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

[JDR13]

No counterargument there, but I guess I didn't really expect one.

 

[samuraigaiden]

Is there any game with a GOOD hacking mini-game?

 

[Bad Sector]

There's nothing subjective about it

...followed with...

If you expect

Eh, come on :-P.

Afair in the beginning part of the game you get the ability to craft neuromods, shotgun ammo and medkits (plus many other things) and more crafting materials than you ever need.

You can get it early if you know the place well enough (or read some guide) but normally you'll still be several hours into the game.

there's no denying that SS2 has real economy when it comes to modules or psy hypos for a psi build, and that's on normal difficulty

Perhaps i need to do a new playthrough of SS2, but as i wrote above while SS2 is more stingy when it comes to resources, i do not remember this being a big concern after a few hours.

 

[Average Manatee]

SS2's economy only really gets hard on impossible if you are generally paying attention to how the mechanics work and have a halfway decent build. Earlier difficulties are pretty lenient, giving both more random stuff, cheaper ammo/hypos, and stronger skills that allow you to expend less resources in general. Even then it can be somewhat broken by specific builds (e.g. overcharged laser pistol spam).

They were two contemporary examples of much better "Survival Horror" games, which SS2 randomly gets lumped in with despite being lacking in the survival department. While SH is far weaker than RE in this aspect, it came out the same year as SS2 and actually attempts at being a horror game.

SH is just a horror game, it doesn't really have much survival horror. Resources are essentially never an issue even on the highest difficulties. Only SH3 really comes close to having serious resource management issues, and it achieves this by some semi-cheating (punishing you if you are doing too well by dropping less ammo in several spots).

 

[Wunderbar]

Is there any game with a GOOD hacking mini-game?

bioshock 2 allows you to hack stuff at a distance, in real time. It's very fast and snappy.

 

[RoSoDude]

Is there any game with a GOOD hacking mini-game?

1. Deus Ex Human Revolution/Mankind Divided - It's overused and hacking is overly incentivized by the terrible XP system in the Nu Deus Ex games, but the minigame itself is legitimately good. It's abstract stealth gameplay in microcosm, focused on capturing territory and avoiding/responding to detection. It's strategic, but the random element makes it dynamic, with influence from character statistics and consumable resources (Mankind Divided adds a lot here, plus more hazards in the grids as well). It's also well-integrated into gameplay at large, as it occurs in real time and failing it can set off alarms.

Spoiler

2. E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy - Basically a stripped-down Final Fantasy ATB system as a hacking minigame. Keep your attack and defense high while weakening your opponent and whittling down their Cyber HP before they wipe out yours. From my limited experience there are some dominant strategies that hamper its depth, but it's engaging enough and, like Deus Ex, it occurs in real time and is influenced by your character statistics. It's also pretty fleshed out in terms of what can be hacked (remotely, I might add) and what actions can be performed by doing so.

Spoiler

3. Paradroid - I haven't played it myself, but am aware of it because it's one of the first hacking minigames ever and was copied wholesale in Neocron. You have to place charges along circuits to fill up or contest as many of the nodes in the middle as possible while your opponent tries to do the same. Each side has a limited number of charges that must be placed before the timer runs out, and each hacking grid will have junctions and switches that require quick reads. Again, a mix of strategy and dynamism. In Paradroid the number of charges is determined by the difficulty of the hack and is a central part of the challenge; in Neocron it's affected by character statistics.

Spoiler

4. System Shock 2 - While the hacking minigame on its own offers little beyond clicking nodes and praying for RNG (you can decide to risk breaking the device by clicking red nodes but it's usually ill-advised), the hacking minigame gains a lot from its implementation into gameplay at large. It occurs in real time so the player is vulnerable while doing it, it's affected by multiple character statistics, and comes with a resource cost that imposes risk management. By contrast, Bioshock's minigame requires more input on its own but is also extremely tedious and disruptive to gameplay, rather than complementing it.

Spoiler

5. Nier: Automata - Another one I haven't played, but it looks like a solid if simple bullet hell exercise. That's a good enough formula for entire arcade games and it looks like it has a bunch of unique challenges built for it, plus it's a natural fit with the bullet hell sequences already present throughout the game. From what I can see, hacking supplements your other options in combat and there's some itemization related to it.

Spoiler

In the best case scenario, a hacking minigame should present a contained challenge that has some depth (or is at least not terribly intrusive) and mesh cleanly with other aspects of gameplay, such as occuring in real time, being influenced by character statistics and/or resources, and opening up new interactivity for the player on success or fail. In terms of the minigame itself, the better ones require strategic adaption to variable components of challenge (e.g. different grid layouts) and pit the player against a simulated opponent or at least introduce randomness to create uncertainty and prevent the minigame from becoming a static puzzle. Prey's minigame utterly lacks any of this, amounting to a limited set of Pac-Man mazes without the ghosts. It occurs in a modal interface while the game is paused, with character statistics only affecting the ability to enter the minigame, and most hacking opportunities producing mundane results. It's a perfect storm for an incredibly boring hacking minigame.

 

[JDR13]

The cyberspace mini-game in System Shock 1 was far better than any of those examples, imo.

 

[RoSoDude]

System Shock 1 cyberspace sucks. It's somewhat impressive that they were able to cram in a 6DOF shooter with 3D vector graphics, but the actual gameplay is pretty awful. Fly around and shoot polygonal blobs with your own polygonal blobs until one of you dies. The combat lacks any hit feedback, every enemy is virtually the same, and you have no real options (pulse/drill is not a real choice, recall is just an escape button, and turbo/decoy are unnecessary) -- just keep things in view and spam away. Most of the cyberspace mazes are linear corridors between boxy arenas where you fight and collect boring stuff. The only good cyberspace maze in the game is SHODAN's virtual lair as it requires some actual navigational skill, but it's still lame. The ReWired fan mission had some better mazes focused on avoiding mines instead of the shitty combat.

 

[HansDampf]

4. System Shock 2 - While the hacking minigame on its own offers little beyond clicking nodes and praying for RNG (you can decide to risk breaking the device by clicking red nodes but it's usually ill-advised), the hacking minigame gains a lot from its implementation into gameplay at large. It occurs in real time so the player is vulnerable while doing it,

Finally someone mentions this little detail. I'm gonna repeat myself, but the HUD overlay is the best feature of SS2. Everything you do happens in real-time, and the game never pauses. So of course, Prey got rid of it. And its hacking mini-game is even worse than SS2's. It is so boring and trivial, I'd recommend removing it with a mod.

 

[Nano]

They were two contemporary examples of much better "Survival Horror" games, which SS2 randomly gets lumped in with despite being lacking in the survival department.

I understand not finding SS2 scary - there are different types of horror and they affect people differently - but how could you argue its survival aspects are lacking? It beats most pure survival horror games in that department.

 

[JDR13]

System Shock 1 cyberspace sucks. It's somewhat impressive that they were able to cram in a 6DOF shooter with 3D vector graphics, but the actual gameplay is pretty awful. Fly around and shoot polygonal blobs with your own polygonal blobs until one of you dies. The combat lacks any hit feedback, every enemy is virtually the same, and you have no real options (pulse/drill is not a real choice, recall is just an escape button, and turbo/decoy are unnecessary) -- just keep things in view and spam away. Most of the cyberspace mazes are linear corridors between boxy arenas where you fight and collect boring stuff. The only good cyberspace maze in the game is SHODAN's virtual lair as it requires some actual navigational skill, but it's still lame. The ReWired fan mission had some better mazes focused on avoiding mines instead of the shitty combat.

As opposed to just clicking on nodes in a simple puzzle that a 4 year-old could solve. Because that's what most hacking mini-games boil down to nowadays.

 

[LESS T_T]

Ooh, then I guess Steam version actually will get Denuvo removed?

It's (going to be) removed: https://old.reddit.com/r/prey/comments/hsdkih/july_16th_2020_update/

Hello awesome Prey community!

Today we planned to perform a backend deployment for Prey in order to remove Denuvo, but some of you may have seen a 16GB or 4GB update instead. We've rolled back this deployment, so you should no longer have any large updates for Prey or Prey: Mooncrash. The update to remove Denuvo will still be deployed, but at a later date.

Your game should be unaffected, but please let us know if you're seeing any issues!

 

[Child of Malkav]

I hate minigames like these in general. I used to like but not anymore.
Just do a stat or an item check and press a button and open the door, hack the computer etc.
They don't add anything to gameplay just more wasted time.

 

[Nano]

Minigames can be fun, it's just that it isn't in Prey.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Minigames can be fun, it's just that it isn't in Prey.

They're not fun for me in any game. They're not fun in Prey, nor in Bethesda Fallouts, nor in DX 3 and 4 (hm, well maybe a little bit, but it overstays its welcome considering that 70% of those 2 games is just hacking) and a bunch of other games.
Outer Worlds had the right idea. Except that instead of holding the button, it should have been just a press.
But whatever, if you like them, more power to you.

 

[Monolith]

I liked the the hacking mini-game in Shadowrun: Hong Kong. A mix of memorization both visually and sound-wise, plus finding matching patterns - it somewhat appealed to my autistic me.

 

[Bad Sector]

The problem with the majority of minigames is that they feel arbitrary - you try to do something like unlock a door or hack a computer or activate a mechanism or whatever and you end up playing minesweeper or something like that, that has zero relevance to what you are supposed to be doing. Prey's hacking minigame makes no sense nor does Bioshock's one, though at least Bioshock tries to somehow give the impression you are messing with mechanics - however IMO it should have been closer to something like the rewiring minigame in System Shock 1, so instead of trying to play a steampunk version of Pipe Dream you could instead try to adjust fluid levels (and perhaps even mixture) until you get the desired result to some gauges or whatever.

Also for some reason most of them are time limited when it also doesn't make sense (at least most of the time). I think it is used for your character's development to somehow affect the outcome and so you have some reason to spend skill points (or whatever) towards improving your "hacking skills" (...or whatever, again).

IMO if you add a minigame then it should feel relevant to what you are trying to do and not have arbitrary restrictions.

I know people around here dislike to read positive things about it, but i think Fallout 3 (and by extension, New Vegas')'s lockpicking minigame is among the best: it doesn't have any arbitrary time limit (which wouldn't make sense), it is exactly about what you are trying to do (lockpicking) - it even kinda looks the part (though i've never tried to pick a lock to know, but sure feels like lockpicking - certainly way more than whatever you do in Prey does hacking) and both your and your character's skills matter as they affect how precise you have to be (a higher skiller character will have an easier time picking a lock, but your own skills also matter too, especially if your characters' skills are low). It also requires some actual resources to use which can affect the rest of the game's systems too (so, e.g. in the Bioshock alternative minigame example i wrote above, you could be collecting chemicals to pour into the machines you are trying to "hack" to affect the existing fluids/gauges).

 

[HansDampf]

It's like the game stops and you have to play Solitaire for a minute.

 

[DalekFlay]

They're not fun for me in any game.

Yep. Even the ones that are somewhat amusing I'd rather just play them on my phone while taking a shit. They just break up the gameplay and ruin the pacing in games like this, IMO.

 

[V_K]

Lockpicking and trap disarming minigames in Wiz 7 worked great - they represented the process fairly realistically and were well integrated with other systems (skills, spells, equipment).

 

[Bad Sector]

Nikt explain your rating ?

 

[Spectacle]

Is there any game with a GOOD hacking mini-game?

The old isometric puzzle-platformer Mr. Robot has a hacking minigame that plays like a short dungeon crawl, with JRPG style combat. It's a very underrated game, worth checking out.

 

[Morgoth]

Minigames can be fun, it's just that it isn't in Prey.

Alpha Protocol had the funniest Minigames of them all!

 

[Average Manatee]

Minigames serve no purpose, especially hacking in Prey. You unlock the ability of hacking level 1 devices. Why force the player to play a minigame to hack level 1 devices then? It's clear the intent is there that the character is good enough to hack level 1 devices, so the minigame is just a waste of time. It's not like there's easy level 1 devices and hard level 1 devices (that might require additional investment in character skills). It's all the same level and difficulty, and you are intended to be able to access level 1 hacked objects if you have level 1 hacking, yet you still need to play the minigame. It's like if you unlocked the ability to wield the Assault Rifle in System Shock 2 but then decided to force the player to play a trivial match-3 minigame every time they switch to it while the rest of the game world paused and waited.

 

[gurugeorge]

I don't mind minigames in principle, but I do prefer them to have some kind of thematic relationship to the thing you're supposed to be doing. One of the best thematic "hacking" minigames I thought was the one in Mass Effect where you have to match patterns of code that that are moving down the screen.