Arkane PREY - Arkane's immersive coffee cup transformation sim - now with Mooncrash roguelike mode DLC

So this is how it goes? We can get good really good AAA games only if they will doom their creators with low sales?

 

Not necessarily. New Vegas did very well in sales. The requirement has to be it's a sequel to popamole on the same engine with recycled assets, so lower budget and risk than usual, and a large fanbase already established.

Stop holding these companies up as icons of incline. Especially Eidos Montreal.
Better than the usual shit, yes, but still utterly compromised and borderline mass market.

Waiting for more consensus myself. You're one trusted opinion among a sea of those that think Dishonored and Nu Deus Ex are worthy Immersive Sim successors.

 

Interesting interview of Raf and Ricardo talking about development, compromises, references.

 

There is something interesting going with AAA games recently. Even the latest CoD didn't sell well.

 

People aren't rich, with so many back to back big releases, at premium prices, you tend to pick and choose what you want now and what you will buy later on sale.

 

Price isn't the issue; the industry is simply too big for its own good.

 

I dunno, I think that with overall lower prices in general, they'd all sell more to make up for it. It's not that common that people can sink hundreds of dollars into getting games per month. At 60€, I'm extremely hesitant to get anything at all, let alone two or more games.

The issue with lower pricing is that there's a subconscious idea of price = quality. AAA+ games rarely get prices lower, because if they are, they will be assumed to not be AAA+ games. If every major publisher agreed to lower the initial pricepoint of their AAA+ games, this wouldn't be an issue, but they're not going to go for it anytime soon.

 

No. Too much supply and too little time is what's murdering the AAA single player game.

I don't like going down then "cheap" route. Developers should have a proper budget to make ambitious games.

 

No and lol no.

 

Funny, for me it was exactly the opposite.

ACTUAL FUCKING SPOILERS (open) ACTUAL FUCKING SPOILERS (close)

When the credits started rolling, I was like "holy fuck, this was completely underwhelming and unsatisfying, 30 second cutscene and that's all? Are you fucking kidding me? What was up with those weird quick cut flashbacks during the game?!" Then credits roll with that awesome music so I am starting to feel little better....and then there is this wonderful mindfuck of a scene which explains what those flashbacks were about, and ALSO explains my biggest issue with the game - why the fuck is Morgan silent protagonist? Plus just the awesomeness of the fact that it takes place after Earth has already been invaded/taken over, and the added mysteries of it. It was great. Made me want to replay it actually, although I will wait some time for my memory of it to fade. Would be nice to have some neuromods to remove so I could just erase it from memory :p

 

Oh and regarding the ending, this is a great article:

https://theindiestone.com/binky/why-the-ending-of-prey-is-magnificent/

But don't read if not finished.

I do not hold them as "icons" of incline and I agree DX HR/MD had stupid stuff in them (timefreezing takedowns, bad economy, somewhat arbitrary level design, gamey systems in general), but I still enjoyed them lot more than most AAA games. They had great atmosphere, sense of place, I liked the sidequests etc. So eventhough they could have been better and closer to original Deus Ex, it is still a huge shame for me to see them relegated on Marvel mass production.

 

Only one question: How is Chris Avellone 's work in the game? Is it visible? is it great?

 

You can feel he wrote a good chunk of the audiologs. Some of it is pretty decent like the D&D subplot (although a bit SJW borderline) but I don't think he had anything to do with the main story except some spoken lines.

 

1 or 2 hours in, I dig it

Somewhat lengthy introduction aside (though I'm sure Dark Messiah would be longer in this respect until you get to the city after the fantasy turret section), there doesn't appear to be any handholding aside from tutorial pop-ups explaining to you how shit works. No quest markers or compass arrows as far as I can see. Visual and sound design (when it isn't imitating terrible Hollywood horror movies) are excellent, but the music is eh

Standard Arkaneisms of leaning, mantling, auto-low crouch and good movement are in place, though sometimes your screen can jerk back and forth at random when trying to lean near walls. Leaning also prevents you from turning horizontally with the mouse unlike in Thief, so that might feel weird to some people.

UI is excellent too, my only gripes being that container contents don't pop up instantly (there's a half second delay but I want to see whether there's anything in it INSTANTLY) and keypads not accepting keyboard number input

The first area after leaving the bedroom is quite spacious, there's a lot of stuff to climb around on but not much to find aside from some trash items, SS was more tight in this regard.

Will check out more tomorrow

Verstuurd vanaf mijn GT-I9301I met Tapatalk

 

Yeah you're correct. He merely gave "feedback" for the main story (that's marketing speech for "did absolutely fuck all") and wrote some audio logs.

 

The latest COD sold well, don't believe the internet hype

 

What? I can't deactivate these quest markers and i'm playing on nightmare difficulty. The game has quest-makers. I guess you can deactivate it somehow, but not from options menu.

Anyway...

I'm playing it and i'm 8 hours in... and i just met the weaver chamber and about to enter the GUTS. but i'm a very slow player since i like to explore every nook and cranny in these kind of games, and with all those readables and side missions... I haven't finished dishonored 2 yet because I spend 3-4 hours on each level by doing everything I can in a no powers non lethal perfect play through - it's the average time I take to play thief FM levels. And the "hours" do take its toll and I just quit playing and play something else (but I don't abandon... I just don't have the time to spare as i did some years ago). Anyway, I like dishonored games for what they are. I can't say the same for DX: MD which is boring as hell.

I'm enjoying Prey. I said that dishonored 1 was the closest thief experience we will ever have in modern gaming industry, prey '17 is the closest we will get to a modern day SS2. Level design is the strongest point. And the fact that, like in SS1 and 2, if you drop items in a section you can go back and it will still be there, is enough to make me happy. I remember bioshock previous levels would reset if you went back there, and there was no reason to do so anyway.

Not everything is amazing. Remember when they said Bioshock was SS2 spiritual successor? Well, this is something in between (but I feel it's closer to SS than BS). We have bioshock features here: The psychoscope works like the photographic camera in bioshock 1, and you scan enemies to discover their weaknesses and unlock their powers. Also, I see myself using mostly my wrench against my enemies. Also, I'm playing on nightmare and I think the game is a bit easy. I haven't suffer from lack of resources yet, and to kill my enemies I use the shotgun and mostly my wrench, and I even haven't upgraded my stamina skill... I feel like a psychopath bashing the wrench on everything. It's like the electric plasmid and wrench in bioshock all over again.

I haven't encountered any bugs other than gaming crashing now and then. In any case, I feel i'm still in the beginning of the game. I also like the sections that take place out of the station in 0 G.

Is this game worth the price? no. I wouldn't buy for the price it is sold here in Brazil, but I bought it for half that price on CDkeys. And I don't regret it. People that claim recent arkane games like dishonored 1 and 2 and prey are popamole modern shit, well... Prey nightmare level of difficulty is easier than when I struggled in system shock 2, a game that I had to backtrack to find some scarce bullets. Here, I can recycle everything. If that's the definition of popamole... they're right. But it's not a disaster like Thiaf or bioshock 2. I still think arkane games are the closest thing we will ever have to games of that time, and they get a lot of things right. But games nowadays must be playable with gamepads, so...

 

You can turn them off by going into the quest menu and double clicking to make the quests inactive.

 

IGN gave the PC version 4/10 due to bugs wiping out their saves and Gamespot could only manage 6/10.

Bethesda must be behind in their payments...

Even with cdkey discount sites in abundance I can't bring myself to pay top dollar for new release games anymore, given the huge backlog of unfinished games sitting on my PC. Maybe for multiplayer games which live or die by the size of their community it's important to get in early but otherwise it's far easier to wait for the inevitable discounts a month or two down the track.

 

They're probably massively asshurt that they were denied early review copies and had to compete with competent youtube reviewers for page clicks, so this was their way of getting back at Bethesda.

 

Just looked it up, haha what the fuck. That's not a fair review. Rating a game shit because of a technical issue that not everyone experiences and could very well be fixed (and actually I literally just downloaded a patch via Steam 10 mins ago that claims to fix it) is what I expect some random dumbass in a user review section to do.

 

Man, this game get me conflicted, it has alot of win but is missing so much. System shock 2 for me had three pillars: Level design, survival, atmosphere. Prey does one of them pretty well but I'm missing the other two. I wanna feel like a desperate rat within an oppressive place and feeling "NOPE! NOPE! NOPE!" at each corner, Prey doesn't offer that.

 

16 hours in, thoroughly enjoying it - completely taken by surprise on how good it is. It's one big homage to the best Immersive Sims. Can't believe how lukewarm the response for this game has been outside Steam.

Seems to be rooted in this "Alien Bounty Hunter Concept" being scrapped, a concept which was never fully realized outside a CG teaser - nearly seven years ago. That and console gamers seem to hate the fact that it's been designed primarily with PC in mind.

I bought a physical copy (it was cheaper than direct from Steam) and even the dude at the store said they've had refunds from PS4/Xbox gamers who "didn't like it"....says everything.

 

You are early game. Wait for the first contact with a Technopath or Telepath then you can tell us all how you "wrench-ed" their asses ... on Nightmare

Level design is excellent, atmosphere is great and survival is decent. You get resource management, sometimes you are hunted and you have to plan before you enter fights.

You are a desperate rat but the Typhon doesn't give you special attention and because of this you have much more space for exploration. I actually like this.

But I also see your point: the atmosphere is not as oppressive as in SS2. I don't know. Enjoy diversity

Maybe you should postpone your run - they are planning to release a Survival Mode dlc. (see video below - posted by Siel)

Hehe ... told you. The guy has a deal with Bethesda

 

Blows my mind that there are people on the codex (of all places) who don't know how to deactivate the quest markers. It is the first thing I did whenever I got a new mission. Come on
Darth Slaughter.

Later via patch there will be added central option to disable them altogether so it does not have to be done manually each time.

Avellone also wrote some side characters. In the credits, he and Colantonio are credited under "Written by" and then there are about 6 more people in "Additional writing".

The game is written very well.