At first glance Prey might just seem like another shooter about an alien race trying to destroy humanity. However, from the opening scene it tries to separate itself from the flooded genre. Prey puts you in control of Tommy, a Native American who has an openly strong hatred for his heritage. The game opens in a bar on his old reservation where he is trying to talk his love interest, Jen, into leaving the reservation and joining him in the outside world. Things quickly turn to the worst, however, in one of the best opening scenes I have had the pleasure of watching in my time playing video games.
The plot and characters are well structured for such a short FPS, it avoids the normal aliens trying to destroy the earth scenario through plot twists and environmental details as you explore the very large alien space structure where the majority of the game takes place. Tommy is an interesting lead character as well; thanks to a stroke of luck at the start of the game the contraption carrying him to his death is destroyed and he is free to roam his new surroundings. What makes Tommy great is his reaction to all of this, while he unsurprisingly becomes the savior of Earth at the end of the game his only objective from the moment he breaks free is finding Jen and escaping from the aliens. Tommy is so stubborn and hates his Cherokee heritage so much that even after dying early in the game and talking to the spirit of his dead Grandfather he still doesn't believe in all of that Cherokee spirit or afterlife talk.
That spirit though, is one of the things that separates Prey from a lot of shooters. After Tommy's short experience with death (where it was of course, not his time just yet) he gains the ability to remove his spirit from his physical body and walk around almost unnoticed by enemies. This gives you a sort of scouting tool to see what lies beyond certain corners, but more importantly it makes for a lot of interesting puzzles. These range from simply walking the spirit through forcefields that Tommy can't cross himself to my favorite ones where you have to find clever places to leave Tommy's physical form in an elevator or moving platforms and activate them as his spirit. Though, they abuse these ideas to death by the end of the game and it starts to feel cumbersome to deactivate a forcefield for the 20th time that level when that could of been completely avoided altogether.
On the opposite side of things, the Spirit form makes the game far easier than it should be. In fact it completely removes any sort of fear of death from Prey. Whenever you die from any means possible you are ported to the Cherokee spirit land where you have a short time frame to kill the ancient spirits of the past to restore your health and spirit power. After that you are simply taken right back to where you were before you died at no cost: enemies are at the same health, you have the same amount of ammo, and so on. There is no loading time or anything of the sort, it is a quick and smooth transition that doesn't even make death feel like a punishment.
To compliment this the enemy AI is also poor most of the time. Every alien from big bosses to the weakest grunt follows a pattern rather than any sort of realistic behaviors. The normal response to an assault from Tommy seems to be firing, side stepping, then firing again. Enemies don't even bother to take cover when there are more than obvious objects to hide behind. What makes fighting enemies a challenge is the sheer volume of them you fight at a time. The game is split up into short bursts of walking and puzzle solving, then fighting a lot of enemies at once. Usually all your guns will be drained in this process but there is a lot of spare ammo across the levels. It just means you will be changing guns a lot.
Thankfully this isn't an issue as a lot of care seemed to go into Prey's weapon assortment. Unlike many shooters out there where you can only hold a couple of weapons Prey allows you to keep a weapon indefinably once you first obtain it, even when it runs out of ammo. The weapons are also obtained through story moments instead of simply killing an enemy and looting his gun. For example, one of the first guns you get is actually the arm of a boss you fight that is ripped from his body by a cleverly timed forcefield. Something to note too, aside from a monkey wrench Tommy starts out with all of Prey's guns are from aliens. While a lot of them mimic realistic weapons such as the alien shotgun they all have their own gimmick that makes them fun to use.
The biggest selling point in my mind about Prey is the atmosphere. The structure the game takes place in, known as the Sphere, is one of the most grotesque things I have ever seen. It appears part mechanical in some sections, while other parts appear to be living and breathing. The game also avoids the whole cliche of quick scares too plagued by a lot of games in this genre, there are never any enemies waiting behind a crate or the sort; Prey is genuinely creepy. There are deformed humans and experimental labs. The first thing that comes to mind is a section where two children are trapped in a small room, one of the kids slowly turns into an evil spirit and rips her brother in half as she flies off. Another after that has Tommy killing the spirits of kids that died on a school bus that was consumed by the Sphere. Moments like this are what Prey is all about for the most part.
Outside of the main campaign Prey really doesn't offer much. There is a multi-player mode but it is nothing special, and most of the achievements are obtained from simply beating the main story. What Prey does offer, though, is an engaging single player campaign that should last the average person 6 to 7 hours. With a great atmosphere, story, and puzzles it is simple to look past Prey's biggest flaw of being a tad to easy for the common gamer, even on the highest difficulty.
