Prey

 

Release: 2017

Developer: Arkane Studios

Publisher: Bethesda Softworks

Gameplay Stats: ~25 hours, completed story, no humans killed

It was my pick for the Gaming Club so I chose this game. I have seen it mentioned several times in video game design essays so I was interested in playing it.

Visuals/Audio: The atmospheric sounds are strong in this game! They very much want you to feel on edge, like you are being hunted, and the sound design is pretty good. Sounds don't deaden through walls like you would expect, but they do sound like how you'd like them to as far as proximity and direction. I was playing with my 2 speakers and I was still able to triangulate sounds really easily. I don't really remember too much in the way of music so I guess that means it wasn't bad? The graphics were really interesting to me. I started the game with my old computer and was unimpressed. Then when my new graphics card came in I was pretty impressed. I didn't realize how much my graphics card had been holding my experience back. Everything looks really good in this game! It's an immersive sim, so the physics are pretty good too.

Plot: I found the plot to be pretty engaging. Aliens take over your spaceship and you have to try and figure out what to do about them. Lots of macguffins and obstacles spring up to stop you so the plot takes a while to finish. I really did like the big choice you get to make at the end of the story! And that post-credits scene really contextualizes the whole game differently. It was really neat and I suspect this will stick with me since the reveal was very unexpected (to me anyway).

Gameplay: It plays like most immersive sims, which is to say there are many ways of solving pretty much every problem. The map is tight and I was generally able to solve a problem one way only to find the other ways to solve it shortly after. The weapons handle a little weirdly since accuracy is something you have to upgrade for some of the weapons. So even if you aim well you might miss which always feels bad. The enemies were really cool and reacted strangely the entire way through which was neat. I felt like I had meaningful choices in the game too which is excellent.

Overall I really enjoyed my time with this game! I would not hesitate to recommend it. The start was a little slow, it took some time to grip me. But once I was around 8 hours in or so I was hooked.