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

[Jasede]

Aren't I recognized as the biggest critic of Bioshock on this damn forum?

"can you name a game that's gotten closer to SS2 that's not Prey"

It's your lucky day, because I have two:

An intelligent non-compromised immersive action survival horror with RPG elements? Darkwood (2017). we have a thread for that on the codex but it is flying over the low standards cucks' heads.

an actual FP/RPG "immersive sim"? Arx Fatalis! Other than that, none.

Prey is "closer" in that it is a straight SS2 clone in concept (not execution), but the above games are closer in terms of design intelligence, hardcore uncompromised design, immersion & entertainment factor, overarching design synergy (how everything comes together, works in tandem; the whole picture), replayability and all the good stuff.

I love Arx of course and I've beaten Darkwood but certainly they're not closer to SS2 as you acknowledge yourself. I give Prey this credit: it's the next best thing to evoking that old "mostly alone on a space station" feeling.

The wokeness, enemy type paucity and resource richness all bothered me very much but I still thought it was a "decent" experience.

 

[Average Manatee]

-Broken resource management/economy. You get way more resources than you ever need. Health kits, ammo, armor repair kits, infinite use psi water fountains.
-RPG systems do not really force specialisation thanks to infinitely craftable neuromods. People contest whether SS2 and Deus Ex are even RPGs which is somewhat understandable, but this crosses the line. It's barely even replayable. I played it once, tried a second time and gave up in boredom.

These are both essentially the case in SS2 if you play at lower than impossible difficulty. Prey needed a similar difficulty bump but let's not pretend that SS2 is some kind of difficult game for the 95% of people who play it on normal or hard. Modern AAA games all being too easy is unfortunately just the norm.

-Going up is too exploitable (in trouble? Look up and jump = danger is gone. It's too reliable, there's always somewhere to jump up to).

In every case you can move vertically it completely nullifies the danger in SS2 as nothing can path at all through the lifts.

-The latter half is boring as fuck: level design falls off a cliff, they give you infinite psi, resource balance if fucked by this point, and they expect you to run backwards and forwards between long ass loading screens doing boring shit.

As much as I think the Rickenbacker's badness is overblown, let's not pretend that SS2's latter parts are great examples of the genre. And the decline definitely in SS2 level quality definitely starts to set in a bit before that.

-The overarching story and pretty much all sub plots are a bit boring and uninteresting. arkane have never been known for their writing and that rings true still.

I don't think they are specifically bad as much as they just hurt the replayability of the game since everything non-gameplay is a waste of time. Same with SS2's cutscenes with the Many and Shodan.

IMO the only serious criticism of Prey at can and should have been addressed in the context of being a AAA-release game is the complete lack of enemy variety. What were they thinking.

 

[Ash]

You know, it's not nearly as good as SS2, but can you name a game that's gotten closer to SS2 that's not Prey?

ELEX.

Ash As far as I can ascertain (from the entire Steam page, the official Prey page on Bethesda.net, and the Wikipedia article), Prey isn't actually marketed nor described as "survival horror," but rather as a "sci-fi thriller." Therefore, utter resource scarcity wasn't necessarily a design goal, so citing that as a shortcoming is a bit of a reach. Besides which, many of we Codexers are incredibly autistic when it comes to scrounging every last nut and bolt and using them as efficiently as possible, and frankly in many games with acknowledged stringent resource economies I still find myself with loads.

It's not a matter of survival horror levels of resource management, but a matter of simple game balance. If I beat your game on high difficulty and I have 69 repair kits and 30 medkits, and never actually had to strategize and think about my choices, i.e the entire purpose of these choices in the first place, then you failed as a designer.

The wokeness, enemy type paucity and resource richness all bothered me very much but I still thought it was a "decent" experience.

It most definitely is at the very least "decent". That is not contested.

 

[Ash]

-Broken resource management/economy. You get way more resources than you ever need. Health kits, ammo, armor repair kits, infinite use psi water fountains.
-RPG systems do not really force specialisation thanks to infinitely craftable neuromods. People contest whether SS2 and Deus Ex are even RPGs which is somewhat understandable, but this crosses the line. It's barely even replayable. I played it once, tried a second time and gave up in boredom.

These are both essentially the case in SS2 if you play at lower than impossible difficulty. Prey needed a similar difficulty bump but let's not pretend that SS2 is some kind of difficult game for the 95% of people who play it on normal or hard. Modern AAA games all being too easy is unfortunately just the norm.

-Going up is too exploitable (in trouble? Look up and jump = danger is gone. It's too reliable, there's always somewhere to jump up to).

In every case you can move vertically it completely nullifies the danger in SS2 as nothing can path at all through the lifts.

-The latter half is boring as fuck: level design falls off a cliff, they give you infinite psi, resource balance if fucked by this point, and they expect you to run backwards and forwards between long ass loading screens doing boring shit.

As much as I think the Rickenbacker's badness is overblown, let's not pretend that SS2's latter parts are great examples of the genre. And the decline definitely in SS2 level quality definitely starts to set in a bit before that.

-The overarching story and pretty much all sub plots are a bit boring and uninteresting. arkane have never been known for their writing and that rings true still.

I don't think they are specifically bad as much as they just hurt the replayability of the game since everything non-gameplay is a waste of time. Same with SS2's cutscenes with the Many and Shodan.

IMO the only serious criticism of Prey at can and should have been addressed in the context of being a AAA-release game is the complete lack of enemy variety. What were they thinking.

Nah

Not worth a proper response, but I'll say one thing: SS2 end game is pretty solid up until the last 15 mins ("where am i?"). Prey is mediocre for the last ~6 hours (post-arboretum).

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

It's just revisionism plus fake news. SS2 is definitely not an easy game on the first playthrough and its economy is very genuine while in Prey it breaks apart completely basically at the very start with no meta required (which, together with how poor the horror angle is, is its biggest flaw).

 

[Average Manatee]

It's just revisionism plus fake news. SS2 is definitely not an easy game on the first playthrough and its economy is very genuine while in Prey it breaks apart completely basically at the very start with no meta required (which, together with how poor the horror angle is, is its biggest flaw).

Totally disagree. SS2 on normal is easy enough that anyone but modern games journalists can breeze through it with a modicrum of FPS skills and no genuine build. On Hard you need to really, really fuck up and make an unfocused build to suck, otherwise you comfortably excel in multiple fields. On both difficulties you have enough health that you can take multiple hits and therefore you don't need to be incredibly good at combat or know the weaknesses to enemies, and once you get power armor you take around a dozen hits to die to anything. The cost at replicators is also quite cheap before impossible difficulty.

I just checked and on normal with you can maximize Standard/Energy/Heavy weapons, Str/Agi/End, and get all technical skills to 3rd rank and still have ~100 cyber modules left over. Alternatively, you can get rank 4 in everything (including every psi power) aside from research and exotic weapons (only checked stuff available at the med sci) and have ~160 cyber modules left over. And keep in mind that when you can specialize in multiple fields you also multiply the amount of resources you can use. Resource utilization is not much of a problem when you have standard ammo, energy weapons, and heavy weapons all together to use (with some psi on the side).

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Sure, pal, "I just checked". Yes, the game is easy when you know it for 20 years an have easy access to meta. But it doesn't give you the best weapon and the ability to craft ammo for it + the ability to craft level up currency + medkits (and not sure about weapon upgrade kits, but they aren't far away, either afair) literally in the first area and actually keeps you on your toes with what you have to work with and the respawning enemies that are not designed to be boring bullet sponges.

 

[ciox]

Cyber modules also don't come at you in a steady trickle like that, the income is low and then ramps up around Command, before that all your choices have a huge impact, unlike Prey where with no investment you can use all the weapons, modify them a little, and repair them pretty effectively assuming you enabled the post-release survival mode.
There's other problems like how long it takes in Prey before psi powers get unlocked because they decided you need the whole Bioshock plasmid syringe intro... but we've been through this before.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Prey might have been a bit resource heavy, but I don't think it was a problem. I took the long perspective, so I mostly invested in things which gave me resources and access. Combat oriented anything came last. It snowballed enough that I was recycling neuromods by the last 20-25% of the game. I actually like being able to play a substantial amount of the game "at peak". It's aggravating to get your coolest abilities or be at your best only for the final encounter. Furthermore, I deliberately gimped myself by not using any Typhon neuromods. (Pure blood!) I'm a special breed of OCD completionist. My play time was 40 hours and 15 minutes. I found every single personnel. I don't expect others to amass the same kinds of resources as I did. I do wish I had done survival mode though.

 

[Average Manatee]

Sure, pal, "I just checked". Yes, the game is easy when you know it for 20 years an have easy access to meta. But it doesn't give you the best weapon and the ability to craft ammo for it + the ability to craft level up currency + medkits (and not sure about weapon upgrade kits, but they aren't far away, either afair) literally in the first area and actually keeps you on your toes with what you have to work with and the respawning enemies that are not designed to be boring bullet sponges.

I'm not talking about any specific build. I'm saying that you can do just about anything and still win SS2 fairly easily on easier difficulties, especially normal.

SS2 does let you start with the laser pistol, which is arguably the best weapon in the game when it comes to resource usage (free energy) and trivializes the only hard enemies at the start of the game. Even if you don't start with one, you'll find it around the part that robots become plentiful. The Grenade launcher is similarly strong. If you don't get either of them then you're getting standard weapons in which case the pistol is quite fine, the shotgun is excellent, and eventually the assault rifle is well known to be overpowered. In normal you can afford all 3 weapon types at low ranks fairly early if you want.

The only way to make SS2 normal mode hard is to completely misunderstand how to play the game. Like not understanding that you need to level up maintenance to make maintenance tools stronger. Or intentionally try to go full Psi.

Cyber modules also don't come at you in a steady trickle like that, the income is low and then ramps up around Command, before that all your choices have a huge impact, unlike Prey where with no investment you can use all the weapons, modify them a little, and repair them pretty effectively assuming you enabled the post-release survival mode.

Early level costs are super low so that you can spread around just fine on normal difficulty. In Prey later upgrades tend to be about 2x the cost of early upgrade, in SS2 its like a 10x increase.

 

[kangaxx]

I finished Prey last night. Fully upgrade human tree and weapons, no Typhon mod, saved everybody, harmed no humans, and activated the nullwave device. The ending was lackluster, but I had a great time playing it. Admittedly this game started slow. It felt too much like all of its predecessors initially, but I quickly came to see it was far better executed. I might have to play System Shock 2 over to decide if I like Prey better--it's been a very long time. Currently I'm erring that Prey is superior. Everything in this game was crafted with expertise and care. The exploration, opportunities for creativity, multiple solutions, atmosphere, good crafting, great monsters, good combat, and enjoyable skills really make Prey a phenomenal CRPG. Games like this make me glad that I've kept true to clearing out my backlog. This game is every bit worth the hype. I think it will place within my top 10 CRPGs.

I think SS2 is better, but I found Prey great fun despite its well documented flaws. In a desert of good games it was a welcome title IMO.

 

[orcinator]

SS2 had respawns so I don't know how you can ever consider it a hardcore game.
Best thing Prey did is not copying that shit mechanic (cough, bioshock, cough).

 

[Naraya]

I love SS2 to death and I think Prey was a good, however forgettable, game (and I definitely wouldn't call it scary) but saying that Prey's hacking game is bad is pretty funny considering the SS2 hacking minigame was a sad joke.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

SS2 had respawns so I don't know how you can ever consider it a hardcore game.
Best thing Prey did is not copying that shit mechanic (cough, bioshock, cough).

Low quantity of available resources greatly limits the advantage and viability of trial-and-error self-respawning, and, in any case, reaching and activating the replicator (or wahtever it is called) is not trivial.

 

[RoSoDude]

SS2 hacking may be an RNG clickfest, but you can get whacked by a pipe hybrid while doing it (plus it interfaces with the RPG systems in pretty interesting ways). Thus it is far better than Prey's timed mazes which are entirely separate from gameplay (aside from the success/failure condition). You could remove Prey's minigame and nothing of value would be lost, while removing SS2's minigame would remove a source of tension, resource cost, and incentive to upgrade your character statistics. Totally different scenario.

 

[Trithne]

I love SS2 to death and I think Prey was a good, however forgettable, game (and I definitely wouldn't call it scary) but saying that Prey's hacking game is bad is pretty funny considering the SS2 hacking minigame was a sad joke.

SS2's minigame is stats-driven, and doesn't take you out of the world so there's risk to trying to do it under fire or time pressure, especially with poor stats, because, you know, role-playing game. It also costs resources, and will cost more if, again, you have poor stats and have to reset often.

 

[Ash]

SS2 had respawns so I don't know how you can ever consider it a hardcore game.
Best thing Prey did is not copying that shit mechanic (cough, bioshock, cough).

because SS2 is hardcore in most other ways. And even its respawns are somewhat consequence-laden, unlike in Bioshock.

Sadly, all the shock games have unrestricted saving so should never be considered truly hardcore and intelligent

 

[LarryTyphoid]

When will Arkane make a game that isn't an inferior clone to other games that came out 20 years ago?

 

[Ash]

Arx Fatalis. Yeah, Ultima Underworld is better in a number of ways, but likewise so is Arx, vice-versa, so I would absolutely not say it is inferior.
Dark Messiah. not really a great game, it's alright, but at the time there was no first person combat fest like it...right?
Deathloop/Mooncrash. Not played either, but merger of FP/RPG/ImSim and Roguelike elements was a first.

Prey is markedly inferior but a nice, sort-of respectable effort, and Dishonored is just a bad popamole game straight up.

It is tragic that there are no mod tools for Prey. It can become a lot better. It will never be a true classic with all that boring ass SJW writing, or the typhon enemies, but with a lot of effort and creative liberties it can come so close. It's also bethesda behind them, who have always supported mods for their own games, so I can't help think that the following killed Prey:
1. Bethesda/zenimax. No mod support (it's in their games), no hardcore mode equivalent (it's in new vegas and FO4), shitty marketing (bethesda own the top selling RPG IP of all time). And lastly the stupid name thing.
2. That one IGN scumbag that gave the game a 4. Probably paid to do so by the competition. It just cannot be justified when the same group gives the like of Gears of War and Assassins Creed 9/10s.
3. feels like Prey dev team was majorly compromised internally. Like a bunch of guys wanting to make the next SS2, but another group pulling in a different direction with four guns, boring lesbo subplots, and zero fucks given for challenge. Prey's design is pretty schitzo, it's weird. I guess we'll never know what happened.

 

[kangaxx]

SS2 hacking may be an RNG clickfest, but you can get whacked by a pipe hybrid while doing it (plus it interfaces with the RPG systems in pretty interesting ways). Thus it is far better than Prey's timed mazes which are entirely separate from gameplay (aside from the success/failure condition). You could remove Prey's minigame and nothing of value would be lost, while removing SS2's minigame would remove a source of tension, resource cost, and incentive to upgrade your character statistics. Totally different scenario.

Sums it up nicely. It feels like the hacking minigame was outsourced to another company or something.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah I always liked when I could jump in Prey and cast timestop midair to hack something.

SS2 had respawns so I don't know how you can ever consider it a hardcore game.
Best thing Prey did is not copying that shit mechanic (cough, bioshock, cough).

It works on impossible because your max health is 10-15 and you respawn with a fraction of that so you can't just smash your head into enemies without dying dozens of times. This isn't the case for easier difficulties though where your HP is 50-75ish.

 

[Noct]

Arx Fatalis. Yeah, Ultima Underworld is better in a number of ways, but likewise so is Arx, vice-versa, so I would absolutely not say it is inferior.
Dark Messiah. not really a great game, it's alright, but at the time there was no first person combat fest like it...right?
Deathloop/Mooncrash. Not played either, but merger of FP/RPG/ImSim and Roguelike elements was a first.

Prey is markedly inferior but a nice, sort-of respectable effort, and Dishonored is just a bad popamole game straight up.

It is tragic that there are no mod tools for Prey. It can become a lot better. It will never be a true classic with all that boring ass SJW writing, or the typhon enemies, but with a lot of effort and creative liberties it can come so close. It's also bethesda behind them, who have always supported mods for their own games, so I can't help think that the following killed Prey:
1. Bethesda/zenimax. No mod support (it's in their games), no hardcore mode equivalent (it's in new vegas and FO4), shitty marketing (bethesda own the top selling RPG IP of all time). And lastly the stupid name thing.
2. That one IGN scumbag that gave the game a 4. Probably paid to do so by the competition. It just cannot be justified when the same group gives the like of Gears of War and Assassins Creed 9/10s.
3. feels like Prey dev team was majorly compromised internally. Like a bunch of guys wanting to make the next SS2, but another group pulling in a different direction with four guns, boring lesbo subplots, and zero fucks given for challenge. Prey's design is pretty schitzo, it's weird. I guess we'll never know what happened.

I can see this being the case. It was still a fun game in the end but it could have been so much more, and I can feel the devs trying to make it more buy being held back

 

[Blaine]

Arx Fatalis.

Arx Fatalis really blew me away, especially since I went into it blind, having heard zero hype about it beforehand.

I never played Ultima VII back in the day (though I'd played others), didn't play it until... the 2000s? Arx Fatalis gave me a similar feeling when I realized what I had in my hands.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

I mean, we are all here to discuss games, ideally intelligently-made ones

Oh you sweet summer child.

Also iirc, you threw me a brofist or two in my RE4 thread even though we pretty strongly disagreed about the game's overall merits, so I now you have some respect for the Socratic seminar!

 

[Ash]

I mean, we are all here to discuss games, ideally intelligently-made ones

Oh you sweet summer child.

Also iirc, you threw me a brofist or two in my RE4 thread even though we pretty strongly disagreed about the game's overall merits, so I now you have some respect for the Socratic seminar!

Well, you weren't trying to claim RE6/7/8 or Deadly Premonition or some shit were better than RE4, and saying those are top ten action horror game material. That is where I drew the fisting line; I will brofist someone I disagree with if they don't seem retarded, but not someone I strongly disagree with.