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| Prey - A JimD73 Review | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Aug 15 2006, 09:55 PM (194 Views) | |
| JimD73 | Aug 15 2006, 09:55 PM Post #1 |
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Posted Image -Prey- For the Xbox 360 & PC 360 Version Reviewed Posted Image First-Person Shooter Released 7/11/06 Reviewed 8/15/06 1 Player Local 1-8 Players Online 1-8 Players System Link Developed by Venom Games Published by 2K Games Rated Mature for Blood/Gore, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity & Strong Language Posted Image While I hardly kept up with the buzz, apparently Prey has been in the making for quite a while now. To think, had it all gone to plan, I would have played this game on my old N64. As it stands, I’m playing it on my shiny new Xbox 360. I wasn’t really all that enticed when I saw the ads for it, but once I started reading some of the reviews, the innovations in the game looked pretty cool. So I figured it would be a solid choice for a rental and picked it up relatively quickly. Is Prey a game that I feel the need to purchase after the rental? Not even close. Prey, like any good sci-fi FPS, is about an alien invasion. Like any bad FPS, it also has plenty of spiritual themes and revolves around rescuing your girlfriend. The basic plot is that Tommy, a Cherokee Indian, is tired of his life on the reserve. He is trying to convince his girlfriend, Jen the bartender, to run away with him, but she is too attached to her people. In the middle of a clichéd and poorly scripted dialogue, lights appear outside and suck Tommy, Jen and Tommy’s grandfather into a space ship. Up in the ship, Tommy is freed by rebel humans and it is up to him to rescue Jen and save the world, with the help of his super-Cherokee powers learned from his grandfather. Yes, your super-Cherokee powers. You gain them shortly after the game begins, and they basically make the game ridiculously easy. There are two main powers gained through the ways of the Cherokee. The first is the ability to Spirit Walk, in which Tommy’s spirit will separate from his body, allowing him to pass through force fields and certain gaps to press switches and activate bridges. Also, you can get the jump on opponents by firing at them with your powerful Spirit Bow. Spirit Walk is neat and all, but the concept is only well utilized a couple times in the story mode, with the other times being simply pressing a switch of something simplistic like that. The other super-Cherokee ability is the Death Walk, which essentially means that you can never be killed. Every time your character runs out of health, he is transported to the Spirit Realm, where you play a five-second minigame to bring yourself back with as much health and spirit energy as possible by shooting Wraiths with your bow. By not being able to die, there is absolutely nothing to stop the player from going Chuck Norris on the enemies and just beating them with a wrench instead of actually shooting. It removes any shred of difficulty from the game, leaving no need for being smart in any way, shape or form. On the plus side, it means no loading times or lost progress every time you die. Posted Image The game doesn’t end with the innovations there. One of the main reasons the game was so hyped was the ability to alter gravity. True enough, being able to switch the gravitational pull of a room by shooting a switch is pretty cool at first, as is walking on walls with special traction, but it is used in basically the same way every time. In fact, for the middle portion of the game, the gravity switches hardly appear. The only real use of these portions is near the very end of the game, where some decent puzzles are presented. Other than those, the gravity ability is pretty much wasted in the story mode. The other supposedly innovative addition was the constant use of portals. Early on, the portals are used exceptionally, with multiple portals in the same room which even have you seeing yourself on the other side. After a while, the game suddenly gets lazy with the portals and they basically become cooler looking doors. Sure, you can shoot stuff on the other side when they’re open, but the same thing could easily have been done with a simple door. Had the gravity switches and portals been used in tandem more often to create solid puzzles, the originality would have been well-used. As it stands, the neat concepts of the game aren’t well utilized, simply a hook that catches and quickly releases. Since the innovations aren’t all that interesting in the end, a nice weapon selection could still make a good overall shooter. The selection isn’t bad, with a total of seven weapons. While it may not seem like a high number (especially considering that includes the basic wrench and the Crawler grenade), all of the weapons have a distinctly different feel to them. While they basically cover each weapon type you’d expect in an FPS (rifle, machine gun, shotgun and rocket launcher), they all look incredibly original. They are all alien technology and most actually look alive. Seeing the tentacles on the rifle move ever so slightly or having the crawler grenade shriek as it’s legs are ripped off add immensely to the immersion factor. Also, each weapon is satisfying, with none that are significantly underpowered compared to the rest (aside from the always-dominant rocket launcher). However, no matter how good the weapons look, there aren’t all that satisfying. Recoil isn’t an issue in the game due the fact that they are alien weapons, and aside from the acid-firing shotgun, none of them feel all that powerful. Not even the rocket launcher has a powerful feel to it, especially later in the game where the common enemy is the heavily shielded and rocket-equipped Harvester. The sound effects on the guns are also fairly standard, and the gore they cause isn’t noticeable enough to make much of a difference. Posted Image The game also has a shuttle that you’ll be able to use every so often in the single player game. The problem with this little addition is that it is never satisfying at all. The flight controls are a tad spotty, but the problem is that the boom from the rockets just isn’t nice enough to make any of the flight sequences worthwhile. They also suffer from being quite repetitive and having no major twists in their mechanics. Just blow stuff up and go through the door, occasionally stopping to shine your pointless tractor beam. As for the enemies in the game, they to follow the repetitive pattern. There is basically only one kind of foe for the third fifteen levels, which is a basic hunter with a blaster rifle, the first weapon you collect. After a while, the rocket-equipped Harveters come into play, and they are more annoying than enjoyable. The enemies aren’t necessarily dumb, but that fact that they are continually the same makes the whole game somewhat dull. The shootouts are constantly with the same number of enemies with the same guns, and it just gets old after a while. Since you can’t die, they also never establish a threatening presence. The bosses are nice, but they are few and far between until the end. Overall, despite all of the little nuances and unused potential, the biggest problem with Prey’s story mode is the fact that it can be blown through in about three days playing casually. Once again, since you can’t die, there is no real challenge to the game, making the option to play on a harder difficulty pretty unappreciable. The repetitive action sequences and puzzles don’t give much reason to go back a replay the game, aside from potential achievement points on the 360. Posted Image The multiplayer falls apart as well. The kiss of death right off the bat is that only two modes of play are available, Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch. In this day and age, multiple game types are mandatory for any game that expects to be a hit online. The fact that the game can only support eight players is also disappointing, as the maps seem to be a better size for sixteen players. Even worse, the game has no split-screen option whatsoever. The biggest problem with the multiplayer is the lag online, which is almost non-stop. There are constant slow-downs in the frame-rate, which make shooting with any accuracy a daunting task. The theme for the game online seems to be shoot blindly, strafe a lot and hope to get lucky. That being said, the multiplayer isn’t a completely lost cause. It can be fun at times, especially with some of the better weapons in the arsenal. Also, the Spirit Walk ability can be used to a much greater effect, allowing you to effective shoot an enemy with no danger to yourself, though it leaves you body fully exposed. Also, a shootout when your enemy is directly above you has a certain level of novelty. The map selection is also pretty good, though some are a tad too big. Still, despite some value, the multiplayer seems like more of an afterthought and is nowhere near as good as the online modes in Call of Duty 2 or Perfect Dark Zero. Graphically, Prey is a mixed bag. Note that I have only played Prey on a standard television, not with full HD quality. The character animations in the game are downright poor, seeming exceptionally polygonized. This is only applicable to the human characters, as the aliens look pretty good. The level design is where this game truly wins out. The Sphere that you must fight your way out of feels like a living, breathing creature of its own, with walls that look like the inside of a stomach. Granted, the whole deal with Harvesters popping out of giant vaginas on the wall is a little odd, but it is definitely original. The sound in the game is pretty decent. The score is never really noticeable at all through the entire game, but it is always a good fit. Oddly, the game uses licensed music, such as Heart’s ‘Barracuda’ or Judas Preist’s ‘You’ve Got Another Thing Coming,’ in the first level, but it only appears once more in the single player game and in one level in multiplayer, which seems like a complete waste. The voice acting is godawful, with a huge amount of melodrama and fake anger, especially from Jen. Posted Image Overall, it is hard to recommend Prey for anything more than a weekend rental, because in that weekend you are likely going to exhaust any possible playtime you would have gotten from it if you had bought it. The single player mode doesn’t make use of the potentially awesome innovations and is incredibly easy. The multiplayer is a rather weak effort that doesn’t compare to other 360 games. Still, Prey may well be a solid choice to kill a weekend with. I know it was worth it for me. Not because I thought the game was that much fun, but because it got me an easy 850 achievement points. To buy the game, however, would be a complete waste of money. ~ 56% ~ |
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| cam957 | Aug 15 2006, 10:29 PM Post #2 |
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nice ness boo you shoud get it and tell me if its good lol |
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| Borris_The_Spider | Aug 18 2006, 01:23 PM Post #3 |
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Foot in mouth and head up asshole watcha talkin' bout?
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I didn't think prey was all that bad.I do agree that it was too easy though.I heard the online isn't all that great either. |
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| cam957 | Aug 21 2006, 09:36 PM Post #4 |
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ia have to say those graphics look realy good though |
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| Borris_The_Spider | Aug 23 2006, 07:02 AM Post #5 |
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Foot in mouth and head up asshole watcha talkin' bout?
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I really like the whole gravity element. Really cool new innovation. |
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| JimD73 | Aug 23 2006, 10:20 PM Post #6 |
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Good idea, yes. But it's full potential was never realized. Aside from the cube bit, all the gravity puzzles were extremely easy, and it rarely factored into combat. In multiplayer, it is used well in a couple instances, but they are few. |
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