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

Your thoughts there mirror mine for the most part. It's not enough of a survival horror game and too much of a shooter to distract from the weak and relatively un-fun arsenal. The encounter design probably isn't helping all that much.
I'm normally all for sensible ingame reasons for things (such as the weapons here), but in this case imo fun really takes a hit as a result, so maybe "security guards in the future have carbines" would have been better. Then again the enemy design would have had to change to compensate.

 

I was actually thinking that myself. Here, realism is not as important as a good experience. Either make the encounter design so that these weapons are sufficient (which they tried, to be fair, just not as well as they could have) or contrive a reason for there being better weapons. Maybe there's a terrorist or rebel cell or something planning to take over and they had some assault rifles shipped. Anything. If your combat is all FPS-style, you can't have Survival Horror weapon loadouts.

 

Speaking of realism...

Can anyone actually tell me why the security pistols are SILENCED?

 

The issue for me is that

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

you're kept from too many guns because of the story, so you accept that, then you find out the story is taking huge liberties where you were living in a dream within a dream anyway.

The disc gun alone would help a lot since it provides one thing I would have liked, high damage per hit at a range for sneak attacks / crits, they kinda planned it to be casual though with some kind of lockon/homing mechanic iirc, I would prefer a slow-moving unguided projectile since it would be the only weapon that works that way. (GLOO doesn't do damage)

Reasons could be that it's not as deafening to fire it in confined spaces, and that it slows down the bullet so it's less likely to pierce the hull. The shotgun isn't silenced along with it because I don't think it works that well to silence a shotgun.

 

Playing SS2 now. It has two go-to weapons: Wrench and Assault rifle. Shotgun, laser pistol and grenade launcher are useful to save on Rifle bullets maybe.
In Prey all weapons are useful and distinct in it's use. SS2 limits your weapon use by tiny inventory space and separate skills for weapon types. If you specialise in anything but Standard you cripple yourself, because each other type is very limited.

 

So that the sound guys had an excuse to make them sound wimpy af.

 

Not really true. The grenade launcher has ammo options for everything and mega cannon is good against all as well iirc. It's certainly true for energy (anti mech) and exotic (melee + anti bio) though.

Because if someone resists firing and getting their brain sucked out while the corp recovers their bonus neuromods, it's good if you can take them out without waking up the entire space station?

The station also has molecular assemblers. You'd think after shit went bad, someone would have the idea to email someone on earth/moon/internet to give them the plans for some assault weapons. Or just some scientist tinkering with a plasma cannon on their free time.

 

Besides SS2, I think there could be some influence from Planescape. Amnesia, meeting your previous incarnations, etc.

 

The US marines are doing testing on putting suppressors on their guns, the idea is twofold.
1.You can actually hear shit so you don't need to be closer to hear orders.

a.Apparently marines want to get rid of giving radios to 'team leaders' because it distracts them.​

2.It makes harder for the enemy to find where you're shooting from, even without the proper subsonic ammunition. As in you'll hear a gunshot, but there is no flash and you can't tell which direction the bullets are whizzing by.
http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/...arine-corps-experimenting-suppressors-rifles/
http://www.military.com/daily-news/...loy-rifle-suppressors.html?ESRC=todayinmil.sm

Also the basic fact that shit gives you tinnitus.

 

Maybe those guns work differently from our gunpowder ones and are naturally non-loud. Or bullets have to be slow/weak, so they do not destroy some vital life support equipment and/or pierce outer wall.

 

If you want a subsonic round you just load a heavier bullet since it takes more force to reach sonic speeds, so it kinda balances it out. For example the average box of 9mm is 116 grains per bullet (that's 7.5 grams for those mulism countries), and a sub sonic load for 9mm is 147 grains (9.5 grams). I also want to mention that the .45 acp, which depending who you ask is more powerful than 9mm, is already subsonic at 230 grains (15 grams). If the US gets it shit together and passes 'The Hearing Protection Act' you bet your ass that integral suppressed handguns are going to be a thing, hell some suppressor company has already made one.

 

I agree with you completely.

To the lack of diverse and memorable enemies add the fact that 3 of them are just the same one, 3 phantoms with different elemental powers. That's lame and lazy.

Also, the tech enemies are just generic turrets and drones, what a blast.

 

Worth noting that the variety of enemies in SS2 contributed a LOT to the feeling that (unlike SS1) you've only missed the start of shit going down, the big initial massacre might have happened, but it's still all developing around you and you're only a few steps behind the rest of the survivors. You encounter the android nurses not long after they're created, hence the Many's WWHAT THE FUCK YOU MONSTER!!! reaction when you kill its children. The first Psi-Reaver you encounter is also THE first Psi-Reaver, i.e. he's the very first guy to have become infected (the 2nd, Diego, uses the auto-surgery unit to cut the mutation out of him, and uses his dying minutes to make adjustments to the weapon he's been building for the Many so that it's a super-weapon against them instead of against humans).

New enemy types appear at a steady pace, almost always preceded by visual cues and audio tapes that indicate that they've only just started appearing, either to fill some need the Many has (like the nurses), or in direct reaction either to your/Shodan's actions, or to the pesky Resistance that has formed out of the more badass survivors on Deck 7, who appear far more capable than the SS1 resistance, and are putting into play a very plausible self-destruct plan (the cyborg assassins - not part of the Many's life-cycle, and it's clear from the audio-tapes prior to your 1st encounter with them that they've only just been created b/c the Many has discovered it unexpectedly has a 2 front fight on its hands).

Very different to the Doom model, where enemy types are introduced early and then thrown at you at maximal variety and challenge. But it's a good illustration of how a SS2 style game can benefit from enemy variety, even on its own terms as a story-heavy rpg-element FPS. Lack of enemy variety hurt Bioshock for the same reasons - even though you had more interaction with other characters than in SS2, the lack of enemy variety put the story at odds with the gameplay, b/c you're just killing 1 kind of mook throughout, with no sense that the enemy is reacting to or trying to counter your (or other survivors') actions.

 

Weapons is just one area where the game just misses a boatload of opportunities.
Even without using the limitless possibilities afforded by having 3D printers everywhere, there's still tons of things that come to mind they could have added, even on a non-military space station. A homemade flamethrower. A nailgun of sorts, adapted from a construction tool. A plasma welder or something. A baseball bat. A knife/dagger. A sword or katana someone kept in his room. Something built from a fire extinguisher. A reployer gun. A taser (higher ranged stun gun). A real crossbow or bow. And so on and so forth.
And then there's aforementioned printer, wouldn't it be cool to find plans for stuff scientists struggled to come up with throughout the game? Or attached to an email some SMG design? A mini rocket launcher of sorts, adapted from the jetpack plans that are already on board?
We know they at least had plans for the disc gun at some point.

To me, this is one of the major disappointments with modern game design. Back in the day when Shock 1 was made, the design mantra often was "when in doubt, keep it in the game", whilst somewhere along the road, this was changed to "when in doubt, cut it".
Every single shocklike game, from the Bioshocks to the modern Deus Exes to Prey, they all have less features than their ancestor, which is now closing in on being 25 years old.
Imagine buying a car today, and when driving it finding yourself longing for the olden days, to the cars of your youth. Remember the days? We had, like a radio in the car back in the day. For reals! We also had a gauge that told us how fast we were going? Sounds crazy, I know. We also had safety belts, I have no idea why they ever dropped those. And cars used to have a storage space in the back we called a trunk. No, I'm really not kidding, almost every car had that...

 

I find it the most surprising that the toy crossbow never becomes "real". Just put some home-made rockets into it or something, damn you.

 

Exactly. In fact, when I first found the toy crossbow, I was kinda "I see what you did there". I expected to find plans for some way to modifiy the foam bolts so they'd immobilize the aliens, or to turn them into firebolts, or whatever.
But no, it remained strictly a toy gun which could be used to distract enemies - but the game is not Thief, and I never made use of it this way - or to press unreachable buttons - I found a single opportunity for this in like 30 hours.
Was this like a mainstay weapon for anyone in the thread?

 

I used up most of my nerf xbow ammo in the second half of the game to quickly get rid of cystoid nests + cystoids, especially during spacewalks. Throwing stuff at them works just as well, but :effort:

 

The enemy variety and constant respawns are becoming a chore to deal with.

Going through the station doing side quests and there's always more phantoms, weavers, mimics to deal with.

Also not sure if it's a bug but I have had to deal with 5 nightmares so far, thought they would be rarer, and more difficult to shoot in the face.

Speaking about shooting, the fully upgraded handgun + sneak damage 250% dmg bonus is ridiculously overpowered. Just go around shooting everything in the face from distance while they are unaware.

 

Alas for all its incline, ammo types and firing modes were definitely something that was not intended for Prey.

There's a lot of stuff that's incline about Prey, but let's not forget they are still following Bioshock/Infinite very closely, constantly quoting its development mantras (say yes to the player) and what Levine is doing (narrative lego blocks). Ammo types and firing modes were both kept out of Bioshock Infinite and that game went to increasingly hilarious ways of putting them back in via different weapons. (e.g the SS2 grenade launcher settings for Bounce and Contact are now two different grenade launchers, with the bounce once having lots of red tape on it)

 

Afaik, enemies only "respawn" (its more reinforce) when you progress the main story missions.

 

That's definately incorrect, I've had several occasions of leaving an area headed for another area, then realizing I had forgot to replicate more ammo or something, heading back to the area I just came from and meeting additional enemies.
Early on in the game this could be a fatal incident, late in the game it was mostly annoying. Once I even had a Nightmare spawn this way. I triggered him, hid in a corner, and went to take a dump.
I'm not exactly sure I should consider this a highlight of my playthrough.

 

This is one of those videos you hate even when you agree in principle because the author is constantly bombarding you with every marker of butthurt autism there is. THANKS FOR THE TWO DOLLAR DONATION

 

He complains about the game before actually playing it.

He complains about Harvey Smith but that guy did not work on this game.

His e-persona indicates he is a poseur but now he provided the proof that he is actually an intellectual poseur as well.

 

Just finished the game last night. I'd say the game really starts losing its cohesion at around the point where you reach deep storage. At this point, you've basically encountered every enemy the game has to throw at you, have probably horded a huge cache of ammo and medkits to mitigate all difficulty, and've likely found the fabrication plans for weapon mods and neuromods to further neuter any real semblance of challenge the game had left. It only really falls apart in the finale though

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

With the sudden appearance of evil Russian mercenary Steve Blum and his army of bullet sponge drones, with absolutely no buildup or foreshadowing.

By that point, the game had thoroughly overstayed its welcome, and I just found myself running through areas just so I wouldn't have to deal with enemies.

Couple other points

- I agree with everyone here in that I absolutely cannot understand how anyone could find this game hard. If you don't rush through things, take your time to find schematics and recycle everything that isn't nailed down (i.e. play the game the way the devs intended you to), then the game is utterly piss-easy. Wish they included some kind've old-school difficulty mode which severely restricted things like salvage yields, number of neuromods you can get, and removed certain replicator plans.
- The game has a lot of little mechanics that you honestly will rarely ever actually find yourself needing to use. There's a myriad of methods the game recommends you use to avoid, trap, or ambush monsters, but they're seldom ever really necessary because honestly, it's much easier to just kill the shit out of everything you see just to make getting through levels easier. By the second half of the game, you'll just be running past every enemy you see to get to objectives.
- Nightmares: neat idea on paper, but in execution they wind up just being a minor annoyance. They're actually pretty trivially easy to kill, it's just that unlike, say, Nemesis from Resident Evil 3, for which each encounter was a risk vs. reward set-up, there is basically no benefit to killing one. Just run past them and they'll go away.

Overall, it's still a pretty decent game, worth a gander if you did enjoy System Shock 2.