StarCraft Ghost
Duke Nukem Forever
Prey
The Legend of Zelda: (Pick a title)
Most, if not all, Blizzard Entertainment games
These titles—as well as many others—have many things in common, but I want us to focus on one core element: delays. Sometimes game delays are worth it (Zelda), and sometimes they're not (Daikatana). Sometimes a game is delayed for so long, the outcome will be a toss-up at best (Duke4). Inevitably, we know these games will come out, but will the wait(s) be worth it? Maybe, maybe not.
I am happy to tell you that in the case of Prey, developed by Human Head Studios and published by 3D Realms, the wait was worth it. So, so worth it.
In development since approximately 1995, then canceled until the project was rescued by Human Head Studios, Prey has finally arrived, and with it that come features that are guaranteed to, if not re-shape the FPS genre, then at least give it a swift kick in the direction it should continue to head.
Prey has been described by many who have played the demo as "revolutionary" due to the features it adds to the FPS genre. But what makes Prey stand out from the pack isn't anything that overtly screams "I AM REVOLUTIONARY!" In fact, it's almost as if the designers didn't want you to notice anything new at all. Take wall tracks, for example. By using them, you can walk up walls and across ceilings as easily as you ascend or descend a staircase. The first time I used one, my stomach lurched just a bit (I found it to be similar to the sharp jolt you get when going up a sharp incline on a roller coaster) and after that, I was fine. Running across walls, sniping from ceilings.... These actions felt as natural as pressing Space to jump or aiming with a mouse, and you'll find yourself weaving them into your FPS repertoire with little to no thought, which is exactly how new gaming experiences should be.
What I found to be the coolest part of ceiling or wall combat was the ease in which you could return to the ground for more natural combat. Simply press jump and you'll flip down to the ground, the quickness of which will sometimes allow you to surprise your enemy long enough to spin your weapon into the air to finish him off, or maybe even get away if you're close to the afterlife. Gravity has a part to play as well, for although enemies killed on the ceiling will drop helpful ammo for you, it will usually fall to the ground, so you're bound to return there anyway.
Portals, waygates, whatever you wanna call em, have been around for a while, and yet Prey causes them to feel brand new. In Prey, strolling through portals that allow you to jump from one area to the other aren't accompanied by any sudden flashes of light and the sudden arrival of new scenery. You see the area you'll be entering through the portal, you walk through, and... you're just there. It's like opening a door and walking through. Again, this isn't necessarily new, but it's a nifty little feature that just feels clean and allows you to concentrate on playing the game. You shouldn't have to feel disoriented when stepping through a portal in “video game land”; you should just do it and keep on playing.
Quick Load may be one of the most controversial features in gaming. Many argue that it's a necessary tool for tricky parts of a game, while others feel it's cheap; if you die, you're dead, and you should have to backtrack. Prey offers a little something for both parties. Let's face it, we've all hit that Quick Save button at an inopportune moment. You know, you think your safe, tap the button, and just at that moment, someone flies around the corner and shoots you in the face. Sucks, I know. Or maybe you haven't had a chance to play for a few days and you just can't remember where you left off. When you Quick Load in Prey, the loading screen consists of a screenshot showing where you last saved. Instead of a generic screen, you get to scope out the scenery of where you last were, and if there happen to be hostiles right in front of your mug, you have a few moments to map out a course of action. Why hasn't this been done before?
If you equate Quick Loading with the devil, you may rest assured: dying in Prey isn't so bad at all. The first time I met my demise, I let out the obligatory curse word and sent my thumb floating toward Quick Load. Turns out, I didn't die at all. Not to give anything away, but at a certain point in the game, you will be introduced to your spirit form. When you die in Prey, you are sent to a sort of limbo-esque place where there are spirits flying around; some blue, some red. You have a limited amount of time to shoot as many of these spirits as you can using your spirit bow. Cap a blue spirit, get a bit of your spirit essence back. Bring down a red, regain some of your health. After a certain interval of time, you're returned to the corporeal plane, complete with whatever spirit and/or life you managed to regain while you were between realms. I found this to be an interesting and fun concept, because you really only have to Quick Load if you don't want to deal with slinging arrows at flying spirits. Again, it's a case of Human Head Studios taking something that's been around for a long time and, with what essentially amounts to a minigame, making it nowhere near as annoying as it is in... in almost any other game, quite frankly. Quick Loaders have a reason not to be so dependent on their favorite feature, and those against it can just keep on playing.
The ability to assume your ethereal form after a certain point in the game makes for many unique gameplay possibilities and moments. When I first heard about it, I couldn't help but think: “Gimmick.” This is hardly the case. By leaving your body, you use your spirit to accomplish tasks your physical body isn't up to. You can pass through certain barriers, use your spirit bow to give your foes the shaft, and solve certain puzzles. One example of the latter is a point in the game where you have to make your way across the ceiling via two wall tracks. Sounds simple enough, but unfortunately, the tracks aren't connected. There's a gap in the center, and a part of the track disconnects to move between them. What you do is, climb up the track then leave your physical body behind. Using your spirit, you go into a control room and press the appropriate button to move the small piece of track across the offending gap. Your body, still being attached, moves with it. Once your flesh has been moved safely across, press the button that corresponds with instantly sending your spirit back to your body. Voila: puzzle solved, and in a rather clever way. These types of puzzles appear rather often, but I didn't find them as detracting from the overall experience. Because you use relatively new methos to solve them, they're not distracting or annoying; you feel just clever enough after solving one to be excited about the next.
The weapons in Prey also have a familiar-yet-revamped feeling to them, (more on this below) but what makes them unique is how each weapon's “feel” is coupled with their graphical designs. The Leech gun, for instance, fluctuates behind fire, ice, and lightning. Said weapon sucks its munitions from organic looking vents instead of packs just lying around. Once you're out of ammo, you're out unless you can find another gaseous substance spewing from something decidedly icky.
Others are a twist on guns you've seen many times before, but their design makes them feel new. The first weapon you'll receive (besides the wrench) is a hybrid of a rapid fire weapon and a sniper rifle. Yeah, we've seen this kind of thing before, but the gooey, organic, alien appearance of the weapon makes it look like something new. After pressing your Secondary attack key, use the mouse wheel to zoom farther in or out to get a bead on your target. What's more, enemies glow orange, so whether you're crouched on the floor or hanging like Spider-Man, you'll be able to see your adversaries to get the kind of clear shots you'll need.
In addition to aesthetics, I'm also a firm believer that a gun should feel good, that it should feel effective, as well as simple and fun to use. Using lightning with the Leech gun provides a perfect illustration. Not content to simply fire a bolt of lightning, the enemies go flying back after the gun discharges, leaving you with the sensation that the gun not only looks powerful, but it feels powerful as well.
A staple in FPS games since Doom, the shotgun makes an obligatory appearance in Prey; for all the times I've used this weapon over the years, however, I can't remember ever having a better time with it. Not content to fire simple shells, the Primary attack of this boomstick spews acid over your foes, which of course begins to feast on their bodies. Should the bad guys be too far away from this attack to be effective, the Secondary attack hurls an entire canister of the stuff, coating the designated area of a level upon impact. This should amount to great fun in multiplayer—er, MultiPrey battles, as you could sneak above a group of adversaries via a wall/ceiling track, blanket them of adversaries with ooze, then drop down to finish any that are still alive. If any managed to survive your acid attack, they won't be putting up much of a fight.
You certainly won't find any cars or tanks to drive in Prey, but at times you can fly around in a small biomechanical spaceship, in yet another way you'll be required to overcome puzzle obstacles. In one instance, the small flying pod required me to zoom around to different power plants in order to deactivate them, thereby powering down a large whirring fan located above me, which would allow me to pass through it. The controls to shut down the power plants were protected by force fields, which provided an obstacle to my physical body—but not my spiritual essence. There's a bit more to it, but I don't want to give anything away. I enjoyed this puzzle, because Prey wasn't content to force me to use only the pod I had inhabited to proceed; it blended puzzle-solving skills I had used before and combined them with new features, which amounted to giving me a higher feeling of satisfaction when I was able to complete the area.
Not content to give only weapons, vehicles, and puzzles unique looks and feels, Human Head has spent pain-staking amounts of time on level design and detail as well. Much of the alien spacecraft, for example, has a familiar looking factory-like atmosphere to it, (think Doom 3's industrial areas; not surprising, considering Prey is built on the Doom 3 engine) but certain others areas are obviously alien. Gooey holes in the walls and ceilings literally vomit body parts, slime oozes along the floor, and of course, most of the enemies look particularly disgusting as well. Even health isn't found in the standard (and now somewhat controversial) Red Cross-esque health packs. You regain health by walking through curious purple misty spots on the floor. The levels are designed just as well as they look, with many opportunities to use the various weapons, tracks, portals, et cetera that are scattered around. Sure, you'll spend some time running along the ground, but who wants to do that when more degrees of combat have been made available to you? Normal and abnormal types of gameplay have been welded together to provide gameplay experiences that got me excited about playing shooters again, something I really hadn't felt since the original Half-Life.
The atmosphere, the weapons, the ways in which you perform tasks that have been done for decades in just about every video game ever made yet in ways that make them feel new.... I realize I must sound like a broken record by this point, but Prey gives you a new appreciation for every little thing because the game makes every little thing feel revitalized and unique.
Online fragging is great fun as well. I found myself having a renewed interest in deathmatch due to the unique gameplay opportunities Prey creates for fraggers who've played just about every other FPS you can play. Let's face it, standard deathmatch-type games have gotten all too familiar over the years, but the new gameplay opportunities presented in play give it a shiny new appeal. It isn't abnormal to sprint into a room only to find players duking it out on ceilings and walls. You'll have to rework some strategies and methods just a bit, but that's not so bad, as the learning curve is virtually nothing at all due to the fun you'll be having. Many levels are only average sized, but due to the fact that you can take advantage of the floor and the walls and ceiling, they'll fell absolutely massive. Portals present many fun kill opportunities, as you can shoot players through them (and even yourself, if you're not careful) for sneaky frags.
So that's what's good about the game. Really, the only complain I have has to do with the storyline; more specifically, the dialogue and voice acting that goes along with it. Some of the lines are just laughable, (“Tommy! Get me down from this thing!” “Hold on, Jen! I'll get you down from that thing!”) and seem to serve no other purpose than to yank you swiftly and painfully out of your comfy suspension of disbelief. I appreciate the unique background of the character, (a troubled Native American) as it's a welcome change from the hard-boiled space marines and psuedo-intellectual protagonists we've had running around for years in video games. I just wish they were written better, that's all. Many of the main characters feel like they're forced upon you, and the action begins so quickly that although Tommy (your avatar) feels an attachment to some of the NPCs, I could've cared less about them. Still, like I mentioned before, I cared more about Tommy and his friends than I ever did about Duke Nukem, or the “Doomed space marine,” so even though much of the writing seems rushed or just plain bad, I give Human Head props for creating a unique video game character.
Prey is a game that will get you tons of bang for your buck. It's like I said, game fans: FPS titles have felt stale for quite a while now. It's time for something to remind us why this genre is one of the best in gaming, and Prey does that and more. You'll be reminded of your first time playing the all time greats (Wolf3D, Doom, Duke3D, Quake, Half-Life) due to the fact that Prey doesn't just feel like something that has come before; it's a trend setter, and a worthy addition to any gamer's library.
