterfully written, with some truly engaging dynamics between Atreus and Mimir, and some geniunely hilarious banter with the side characters. Each character acts with reason and the vast lore of the world is explained to a point where no mythology knowledge is needed. While not sure if I will immediately, I can definitely see myself returning to the Nine Realms to pick up any achievements I missed while waiting for an all but inevitable Ragnarok PC Port.

I'd like to preface this by saying that of the five available endings (or routes), I had to stop after reaching Ending A because I simply couldn't take this anymore. At times, Drakengard is incredibly fun, but those times are few and far between. Most of the time you are spent fighting spongy enemies and bosses pressing the same button thousands of times and doing the most mindnumbingly boring tasks imaginable for the sake of reaching a minor plot development, only to do the same surface level hack and slash combat for another few hours. At times, the visuals are Drakengard excel for the times, but others, the arenas are nothing but grey expanses. It's truly impressive just how little character this game has once you do anything but look at the story. The difficulty scaling is abysmal, and the mechanics of the boss fight are frustrating for the sake of it. There is no reward to overcoming obstacles, unless you've got a hankering for more boring combat.