Prey
- Thread starter Jono8
- Start date
Soldato
- Joined
- 29 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 4,184
- Location
- London
i completed it last night - it's not too short but if you're going to play on easy and quick save every few mins then any game is short tbh.
visuals are outstanding - very well made game - best fiver i ever spent on a game.
cheers,
visuals are outstanding - very well made game - best fiver i ever spent on a game.
cheers,
I only just bought this game myself a few weeks ago..I haven't had time to play or install mine yet...
IGN gave it 9 out of 10 here http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/717/717800p1.html
IGN gave it 9 out of 10 here http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/717/717800p1.html
Prey is excellant. The weapons are all fun to use and the portals and anti mavity walls and ceilings are great fun and do disorientate you pretty badly at times! The Doom 3 engine has never looked better in this game, full parrallax mapping 
Youll certainly enjoy it, only problem is that it could be a tad longer but still great fun from start to end.
Youll certainly enjoy it, only problem is that it could be a tad longer but still great fun from start to end.
Caporegime
- Joined
- 21 Nov 2005
- Posts
- 41,459
- Location
- Cornwall
After the first few levels I got bored of it very quickly. The full game doesn't offer any more than the demo did but the length is perfect. Any longer and I wouldn't have bothered completing it.
Best Doom3 engined game by far. Bargain even at £20 when I got it last summer. You have to play through the first few levels before you realise how good it is but like any FPS it is samey after a while. Still excellent though even now and runs like a dream on recent mid range hardware.
Here's a post I made about a year ago, effectively a mini-review:
Hmm.
I'm not quite sure what to make of this game. The core of the game, the bread-and-butter FPS elements like weapons, monsters and level design are distinctly average. Most of the guns feel like they lack punch, and the gimmicky aspects soon wear thin. For much of the game you never really feel like using anything but the basic rifle thingy. Likewise, very few of the monsters impressed me. You've got your basic trooper types, flying creatures and charging melee monsters - all of which we saw more than 10 years ago in the shape of grunts, cacodemons and demons. And the level design seems to be a mix of your standard linear corridors with a few spaceshippy bits a la Halo. In fact it reminded me quite a lot of Area51, just in a much better engine. Well, actually I'm being a little harsh here, since the physics/mavity stuff is incorporated into the level design quite well, and some of the latter levels do impress in terms of scale.
But, on the plus side there at least appears to be some semblance of originality in game design. You've got the whole weird which-way-is-up? mavity fluctuations, which makes for some interesting combat possibilities as you manouver for position. Then there's the portals which work quite well - the only downside for me being that they tend to be a bit linear and contrived, just conveniently appearing to provide you with a route forward rather than offering any kind of genuine variety. The spirit walking is pretty cool, but again, it tends to be mostly used in a rather simplistic fashion: Arrive at forcefield/eye scanners/hazard/dead-end, spirit walk through, or over 'cobweb' bridge, find the switch round the corner and then return to your body. The sections where you go back to the earth and talk to your grandfather are good, and it's a shame they weren't expanded somewhat in the shape of more trials/training etc. I think there was an opportunity missed here to do something like we saw in the Jedi Knight II games.
The difficulty level seems to be leveled quite low, possibly due to being targeted at a console audience. You can't change the difficulty level at the start, and most enemies can be taken out fairly easily due to the poor AI. However, the biggest problem is that dying appears to carry little penalty - you simply shoot a few red and blue bats and then come back to life where you left off. This respawning ability means that even bosses can be dispatched simply by charging in all guns blazing, safe in the knowledge that you can just rinse and repeat to wear down their health. At least with the traditional 'quicksave method' any damage/deaths you have caused since your last save get reset, so you have complete the game 'without dying'. Ironically, the hardest part of the game is arguably the first couple of levels, before you gain the ability to do this! It also seems like you rarely face more than about 4 enemies at once, presumably due to performance concerns. In terms of length, I've played around 5hrs now and have maybe another 3 or so levels to go.
From a technology perspective, the game is solid thanks to the doom3 engine. Sumptuous visuals and excellent sound all flow along at a decent framerate - on my system (A64 3800+, 1gig PC3700 cas2, 6800ultra) I had 45-60fps the vast majority of the time in 1024x768 high settings. The memory usage is very good, 768meg systems should handle this fine, and level loads are fairly infrequent - a welcome change from the likes of Sin Episodes where it seems you can't go round a corner with getting LOADING shoved in your face and the game stuttering like mad.
Overall, I'd say it's another one of those 'worth playing' titles. It's certainly not in the same class as say, Doom 3, which is a much longer game with better monsters, and IMO a better storyline coupled with slicker presentation. But there is enough variety here to make it a welcome addition to the library of a FPS addict. You've got quirky physics, a reasonable vehicle and some decent puzzles which raise this up above the pile of mediocre shooters with flashy graphics. It's good, but not really an improvement on what we saw in 2004 in the shape of Far Cry, Halflife 2 and Doom3. Those are still the benchmarks against which I judge FPS games. To be fair, my opinion of this game has improved as I've played further through it, and I must admit that now I'm near the end I'm finding it hard to put down, the old 'just one more level!' mentality sets in
Hmm.
I'm not quite sure what to make of this game. The core of the game, the bread-and-butter FPS elements like weapons, monsters and level design are distinctly average. Most of the guns feel like they lack punch, and the gimmicky aspects soon wear thin. For much of the game you never really feel like using anything but the basic rifle thingy. Likewise, very few of the monsters impressed me. You've got your basic trooper types, flying creatures and charging melee monsters - all of which we saw more than 10 years ago in the shape of grunts, cacodemons and demons. And the level design seems to be a mix of your standard linear corridors with a few spaceshippy bits a la Halo. In fact it reminded me quite a lot of Area51, just in a much better engine. Well, actually I'm being a little harsh here, since the physics/mavity stuff is incorporated into the level design quite well, and some of the latter levels do impress in terms of scale.
But, on the plus side there at least appears to be some semblance of originality in game design. You've got the whole weird which-way-is-up? mavity fluctuations, which makes for some interesting combat possibilities as you manouver for position. Then there's the portals which work quite well - the only downside for me being that they tend to be a bit linear and contrived, just conveniently appearing to provide you with a route forward rather than offering any kind of genuine variety. The spirit walking is pretty cool, but again, it tends to be mostly used in a rather simplistic fashion: Arrive at forcefield/eye scanners/hazard/dead-end, spirit walk through, or over 'cobweb' bridge, find the switch round the corner and then return to your body. The sections where you go back to the earth and talk to your grandfather are good, and it's a shame they weren't expanded somewhat in the shape of more trials/training etc. I think there was an opportunity missed here to do something like we saw in the Jedi Knight II games.
The difficulty level seems to be leveled quite low, possibly due to being targeted at a console audience. You can't change the difficulty level at the start, and most enemies can be taken out fairly easily due to the poor AI. However, the biggest problem is that dying appears to carry little penalty - you simply shoot a few red and blue bats and then come back to life where you left off. This respawning ability means that even bosses can be dispatched simply by charging in all guns blazing, safe in the knowledge that you can just rinse and repeat to wear down their health. At least with the traditional 'quicksave method' any damage/deaths you have caused since your last save get reset, so you have complete the game 'without dying'. Ironically, the hardest part of the game is arguably the first couple of levels, before you gain the ability to do this! It also seems like you rarely face more than about 4 enemies at once, presumably due to performance concerns. In terms of length, I've played around 5hrs now and have maybe another 3 or so levels to go.
From a technology perspective, the game is solid thanks to the doom3 engine. Sumptuous visuals and excellent sound all flow along at a decent framerate - on my system (A64 3800+, 1gig PC3700 cas2, 6800ultra) I had 45-60fps the vast majority of the time in 1024x768 high settings. The memory usage is very good, 768meg systems should handle this fine, and level loads are fairly infrequent - a welcome change from the likes of Sin Episodes where it seems you can't go round a corner with getting LOADING shoved in your face and the game stuttering like mad.
Overall, I'd say it's another one of those 'worth playing' titles. It's certainly not in the same class as say, Doom 3, which is a much longer game with better monsters, and IMO a better storyline coupled with slicker presentation. But there is enough variety here to make it a welcome addition to the library of a FPS addict. You've got quirky physics, a reasonable vehicle and some decent puzzles which raise this up above the pile of mediocre shooters with flashy graphics. It's good, but not really an improvement on what we saw in 2004 in the shape of Far Cry, Halflife 2 and Doom3. Those are still the benchmarks against which I judge FPS games. To be fair, my opinion of this game has improved as I've played further through it, and I must admit that now I'm near the end I'm finding it hard to put down, the old 'just one more level!' mentality sets in
I got a bit bored in places. I kept going because of the woman's voice egging you on all the way through. I needed to see what kind of a baddy she was. Her laughing in the final level has me in hysterics for some reason. 
Associate
- Joined
- 4 Mar 2007
- Posts
- 400
You got yourself a bargain there, excellent game and some original ideas