“Remembering Prey”? The game is 7 years old, and has a release on current gen consoles. The nostalgia cycle is starting to spiral in on itself. Get ready for “Remember Baldurs Gate 3” next month.
If we want to talk about a game that is about ready for a nostalgic revival, featured unique gameplay for the time, told a story with interesting lore, and had the potential for interesting sequels, let’s remember Prey (2006). Also, it had a bus full of evil ghost kids on a spaceship. Can’t beat that.
Prey is barely functional on modern systems. They never had a PS5 update and it barely hits 30fps there. The PC version is quite buggy and crashes for many.
I try to replay it every once in a while and just give up. It’s unfortunate.
I don’t know if Prey is my favorite game of all time, but it’s on the short list. I can, however, say that it is the game that most fills me with awe. Talos 1 is an extraordinary playspace filled with incredible detail, choice, style, and diversity. The narrative, possibly the weakest element of the game, still packs in a lot of cool ideas and genuine surprises.
Prey also contains by far my favorite opening “level” of all time. Without spoiling, the immediate tonal shift, the creepy mystery, the complete recontextualization of your first 10 or 15 minutes, it’s an absolute spectacle.
In a perfect world, all these devs get absorbed by WolfEye Studios or something and they get a bunch of funding to make another massive masterpiece.
I only played until my first encounter with the enemy that hunts you, for some reason I couldn’t get past that dude or escape and got frustrated enough to give up
The Nightmare Typhon that has a timer? That sucks. I don’t remember having too much trouble in my first playthrough - I have memories of just hiding in a bathroom that it was too big to enter until the timer ran out for one of the encounters. But I can imagine that if you’re in a particularly bad area when it comes for you it could cause problems.
Even tho the game doesn’t need a sequel I want one so bad. That space station was amazing. I guess we wont be getting one, at least not from og devs. I still need to play that roguelike dlc for the game, I heard it’s very good too.
I’d say peak Bethesda publishing was with the Wolfenstein The New Order (2014) by Machine Games, Doom (2016) by id Software, and Prey (2017) by Arkane Austin. Bethesda managed to put in one mediocre -in comparison- game in 2015, Fallout 4.
Wolfenstein The New Order was coupled with a short but rather good prequel The Old Blood, and The New Order managed to pull in quite good semi-linear progression mechanic with weapon upgrading interjected to make a good game. Latter games marketed with “Lets blast some Nazis, HELL.YEAH BROTHER” kinda zealous and soulles propaganda machines rather than being games, imo.
Bethesda squandered the critical acclaim of Doom 2016 with rgb sales of Doom Eternal imo. 2016 was a pretty novel entry in Doom series, and they went with all the controversy of soundtrack composing, stat-based difficulty, all-color ui shit that distracts from gameplay, pretty unconnected region/planet jumping, cheesy orbital station upgrading/unlocking, etc.
Even though I had not played the first Prey game, I’d still say the most and only bad thing about the Prey 2017 is its name. The name is forcibly put into the game in one memo and isn’t mentioned anywhere else, as if the hardest part of making that game was coming up with a new name and they just gave up, using an old IP. The game was so good tho, that it really could rival Half-Life if it had a couple more intriguing elements. Other than that, the gameplay area, enemy, weapons and utilities designs are spot on. Interconnectivity and reuse of old maps with new designs were excellent. The different mechanic of zero gravity environments really shone with the outside of the Talos I, with how good they implemented the feeling of going into empty space, skirting the station, etc. There wasn’t much to do outside, but the empty scenery was breathtaking anyway. The contrast of the opening of the game and its slow connection to the rest of the game, environment design with every bit of elements fitting the current space station environments, while adding the old Soviet style that the station was taken from, the weapon and ability progress that matches the same good mechanics from Wolfenstein and Doom, how the story is well written and flows very nicely even though the game is actually open world, which in turn changes a lot with respect to the story, etc.
There's a port of the game that runs on Quest and Pico VR headsets that's dope as hell. Officially comes with the demo version and requires pulling files from the PC version to get the full game which is a bit difficult to get legit at this point, though there are other ways. https://github.com/lvonasek/PreyVR
We were going to be badass BOUNTY HUNTERS on an ALIEN PLANET and it would’ve been so fucking cool! I loved the original game, I love Prey 2017, but I’m salty we never got the 2 they revealed.
It really did fuck things up which is depressing. The game was a masterpiece of an immersive sim and the atmosphere of the whole game is like no other. With a different name, I think it could’ve sold better. Even I avoided it because I was mad about Prey 2 being canned and the reused name, until I saw Markiplier play it and fell in love almost immediately. Such a beautiful game that deserved better.
Good choice, a favorite of mine as well. In the middle of the night when I’m supposed to be sleeping with a theme that often makes no sense in reality but I’m bought in 100% anyway until my alarm goes off.
Exactly! I spent an entire night playing a football game over and over in my head that didn’t happen and wasn’t important to the team. But John Elway just could not throw for a first down to save his life…
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