Move aside Doom 3 and F.E.A.R.! Prey is here and ready to rrrrumble!!

[Nuclear Krusader]

Yep. Prey is finally ready to ship, and the demo has already been downloaded by many gamers, and it has left a darn good taste in the digital mouth of yours truly. The Doom 3 engine-powered visuals are good (even with my aging machine was I able to play it without a lot of tampering with the options to downgrade graphic quality); and although I did experience some quick jags the frame rates were in the range of the acceptable; most of the time I didn't even notice if there was such a thing as a mild drop in the fps. And this is real good news, for it means that gamers without SLI-powered rigs will be able to enjoy Prey in most of its glory.

Prey puts you in the boots of a disaffected Cherokee indian named Tommy who is trying to convince his girlfriend to leave the reservation with him when aliens shoot down abducting rays and start sucking people and things into their ship orbiting Earth. (Oo, and the musical score at that very moment! Just glorious!!) After he's captured, Tommy manages to escape with the assistance of some unknown character and then it's run and find a way to free your girlfriend and your grandpa from the aliens. The grandpa is inevitably turned to human sauerkraut before Tommy can do anything, and this leads the story forward to bring in one of the key elements of the game: the spirit walk. Now, I won't spoil it for you by spilling all the details, but I will inform you that the spirit walk allows Tommy to leave his body and move around, and to go to locations which are physically unreachable.

The ship is one hell of a warped ride. There are energy walkways which allow one to walk on the walls and the ceiling. Now you can have the room spinning around you without buying a bottle of gin and getting loaded. And when enemies on different positions of the X,Y,Z axis start shooting at you things really get interesting. There is potential here for puzzles and traps, which I am sure, the retail version of the game will have. As if that weren't weird enough, we have one more key element of the game to top the warpedness off: portals.

3D Realms has been speaking of Prey and its portal technologies since they first talked of the game back in 1996 and how it was to be one of the most -if not the most- important elements of the game. Well PPT (short for Prey's Portal Technology) is here and it delivers. The portals, when viewed from one direction, allow Tommy to inspect other portions of the ship and hop to the latter when he crosses the former. Now, portals are different from just spying on enemies from a surveillance camera in two Cherokee-chief ways: they are rendered in real time, that is, you are actually seeing what's happening on that spot right in that moment; and, following from the previous condition, you can interact with the environment (and it can interact with you too!). You can shoot enemies through the portal and liquidate them (nice!), yet enemies can also spot you through their end of the portal and pump you full of lead (nicer!). Walking around the portal and positioning himself behind it, Tommy cannot see the other room anymore, but the one he is in at the moment with no trace at all that a gateway to another location is opened. (Mmm, I'm already waiting for those moments when I walk into a room and enemies ambush me from a portal I cannot yet see).

Dying adds another neat surprise: When Tommy dies after he earns the ability for spirit walking, you are forced to the old RoR (restart or restore). But after he graduates from the tutorial imparted by his late grandpa on spirit walking, dying adds a new dimension to the game: you no longer are forced to RoR; instead you are transported to a spiritual pocket plane where you have to shoot wraith-like creatures to regain health and spirit energy. You only have a short time to do this, though, and then you fall again in the physical world. This is neat as you are not forced to reload (and reload times, while they are not so slow that you have time to mix yourself a martini, they are not bullet fast either), but if you died surrounded by enemies and you are able to regain only a tiny amount of health in the time given frustration levels can hit the ceiling pretty fast as you die time and time again.

The story, while it's your cliched "one man against them all, gotta-save-my-lass and the world while I'm at it," promises to be carried on a little different from what we are used to expect from a Doom-clone; this aided in great part by the spirit walk and the portal technology. Being able to pierce the veil of the physical world gives Tommy a new perspective on things, both immediate and urgent (saving his sweetie), and long-term and more transcendental as well (coming to terms with his heritage so jolly much rejected by him). It also allowed the developers to add certain elements to the story which at the beginning of the game were unthought of. I shan't spoil the fun for you, fellows, but let's just say that Tommy's spiritual hopping has created some kind of rift through which other 'entities' not of alien origin are now able to interact in the material plane.

At length, the Prey demo offers gamers a quick but delicious taste of what they should expect in the full version of the game. If the story continues to be developed smoothly, and the surprises don't stop immediately after the second level past where the demo left off, this game is a winner. When jolly much hyped Doom 3 came out, I prophetically stated that the landmark in PC Gaming would never be the game itself, which was a flop, but the engine developed for it, which would allow really imaginative developers to create real entertaining and jaw-dropping games (and I am not talking just anent visuals and fps), parsecs away from the digital garbage id Software tried to feed us. In 1996, 3D Realms stated that Prey "will do to Quake what Duke Nukem 3D did to Doom." Well, it just may do precisely that... to Doom 3 and many others.

[Ghost(BOO!)]

That's quite a post Nuclear. Sounds like a good game. I have pretty high standards after I bought Half-Life 2

[pam123]

Thanks.
The latest PCGamer arrived just the other day with the trailer for Prey included on the disk.
I see I'll have to check it out.

[TwoRails]

That's good news, NK! -- I wonder, since Prey is finally arriving, if that means there is hope for DNF ... ??

[rspassey]

Originally Posted by pam123 Thanks. The latest PCGamer arrived just the other day with the trailer for Prey included on the disk. I see I'll have to check it out.

WHAT? I just got mine yesturday and there was no disk - That isn't fair... though I can get the demo online, I think I'm being jipped on CDs, I have never gotten one... the magazine's a good read, anyways...

Nonetheless, Prey sounds like a GREAT game with incredible potential - I will be getting it in the future.

[pam123]

Originally Posted by ryan124712 WHAT? I just got mine yesturday and there was no disk - That isn't fair... though I can get the demo online, I think I'm being jipped on CDs, I have never gotten one... the magazine's a good read, anyways... Nonetheless, Prey sounds like a GREAT game with incredible potential - I will be getting it in the future.

Hmmnnn....
It could be something about sending the issues out of the country or you could have subscribed to the version without included disks (The subscription comes both ways.).

[Nuclear Krusader]

Which month's issue is it, Pam?

[pam123]

Originally Posted by Nuclear Krusader Which month's issue is it, Pam?

It's August 2006.
Prey is on the cd face and the magazine cover features Half-Life : Episode 2.

[Nuclear Krusader]

Ahh, the new one. I just got the July issue, but I am not a suscriptor, I just grabbed it at the mag stand.

[Alaron]

Originally Posted by ryan124712 WHAT? I just got mine yesturday and there was no disk - That isn't fair... though I can get the demo online, I think I'm being jipped on CDs, I have never gotten one... the magazine's a good read, anyways...

No worries ryan, it was only a 2 minute trailer video for the game. You would enjoy the demo much more.

[wolfie]

really fun and cool single play, the online didnt thrill me that much. but you do get dizzy playing it. lol

wolfie

hello TwoRails

[TwoRails]

Hey stranger! How ya been, wolfie!?! Don't see you around much... Hope things are good for you.

[tomster2300]

This game better be good. It's been so many years in the making they actually had to restart the project twice (or more) before they could finally finish it. They main character has to be cool since we share the same first name.

[Nuclear Krusader]

Ya, they had to switch engines throughout the years. Same as DNF.

[tomster2300]

Went to an all night lan party Friday where we all played the multiplayer section of the Prey demo. I played through most of the single player while waiting for the network to be setup. Have to say it's interesting. Looks a lot like Doom 3 though (I realize it's the same engine), but now you can walk on walls and leave your body to shoot a bow and arrow. While the multiplayer is very entertaining (blasting somebody off the ceiling is kind of fun), the single player too closely resembles Doom 3 for my tastes and will probably be the deciding factor that keeps me from buying it. Plus the graphics don't look any better than Doom to be honest. Neat concept, but same dark hallways...just this time the walls shoot goo at you instead of demons jumping out of them.

[SputnikSweethrt]

I played the Demo yesterday. I absolutely loved it, especially the way it begins and the trippy dimension shifts. Yea it resembles Doom in a lot of ways but I think it's a better product overall (as far as I can tell) and the storyline seems more in depth.

Eagerly awaiting release

[Jester]

I thought i was going to be sick when i got to the gravity shifting part in the demo. I need a bigger monitor so i can insure maximum spewage.

[PnyK1d]

what specs of a card do you need to play this game on max settings?

[pam123]

Originally Posted by PnyK1d what specs of a card do you need to play this game on max settings?

Check out the game requirements : http://www.3drealms.com/prey/index.html#requirements

[flawedreality5]

I tried out the demo and didn't really care for it. There was just something about that didn't appeal to me. The graphics were pretty good though.

[Ghost(BOO!)]

I tried the demo too but wasn't too impressed. I still like Half-Life 2 a lot more