6 Reviews liked by princessbeach


Prey

2017

Maybe my favorite imsim. Taking what is essentially a dungeon crawler genre (FPS RPG, aka "immersive sims") and synthesizing it with Metroid is a stroke of genius, and I adore basically everything about this game. How it looks, how it plays, how it sounds, the plot, the twists, everything. I recommend it to everyone forever.

The best indie game I've played in the last couple of years -- great brain teaser puzzles focused around a really narrow set of answers/clues, integrated in a (lightly) myst-esque way into the setting, reasonably well paced, some clever stuff. The text throughout the game is competently written, but the Plot (and to a lesser extent setting) is exceptionally hokey.

Love this game.

The campaign design is a little scattershot, and it shows the seams of the scope-tightening it reportedly went through, but the result is still great. Unparalleled ambience, looks fantastic to this day, an all-timer OST (in my top 5 for sure), and a goofy sci-fi plot about climate change made in the late 90s.

Less solid as a game than its successor Red Alert 2 for sure, but still effortlessly iconic.

Really wanted to like this one, and there are some parts of it I do like - the broad brush strokes of the narrative, the soundtrack (sans the rapping; lyrics were too cringe for me lol) - but ultimately it felt easy, repetitive, hollow, and boring. Making most of the enemies in a Max Payne homage melee was not a good move, and there's way too many levels. You don't have to slo-mo or dive-dodge basically at all in this game, and in fact will actively hurt you in the boss fights as the roll-dodge is how you get away from the boss tracking. A strong effort for sure, but a weak outcome.

the androids are like the ultimate universe x-men and i fucking despise the ultimate universe x-men. i wish the ultimate universe x-men did not exist and this game reminds me they DO exist. so.

this would be the best game of all time if the one behind it was me and not david cage. food for thought