Video Game Review: Prey

This game brings together Quake and Doom in one easy package! When you start off playing Prey you assume the role of Tommy, a Cherokee garage mechanic who hates being stuck on the Indian Reservation and believes that the old ways are for the old and are nothing but stories the so called elders tell their grandchildren to make them behave. Tommy has no idea what he is in for!!

Learning how to use your abilities is a little tricky at first, but after you get the hang of it Prey is a very enjoyable game. When you first begin to play the game, you are subjected to the lengthy but necessary tutorial mode which explains the basics of using some of your abilities, how to move and etc.

After a short time playing the game (about 20 minutes for me) you find out that aliens are coming to take over the world and only you have the proper abilities to vanquish the evil enemies. Soon after the aliens begin attacking, they start to bring people aboard their spacecrafts. Once inside the craft you are subjected to weird and horrifying experiments until you are able to break free with the help of what appears to be a rogue human that has escaped previously.

There are many challenging puzzles to overcome and it kind of reminded me of play the original Resident Evil, which lead you through mazes of carnage filled puzzles. There are several weapons to choose from once you begin your quest on the living ship. It seems that the aliens use the humans as some sort of substance and it looks like it kind of fuels the ship as well. The aliens are hideous looking and offer a nice little scare factor to the gaming experience.

After exploring on the ship for a while you learn how to use your spirit powers which allow you to leave your body and walk the spirit path to unlock doors and get around obstacles through the assistance of your spirit guide which is a hawk. When you die in Prey you do not really die. In most games if you are defeated or you just die then you typically have to start over from a saved game, or checkpoint or something like that. Well, in Prey there is a similarity to the checkpoints in the fact that if you die it is kind of like a checkpoint to the effect that you will start over from the last section you were in (typically called a checkpoint in the game), but the difference is when you die you are taken to a spirit world where you have to use your spirit bow and take out some swirling ghosts, which are two colors: Red and Blue.

The Red Ghosts replenish your health supply and the Blue Ghosts allow you to build your spirit back up so that you can continue to play the game. After hitting enough of the ghosts you will be sucked into a portal in the middle of the screen and you will be back at the last checkpoint or section that you were just in. So Prey allows you to play a little side game to get back to where you were rather than making you start off at the beginning or further away than you were when you died.

The gameplay with Prey takes a cool turn with some of the puzzles. One of my favorite things in the game is the ability to walk upside down using the magnetic floors and walkways. The cinematic presentations in the game are outstanding as well and the sound quality is superb to say the least.

While playing Prey I had an absolute great time and would recommend this game to anyone who wants to play a solid action game with great innovations in gameplay and design. Prey has to be one of the best games that I have played and one of the best games that I have owned in a very, very long time!!