A Sci-Fi epic eleven years in the making...

Where to start with Prey… where to start where to start… hmm…

The eleven-year development period?
Nah, too obvious.

The Turok-like main character?
Covered it in the Preview.

The Doom-meets-Independence Day scenario?
Its been done.

The earnest issue concerning the decreasing affluence of the contemporary Cherokee tribe in face of stiff pressure from younger generations to dispel heritage and modernise, foregoing years of tradition in return for a richer (though arguably less enriching) quality of life?
Politically sensitive. Best avoided.

Oooh, wait, got it: The toilet.

Yes, the toilet. That's where Prey kicks off, in the grimy restroom of a dingy Oklahoma bar - peering the player's view in first person, in the finest tradition of Half Life, through the eyes of the game's main character Tommy: erstwhile Cherokee tribesman, garage mechanic and all-around unhappy soul. Tommy wants to get away from the reservation, but his girlfriend Jen won't turn her back on the tribe - while Tommy's robe-wearing brow-furrowed Grandad (who, incidentally, could be the long-lost brother of the old guy from the 80s Marshall Bravestar cartoon) keeps spouting some nonsense about the tribe making Tommy stronger, and Tommy needing that strength on that night. Poor old guy, he's probably smoked one too many peace pipes… or so our hero thinks at the time.

Set for certain doom!

Then, of course, it all goes horribly wrong. A fight breaks out in the bar, static hits the TV set, the ground shakes, lights appear outside, cars begin floating and eventually the roof rips right off Jen's struggling business - before the hovering alien mothership overhead beams up the bar's inhabitants for a spot of human 'processing'. As any self respecting living, breathing technological entity does, from time to time. Of course.

So yes, that's your beginning. Tommy, Jen and Grandpa, all strapped to a human conveyor belt and set for certain doom; the Earth itself at the mercy of a superior - and yet for some reason still malevolently evil (aren't they always?) - alien race bent on making the world's foremost species its primary a food source. Bummer.

Luckily, by some freak accident (or was it thanks to something more spiritual?) Tommy manages to escape his shackles, and soon sets off exploring the ship and generally doing his best to rescue his loved ones. Sadly, poor gramps soon snuffs it, but leaves a lingering sense that all is not lost by hinting he'll see Tommy again - while Jen is still very much alive and in need of rescuing. And thus is the central motivation as you pick up the pad (or whatever your preferred control setup) and really get your teeth into Human Head's stunning sci-fi shooter.

We say stunning, because that's exactly what Prey is - in the most decadently decaying, tendril-bursting, biologically off-putting of senses. It's a nightmarish fiction for Tommy to negotiate, mixing electronic switches and digital displays with pulsating muscle tissue and oozing wall cavities. The ship itself feels alive, and as the sense of scale only increases throughout the adventure, you'll frequently feel like a small insignificant speck of humanity against the pseudo hell of Prey's ever-evolving biomechanical backdrop.

Likewise, that same feeling of fallibility will only grow as you attempt to comprehend the game's at-times mind-boggling portals system. They can appear anywhere at any time, be it behind an arch, at the side of an overturned crate or randomly in the middle of a level as a circular rip in the fabric of space.

Such portals often provide shortcuts to completely new areas of the ship, and, cleverly, both yourself and enemies can see through them - making inter-dimensional cross-location firefights a very real (and intensely surreal) possibility. Moreover, you can only see a portal from one side - so from the back you'll have just an ordinary arch, or empty space in a corridor; then you'll walk forward, turn around, and find a monstrous alien entity firing chunky death-bringing plasma in your direction through a shimmering gateway. And the first occasion where several portals appear in the same room and all seemingly lead into each other is utterly logic defying. Like standing in a hall of mirrors, you'll see Tommy from all angles on the same screen as you attempt to traverse the environment and make your way through the ship. It's outrageously odd, but deviously delightful design.

Craftily constructed

Which is a characteristic running throughout Prey's craftily constructed halls. Though at first glance Prey may appear your generic- corridor-blaster-running-on-the-Doom3-engine-101, it is, in truth, a far more thoughtfully engineered experience with a sound physics engine and smart puzzle structure working in unison to tax the player in practically every room.

Environmental puzzles are the order of the day here, with your typical press-button-to-open-door variants being joined by a host of more inventive approaches. Wall walking is one of the bigger innovations, with the Human Head's magnetised walkways quite literally turning things on their head and adding an extra dimension to the level design. Moreover, the gravity theme is played upon in several ways - even early in the game you'll be hitting dead ends in corridors and searching the flaws, walls and ceilings for a switch, shooting said switch, and watching the whole room flip upside down, allowing access to new tunnels that were previously blocked, or just located out of your reach.

There's definitely something to be said for this approach to the genre - it may help enforce a more measured linearity to proceedings, but also imbues a wonderfully retro confusion when you can't quite figure out what you're meant to do next - almost as if the level designer was watching, cackling manically. Sufficed to say, there's nary a puzzle in Prey that feels unfair when you do work out the solution, and that pleasing feeling of achievement at doing so is something that's been missing from many of the genre's recent efforts.

As well as wall-walking, we have spirit walking, which lets Tommy use that much-maligned Cherokee heritage Grandad always talked about to float outside of his own body - used frequently throughout Prey to pass through energy barriers and flip switches on the other side, allowing his physical form to progress. When in Spirit mode Tommy's physical body sits prone to attack, while his spirit form has only the use of a bow with which to defend itself, so it's often best to employ spirit mode on the rare occasions you'll need it.

Ever-growing armoury

At other times, you can rely on Tommy's ever-growing armoury of alien weaponry, which pretty much cover your usual FPS gun types, but do also offer a secondary fire function. Truth be told, these seem a little overpowered in the face of the game's rather small enemy quotient - ammo is plentiful, and the number of monsters you'll face at any one time rarely ever exceeds two or three, so Prey does tend to err on the easy side. And that's not even considering that you can't really die, either - if you do, you'll be sent to another dimension where you'll shoot as many floating spirit type things as possible before being dumped back aboard the alien craft. This is called Death Walking, and could be seen as a bit of a cop-out, if it didn't help make the game such stress-free fun.

And Prey is definitely that. Constantly involving, ever atmospheric and boasting enough variety to keep players gripped throughout its (admittedly short) 8-10 hour singleplayer campaign, it's a rare treat for Xbox 360 and PC gamers to savour in the summer months. There's a multiplayer component too, which, while somewhat basic (deathmatches only - sorry CTF fans!), is worth trying out for the sheer novelty of eight-player wall-walking gunplay, while the evocative nature of the gameworld, powerful visual style and nicely done voice acting (shame about the music really!) all make Prey an outing that even the most discerning FPS players would be unwise to miss.

GAME's Verdict

• A powerful presentation of an evocative and nightmarish fiction
• Wonderfully retro environmental puzzling
• Well paced, innovatively designed and rarely borders on frustrating

• Linear, with few enemies on-screen at once and limited gunplay
• At 8-10 hours, it isn't overly long
• Pretty basic deathmatch-only multiplayer

Review by: Mark Scott
Version Tested: Xbox 360
Review Published: 14.07.06

Probably the most bonkers tale ever penned for a game…

Tommy is just your average, normal, everyday, common-or-garden…Cherokee garage mechanic. He works his shifts, pays his taxes, looks after his grandad and loves his girlfriend…but when an enormous moon-sized alien mothership appears above Earth, takes a distinct dislike to his Oklahoma reservation, and begins abducting its residents…Tommy soon finds himself aboard the craft, forced to discover his long-hidden spiritual powers and tool up on some serious otherworldly weaponry, ready to save the world from the evil extra-terrestrial threat. As you would, in that situation. Naturally.

Thus is the slightly surreal plotline running through Prey - a game itself with a ludicrously long and often-joked-about development story. Not to worry if you haven't heard it though, because you probably HAVE heard of 3D Realm's other high profile dev disaster: Duke Nukem Forever. Next to that most legendary of long-delayed PR nightmares, Prey, which originally began creation back in 1997, is a relative spring chicken.

Even so, with such a laboured lineage, you'd be forgiven for having low expectations. After all, the core concept is around nine years old, and the first-person shooter genre has evolved exponentially since then - Messrs Freeman and Master Chief in particular have raised the bar to previously unforeseeable heights. More so than any normal Native American could ever hope to match…or so you'd think.

Not short on new ideas

Strangely, though, pre-release reports surrounding Prey point to a title neither short on new ideas, nor out of its depth, even in the most overpopulated of gaming pools.

On paper, it's hardly original; an old-style corridor-based sci-fi shooter running on a modified form of the Doom 3 engine, and set to release simultaneously on Xbox 360 and PC just in time to sate those dreading the summer games drought. Indeed, even the main character is a tad template driven: he may be the most heroic Native American (Is that the PC term now? Having trouble keeping track - Jonny) since Turok, but if his exploits prove anywhere near as generic, then Prey could be an enormous missed opportunity.

We're confident that isn't going to be the case. Unoriginal as it may first appear, Prey takes some of the more established fps conventions and turns them on their head - quite literally, as it turns out.

Being based in a huge hulking spaceship, controlling Tommy is set to throw up some rather gravity-defying gameplay elements. The ship itself, known as the Dysonsphere, is an enormous beast of Independence Day proportions that blends technology and living tissue, creating an always evolving - and often plain gross - aesthetic quality to its environments. Moreover, one of its biggest features is set to be its gravity system - by flicking certain switches, you'll be able to invert the gravity of a room and walk on the walls and ceilings, making Prey a truly disorienting three dimensional next-gen fps.

The living technology theme has been taken to the extreme in designing Prey's monster and weapon quotients. Many of the former tend to resemble an imposing cross between lizards and birds, and, running on the same engine which made Doom 3 look so super scary, definitely carry a psychologically unerring edge.

Organically influenced

The weapon quota throughout the game is also every bit as organically influenced. Some, like your standard rifle and cannon, are a bit more traditional - while others take the expectations of an fps firearm and mix in an unusual level of variety. The Bio Acid Gun, for instance, is a shotgun-style weapon loaded with (you guessed it) acid instead of shells, while the Leech Gun has four different modes of fire, and can be charged up from any outlet on the ship. There's also another gun called the Crawler Launcher that propels explosive little wriggling creatures at enemies - or with one of its other fire modes, uses the energy of several Crawlers at a time to form a temporary bullet-proof shield around the player.

As if that wasn't unusual enough, there are those abovementioned spiritual powers still to get to. Indeed, the game itself has a general spiritual theme running throughout its narrative - early on in proceedings Tommy's grandpa gets processed for the ship's feeding (it's gotta eat - and its favourite food is humans), but returns to help guide our hero in ghost form - bringing with him the spirit of Tommy's old pet hawk, Talon.

From what we've seen, Talon acts in part in a similar way to Navi from Zelda: Ocarina of Time. He's not controlled directly, but floats overhead acting as a guide to highlight items of interest, as well as distracting enemies, and providing the occasional hint when players seem entirely stuck. In short, he should help in making the game easily accessible, despite the overbearing visual effect of the Dysonsphere's surroundings.

Thankfully, reports would certainly seem to suggest it does - indeed, coupled with the gravity-defying parts of the game and a pretty sophisticated physics engine, this promises to form the basis of Prey's puzzles - which, at a supposed 40% of the game's focus, should make it more of a thinking man's shooter than many first thought.

There are other inter-dimensional elements at hand in Prey that we haven't yet mentioned. Paramount are portals, which rip a fabric through space, and can connect you to completely different areas than those you'll currently find yourself in. Moreover, they can be shot through two ways by yourself and enemies, making for a confusing but involving otherworldly spectacle of alien-oriented gunplay.

THE game to watch this summer

Another interesting feature, meanwhile, is the dimension you'll find yourself in if you die. Unlike other shooters which reload the last save point, Prey doffs a cap to Legacy of Kain classic Soul Reaver, and implements an alternate dimension, in which you can replenish health and spirit energy, before returning to the real world. Like the rest of the game, then, it's not entirely original, but Prey does promise to innovate in the way it applies certain conventions to its very specific sci-fi fps framework.

This is an ethos also being applied to its multiplayer component. Wall-walking, Zero-G levels and explosive alien weaponry should all combine for an eight-player frag fest of epic proportions, with a solid 30 frames per second and lag-free service being promised throughout.

Which just about makes Prey our nomination for THE game to watch this summer. The wait may have been long, but for once, it's looking every bit worth it. Let's just hope Duke Nukem Forever can meet these same heady standards one day…

…Yeah, right.

Preview by: Mark Scott
Preview Published: 21.06.06