Prey for Xbox 360

In the year 1995, the game industry was very different. Nintendo dominated, Sega was in the midst of their destruction, and Sony was just about to reinvent gaming as we know it. Also in that year, 3D Realms, the team behind Duke Nukem, announced Prey, a gravity-bending FPS that, along with Duke's sequel, Duke Nukem Forever, would corner the market from competitors like id Software. Funny thing happened though DNF became the butt of jokes due to its apparent development difficulties, and Prey wasn't fairing much better and was shelved in the late 90's...but not outright canned. So it was quite a shock that in 2005, Prey magically appeared again for the next-generation of gaming, including the new Microsoft system which we know and love as the Xbox 360, under the watchful eye of 3D Realms, but developed by Human Head Studios. Just as fast as the game vanished, it reappeared, and now it's available...and it's pretty damn good. In this slow summer, it's the equivalent of a summer movie blockbuster, making a wild ride that avoids as many cliche moments as possible and manages to deliver something quite different from the horde of FPS releases on the 360, though at the expense of length.

And as an aside, we must clearly be approaching the apocalypse; Prey is out, Duke Nukem Forever might really exist, and Valve announced Team Fortress 2 again this past week. Invest in some good insurance and maybe build your own ark. Just in case.

Aliens vs. Indians
If you really want to get down to brass tacks, it could be argued that Prey is simply yet another first-person shooter on a console that is already overflowing with them just 8 months after its release. But that would be a shortsighted observation, because the game goes beyond being a mere shooter and genuinely attempts to be a unique offering. You play as Tommy, a Cherokee Indian who wants no part of his heritage and just wants off his Oklahoma reservation, away from the 'superstitious bull****' as he puts it. He only stays out of love for his girlfriend Jen, who runs the Roadhouse bar and is Tommy's complete opposite wishing to stay and fully accepts her roots. But then the aliens come, and suck up the bar, Jen, Tommy's grandfather, and Tommy himself, transporting them to what you learn is called Sphere, an alien craft used to harvest humans for food. Yucky. Naturally, escape is the goal, but by the time the game ends, it becomes much more than merely getting off Sphere. Like a lot of other FPS games, the story doesn't use cutscenes to show what's going on instead it tells everything through in-game action. Quite often, the story moves along without saying a single word.

Prey has many tricks up its sleeve that make for an unusual experience. You learn early on that the enemies of the game can warp to your location through portals rather than more conventional means, and Tommy can do the same if he sees an open portal, letting you quickly reach a different area of the ship. Many times you might see the portal in a place where you can't reach, which is where gravity shifting comes into place. Early on, Tommy will find walls and ceilings that can be walked on through bizarre 'tracks', and the perspective then flips upside down, leading to some crazy fights where the enemies are coming from angles that aren't normally in an FPS, like off a wall or hanging from a ceiling. Eventually you come across 'gravity buttons' that let you affect everything yourself by shooting them. Many times you might think you're in a dead end, but that's when you ditch the conventional FPS thinking and look around for these little switches that help you reach areas that otherwise cannot be accessed. Just be sure you don't have a weak stomach.

Finally, there's spirit walking. Though Tommy shuns his origins and wants to live free of it all, he's somewhat forced into learning some of the 'old medicine' and spirit walking is the essence of it. Basically, it's like having an out-of-body-experience; you leave the physical body to progress through areas otherwise blocked off, or let you be in 2 places at once. For instance, if you come across a force field with the switch (as an aside, unfortunately there's a lot of switch pushing in this game...but no keycards!) on the opposite side, you can spirit walk, head through the field, hit the switch and then return to Tommy. Sometimes it's that simple, other times it's not. Many times there's puzzles that can only be solved by leaving your body in a specific spot and hitting a switch to start a chain for example, you have to leave Tommy on an elevator and switch to spirit walk to actually start it, then return to Tommy (which is done automatically by pressing Y) in order to progress. There is one caveat to spirit walking though Tommy is vulnerable during it all, meaning if enemies attacked he'd be basically defenseless. So you have to pick your spots and make sure its safe before trying it.

Operating Heavy Weaponry...and Wrenches
Tommy begins the game with a wrench that's effective for doing melee attacks on the weaker enemies, but otherwise it has no real purpose it's certainly not on par with the crowbar from Half-Life. But no worries, as Prey has plenty of pyrotechnics in terms of gunplay. All the usual standards are here shotguns, machine guns, grenade launchers, you name it, but not like you've ever seen. The guns are more organic than metal, as Prey emphasizes that yes, this is alien weaponry. The grenades are not actually grenades, but explosive spiders (of a sort) that alternatively can be used as mines for setting traps. Even the grenade launcher is just a machine that fires these spider grenades at a crazy-fast rate. You almost always get a new weapon right before a huge boss encounter, and naturally it becomes your most vital ally during that fight. There's almost always ammo lying around, whether its off dead enemies or in special lockers you find spread all over the Sphere. See, even if it's yet another FPS game, even the weapons are unique to Prey.

The shooting mechanics don't rewrite the book on how to play a FPS, but it doesn't stink up the joint either. Ammo is plentiful but there are times when it dries up a bit, meaning you learn how to balance your weapons quick. The first rifle you acquire has a sniper function, which is perfect for picking off enemies high above doing their own sniping (you can tell when this is happening if the laser sighting from it is targeting your location, it also serves as your 'map' to the sniper). That becomes your bread and butter weapon for common encounters. When you find more powerful enemies like the gigantic dudes or centurions, the shotgun, machine gun, and grenade launchers become your ally, and while the shotgun is a nice all-purpose weapon, it's best for those tough battles late in the game. Though it's a nice weapon indeed. Because the enemies generally portal in to you, even a quiet room runs the potential to be a death trap, so always be on your toes. Thankfully, while using the bumpers to change weapons is fast, the game lets you map 4 weapons to the d-pad, making it much easier to switch to whatever gun is needed.

It wouldn't be an FPS in today's gaming without vehicles. Thanks a lot for making that cool, Halo. Anyway, about halfway through the game you're introduced to Shuttles, which are weak little things that are only really good for getting to another location. They have some firepower but not much, and have a tractor beam for sucking things away from a blocked door or portal, but also take very little punishment before being destroyed. Thankfully there's little if any moments where you get locked into a conflict while flying a shuttle aside from one simplistic boss encounter, but even then there's a shuttle dock where it can be recharged in case you get into danger. Though it's not a major part of the game, Shuttles do pop up frequently after a while, but as said, their role is small and usually last just a few minutes they do their job of getting you from one place to another so you can resume shooting stuff.

You might think with all these weapons and crazy tricks that Prey is a challenging affair. It might be the case if you ever could die. Well, actually for the first 30 minutes or so, you can actually die and be forced to load your last save, but at the same time you learn how to spirit walk, you learn how to not die. Yes, you run out of health and technically perish, but rather than actually ceasing to exist, you simply are transported to a 'between' world where you can shoot your spirit bow (which is the lone weapon you have when spirit walking, but rarely used) at 'evil souls' which replenish your health and spirit, and after about 10 seconds you're dumped back to the exact same place you died. On one hand, this reduces the amount of time you might spend saving and loading, but on the other it makes the game very easy since everything remains the same. On a boss encounter you could die 100 times and their health would stay as it was before you perished. It makes playing the game on Cherokee (hard) just as easy as normal, because there's no real punishment for sucking.

It also eliminates the artificial game lengthening tricks employed by many games where you waste time fighting through areas you already were in but died before saving, and thus have to repeat the process. Alas, this welcome sight is hurt because it makes Prey a 5 hour game. Which is very short, and at over $10 per hour of gameplay, it might be too much to ask full price. But there is a positive to it, as Prey contains little if any filler and few moments of boredom. There's no Library level or replaying old levels backwards either, so the game design is very tight (the game slowly introduces all its quirks) and every stage feels unique. The story builds like a slow burn, with something crazy happening almost every hour you play, leading up to a climax that contains some cliche stuff, but at the same time more than a few things right out of left field. Unfortunately there's no multiple endings, which is a shame because the last little bit was a perfect setup for such a thing. Prey also pulls off a smooth balancing act the game makes sure to wrap up the current story, but after the credits leaves you with something to look forward to with the forthcoming sequel...indeed, it's coming. There is of course multiplayer to enhance the replay, but it's somewhat basic and clearly the single-player portion is the star of Prey's show.

Don't Fear the Reaper
Prey uses the Doom 3 engine, which means the game carries over the same sort of shiny, freaky-like technology that's in that game and it's sister title Quake 4. That said, it's highly polished and has a distinctive alien style, though it's the sort of alien style that's pretty cliche. The leaping into a portal stuff is handled nicely; there's no loading or any sort of hiccups when heading through it feels very natural. Same for gravity shifting; it's a very quick process and the physics respond to it well, with anything that's not tied down flipping to your perspective too at least one puzzle requires that sort of trickery. One of my favorite parts is when you come across the Roadhouse bar, completely intact, inside Sphere, just overloaded with portals and enemies, and other places you'll find random casino machines that were ripped off the reservation (at the Roadhouse itself, it leads to a Tommy Classic 'Worst. Indian casino. Ever'). There's plenty of enemies, ranging from little freaky dog-like savages to flying, grenade firing mutated humans. Creepy stuff.

Generally licensed soundtracks are used as bullet points on the back of a game box without any rhyme or reason to their existence. The same could possibly be said of Prey too, but at least one instance is perfect. When the Roadhouse is being sucked up by the Dark Ones, the jukebox automatically plays 'Don't Fear the Reaper' by Blue Oyster Cult, which is a perfect song to match what's happening on screen. And judging by what happens on Sphere, the classic tune is fitting. Other classics include 'Cat Scratch Fever' by Nugent, and 'You've Got Another Thing Coming' by Judas Priest, along with some modern stuff that is more filler than killer. Along with that, there's a fully orchestrated soundtrack done by the same composer who did Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which means to expect a fantastic score. Though it is funny to wander around the Sphere and find a speaker that still is playing music from the jukebox.

The voice acting is handled decently enough, aside from Jen who has a tendency to get annoying. Tommy is foul-mouthed and often hilarious, but plays the part of your own self well...he usually speaks the kind of things we might say while playing. In one spot when he gets the high-powered machine gun, he blurts out 'now let's see how you ****ers like it!' which is almost the exact same thing I might say upon getting such a tool. On the PC version there's a curse filter to get rid of his naughty mouth, but I didn't check to see if it was in the 360 version. Just be warned that as brutal as the game is, the language is even moreso. The coolest touch is the inclusion of radio legend Art Bell. Once on Sphere, you can find little stations that act as transmitters to listen in to what's happening on Earth, and it's always the Art Bell show, which focuses, in amusing fashion, on what's happening right now, with all these crazy lights and people being sucked up into a ship and people being 'altered' by aliens. It's pretty funny stuff and a great touch to the game. Whenever you hear Art's voice, stop and listen.

The Last Paragraph
With some 11 years in development, Prey really had to be good or it wouldn't have been worth the trouble of reviving it, even if an entire generation of gamers had no idea of its existence until 2005. It might be short and easy, but the game indeed is a wild, focused ride that plays out like a popcorn movie action packed, plenty of humor, a little love story for the romantics, and a satisfying ending, even if there's a cliffhanger after the fact purely to push a forthcoming sequel. Bringing Prey back was a calculated risk, but lo and behold, Human Head Studios pulled it off and the result is an enjoyable game that fills a void in this always-quiet summertime gaming scene. Now, let's bring on Duke Nukem Forever...or not.