Prey: Ugly aliens and gorgeous gameplay

Ten years ago 3D Realms promised us a title that would turn first-person shooters on their side: Prey. The game would feature radical technology and a detailed new physics engine unheard of at the time. Delays and technical problems plagued its completion, but now, after a decade of development, Prey has finally arrived. While its revolutionary bag of tricks are a bit dated, Human Head Studios managed to pull a few rabbits out of the hat for a surprisingly fresh gaming experience. Plus, you get to kill aliens with a wrench, which is almost always a good thing.

In Prey you take the role of Tommy, a Cherokee Indian who lives on a reservation with his girlfriend and grandfather. One dark night at the bar, reports of strange hovering lights drift through the television speakers. The power flickers and suddenly green beams blast through the ceiling. Planks are torn away to reveal an alien spacecraft floating in the air. The ceiling is ripped from the walls and Jen, Tommy and his grandfather are taken prisoner aboard the ship.

Tommy awakes inside the craft staring at a sprawl of bio-machinery and alien life forms. Humans are strapped to slabs of metal and carried along conveyor belts to their doom. Tommy is nothing more than helpless prey to these monsters. But as he nears the end of his journey, someone sets off a bomb. The explosion rocks the ship and sends Tommy flying from his shackles. He's free, but Jen and his grandfather are still trapped. With nothing more than a wrench as a weapon Tommy sets out to rescue his family and destroy the aliens that have kidnapped his people.

Prey's heart-pounding beginning fuels the entire game with adrenaline, yet it isn't afraid to tone things down with heady puzzles and a dramatic story. The game takes place on a massive alien ship roughly the size of Texas. Every wall, door and ceiling has a sick alien feel to it, and with changing gravity and strange creatures oozing from the walls, you'll feel just as lost as the abducted humans.

The game progresses smoothly from one area to another, alternating run-and-gun action with quiet puzzle solving. While the shooting part is average, the unique puzzles Prey throws your way are the real meat of the game. Most of your time is spent searching for a way across seemingly impassable rooms. You'll have to pull some interesting tricks to progress through the ship, so learn to think in 3D and take note of the world around you. A strong sense of spatial orientation can be your greatest weapon.

Climbing your way through the alien corridors you'll come across a slew of interesting bio-mechanical weapons. The guns operate similar to traditional FPS fare, such as grenade launchers and shotguns, but the look and feel is entirely different. The most interesting weapon is the Crawler, small spider-like aliens you can pick up, pull apart and toss like a grenade for a satisfying explosion.

Prey is packed with interesting gameplay mechanics that make it a very different breed of game. These include gravity-defying wall walks, mid-air portals and a mysterious spirit mode. Using the wisdom of his ancestors, Tommy learns to separate his soul from his corporeal body. The main use for this is moving through force fields to activate switches that allow your body to traverse impossible terrain.

Even dying has been turned into a unique event in Prey. Rather than simply re-spawning at a previous location, when Tommy loses his health his spirit enters the Death Realm. There, armed with only a bow and arrow, he must battle the Wraiths of Fallen Spirits for the right to reclaim his body.

The first time you come across a wall walk you might want to puke. Tommy audibly agrees. Wall walks wrap around rooms and allow you to move freely on the surface as if gravity were always on your side. As the screen tilts to maintain your perspective, it's extremely easy to lose your spatial orientation. After some time you'll grow accustomed to it, but the first few instances it's morbidly confusing. You'll also come across gravity changing platforms scattered throughout the ship. Blast them with a weapon to shift the gravity parallel with your target. Again, confusing at first, but a lot of fun to play around with later in the game.

One of the earliest features announced for Prey was portal technology. These doors are shown as rips in space-time and let you peer to another part of the ship as if you were standing right there. The impressive part is that you can walk around the portal to see the remainder of the room you're in, yet take two steps back you'll move into a completely different area.

Fortunately none of these features turn out to be simple gimmicks. Level design takes full advantage of the gravity effects. It's amazing to stand upside-down on a wall walk and have to take out enemies from above who are really on the floor below. Portals, while not nearly as integral, can be used in some creative ways to move around the ship, and the spirit mode ability becomes a very important part of puzzle solving as you progress in the game.

The dark, mysterious atmospheres of an alien spacecraft comes alive in vivid detail in Prey. Colors are extremely rich but keep a muted appearance to mirror the alien feel of the sphere. Everything you come across looks simply stunning, though the human character models appear a little blocky at times. Expect a lot of detail and some amazing scenery on your little tour of duty.

The even mix of open areas and tight corridors are elegantly sewn together to create an expansive ship to explore. The many disparate elements of Prey are all folded quite smoothly into the game. After ten years of development and many false starts, it's nice to see it still manages to pull itself together for a coherent experience.

If it were released 10 years ago, Prey would have been hailed as a revolution in gaming. The wow-factor may have faded, but Prey still manages to illicit a few surprises. The storyline is intriguing, the environments are filled with detail, and the weapons add a distinct flair of originality. Even though Prey missed it's time, it's still filled with new experiences for modern gamers.

Credits:
Official game site: http://www.prey.com/
Developers site: http://www.humanhead.com/
Publisher site: http://www.2kgames.com/

Special thanks:
Andrea Stefanoni for stitching and photoshopping

Johnny Vaccaro
Editor In Chief