Prey

Rating: 2 out of 3 Stars (why out of 3 stars?)
Genre: First person shooter; Sub-genre: Puzzles
ESRB: M (for violent gunplay, some profanity, and gross alien technology)
Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 10/6
Developer: Human Head Studios
Wiki page

I was a bit dismayed when E3 2012 rolled around and I didn't see any more information on Prey 2. I actually took the time to play Prey for the first time (it was originally released in 2006) because I was curious as to what the hell the game was. When I read about Prey, I discovered that the main character is Native American and has some kind of Native American themed super powers. It sounded like just the right kind of wacky nonsense I could get behind!

Tommy's spirit walks out of his own body. Whoooooaaaa.

I also read about how chronic game-killer 3D Realms had started this project back in the 90's, only to have it finished by a different company 10 years later. Is that, like, their thing? Well, I'm pretty sure no one's giving them money any more, so hopefully that will stop happening. Normally something like that would be the death of a game as far as quality goes. Surprisingly, I read many reviews that were quite positive. More surprisingly, the depiction of Native Americans was noted as tasteful. The man who voices Tommy (the main character), Michael Greyeyes, has nothing but kind words for the process of voicing for the game. After playing the game, I came to find that this is actually pretty decent. And there's a good sense of drama and pacing.

Machine guns instantly create drama and fix pacing.

But it IS still a first person shooter about fighting aliens. More so, it's an OLD game with even older designs left over from when development first started. So don't start expecting "Citizen Kane" or anything, it's pretty damn wacky.

This comes off as both a relief and a little bit dated. It's a relief to play a game where all the guns are very different and have two triggers. Enemies are meant to be danced around rather than hiding from them all day using cover. Also, Tommy can take a lot of damage and does not have health regeneration. It's dated in its level design: silly rooms with no realistic function that connect to each other in illogical ways. It's from a time when levels didn't necessarily look like a real place and were more or less just a series of polygons arranged in a way that looks cool and provides appropriate space for combat. One thing that's still pretty new are the portals. Yep, just like in that one game everyone loves. Except this game came out a year earlier (although these are used more as a cool transition effect than major gameplay element).

AND there aren't any machine guns in this game! Ohhhhhhhhh!

I don't want to talk too much about the story. I know I always stick to generalizations, but I think a lot of stuff in this game works as a bit of a surprise. I will say, again, that the pacing is amazing. I was expecting a very slow build-up but it all starts right away. And at the same time the game manages to get all the necessary details of the characters and their motivations very quickly and effectively. My only complaint is the ending: I'm not really sure where Tommy is, physically, during some important moments. Oh, no! The ending is clearly terrible! Everyone, boycott the franchise!

All those hundreds of hours (and counting) of enjoyment were a lie! Wahhhh!

The gameplay is effective, for the most part. It will be a blast from the past navigating all the weapons and shooting space minotaurs, so modern audiences could potentially feel a bit bored. And Tommy doesn't fall out of an exploding helicopter ONCE. What the hell, 2006?

My feelings on the "puzzle" aspects of the game are a bit mixed. On the one hand, they are visually and technically interesting. Lots of use of "5D" space and gravity (by the way, Super Mario Galaxy came out in 2007, a year later as well) which is cool, but it doesn't affect the gameplay much. Most of the time, the answer to the "puzzle" is to simply use the spirit walk power to bypass terrain obstacles. That's it. And the gravity aspects mostly just disorient you; they are not challenging, necessarily. Sometimes you have to fight while upside-down or whatever. All this means is taking unavoidable damage. Wooo. I tend to refer to these as "non-puzzles". I thought of this term when I was playing one of the God of War games. A lot of people think those puzzles are great. I do not consider "finding out what is clickable" to be a puzzle. However, there were a couple puzzles that actually took me a few minutes to figure out, so some good came from them. All in all, they are not "bad" at all. Just... not puzzles, man.

Kill a guy and he falls up! Wakka wakka!

I really wanted to try the multiplayer. I looked at the leaderboards and saw that there was a "weekly" ladder with a bunch of people on it, so I thought I'd get the chance. But when I clicked on "find game", it waited a total of zero seconds before saying "There are no games". I created my own game and left it open in the background while I did something on the computer. One or two hours later, nothing changed. Oh, well. It looks cool, though.

Conclusion:
A solid enough game to justify the $2.90 I spent on it for sure. If you want an old school-ish FPS treat then try it out. The game is old enough, though, that I can't give it the strongest recommendation. And the non-functional multiplayer is unfortunate.