Prey First Impressions

One of my friends is a big fan of slower-paced action games, the kind that emphasize player agency and freedom instead of setpiece moments and cutting-edge design trends. Referred to as "immersive sims", these types of games are an endangered species in today's game development environment with just a handful of studios and projects carrying the torch that Deus Ex and System Shock set aflame - the Bioshock series by 2K Boston / Irrational Games (featuring former members of System Shock creators Looking Glass Technologies), Dishonored 1 & 2 by Arkane Studios (another harbor for former Looking Glass employees), Far Cry 2 by an Ubisoft team headed by emergent gameplay maestro Clint Hocking and GSC Game Worlds' S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, among others. Prey, the newest title by Arkane Studios, follows in these footsteps with an open-ended design methodology that will feel very familiar to any fans of the 'Shock series or its many children.

The game takes place aboard a space station called Talos I with you filling the shoes of Morgan Yu, who is basically a space-age yuppie caught up in a conflict with your brother Alex and a mysterious race of aliens known as the Typhon who have infested the station. While the premise is new and the CryEngine tech is quite nice looking the core gameplay will feel very comfortable to immersive sim old hands:

• You start off with a wrench and then can acquire further weapons in mostly whatever order you want
• You use "Neuromods" to upgrade Morgan's abilities and to unlock new ones. These are basically just Plasmids in space.
• You are guided throughout the station by a mostly unseen character while picking up audio logs and reading emails to give context to life on the station before everything went to shit (sensing a pattern yet?)
• Instead of scripted missions, you are given a loose narrative thread to follow and numerous optional objectives to complete at your leisure.
• The game has several systems you can interact with, including keypads you can hack, turrets and robots you can deploy, items you can craft, and enemies to fight, evade, and scan for research all nested in several expansive hub areas that are partitioned off with loading screens.

Sounds a lot like one of the 'Shock games, right? That's because Prey basically is the System Shock 3 we never got, and it is fantastic if you are a fan of that genre. I'm 12 hours in and I'm pretty sure I'm on the B side of the main plot and I still have several side quests I'd like to wrap up as well as a few more areas to comb through, all while continuing to make tough choices about how to upgrade Morgan and my weapons and making plans in the back of my mind about the strategies I'll pursue when I inevitably run through it again. 

So if this sounds at all like fun to you, I highly recommend Prey. It's on sale on Steam right for $40 and is well worth it for such well-wound package. After I finish it I would like to talk more in-depth about its design but I still feel like there is a lot to learn and absorb with this one, so we'll see when I get around to that.