Prey Review (360)

Age rating: 18+ (PEGI)

What is it?
First person shooter in a space ship.

Is it fun?
Yes, unless you suffer from motion sickness then you might feel a little sick!

Is it worth the money? Xbox 360 – £39.99 and PC – £24.99
Yes.

Why?
I’m going to summarise Prey’s good and bad points. It does boast portals (aka doors) and other very clever graphical effects. This is a cool looking game.

Good points:

• It’s easy – You can complete all 22 levels in a few days.
• I’m invincible – You never really die. Instead you just take part in a sub-game in the spirit world to gain your health and spirit energy back and then you’re transported back to the game at the point you “died”.
• Achievements ahoy – You get achievements after completing every level, even for the short, plot heavy levels where there’s no shooting. Easy money gamerpoints.
• Spirit mode and spirit bow – For those hard to reach places.
• Organic environment – Uses an enhanced Doom 3 engine apparently.
• Kick-ass weapons – I love the leech weapon when it’s full of hot plasma. Melty, melty.
• The “shoot first, ask questions later” approach to game play.
• Clever level design – For the first 19 or so levels incorporating several nice and slightly challenging puzzles.
• Portals – Madness. Sometimes you walk through doors, sometimes you use portals (and so do the bad guys!).
• Gravity switches and walkways – Upside, downside, on-your-side action anyone?
• Your own spaceship – Fly me to the moon, or just to the end of the level. Ta.
• Arcade games – Rune Master, Blackjack and Draw Poker.

Bad Points:

• Really, really lazy level design for the last 3 levels – It looks like they ran out of ideas and wanted the game out the door.
• Multiplayer via Xbox Live sucks donkey balls – Don’t mention the lag. I said DON’T mention it. Aggghhhh, the lag.
• The Black Jack machine cheats – There seems to be a huge number of 10 cards in the pack Mr Xbox 360
• Tommy’s sidekick, the spiritual hawk – Annoying, just really annoying. Look this game is not that complicated so just bugger off and let me shoot stuff!!! Grrr, feckin bird.

Screenshots:

Links:
Official Prey website
Prey’s protracted (11 year) incubation period