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

[Spukrian]

People whining about Enemy Variety, well, they're just annoyed that the enemies look the same. The different enemies actually require different tactics and approaches.

 

[ciox]

The fact that some immunities are shuffled around the various enemy variants doesn't really make them that interesting.

And the fact that they had trouble creating truly different and new enemy types is something that shows up in dev interviews, it's not a conspiracy theory.

 

[Tyranicon]

The game just needed one or two different enemies to change up the formula. Fighting boxy floating robots is never going to be a crowd-pleaser.

 

[RoSoDude]

In the first half of the game you're getting introduced to new enemies all the time. Mimics, phantoms (normal, thermal, etheric, voltaic), operators, cystoids, weavers, technopaths, telepaths, poltergeists, the nightmare. This is up to the Arboretum, at which point you've been able to find a wrench, pistol, shotgun, GLOO gun, stun gun, and Q-beam. All the while you're exploring, fighting, collecting, crafting, and upgrading. It's great stuff!

But all of a sudden, the game just stops introducing anything new. No new enemy types (aside from the military operators much later, yawn). No new weapons. Level design with empty rooms and less interconnectivity. And there's still 10 more hours to go of this, just fighting the same old enemies with the same old weapons. You get so many neuromods that you're virtually guaranteed to fill out at least 4.5 of the 6 skill trees, so every character build looks the same, and everyone will have the same selection of weapons too.

An apt comparison would be if System Shock 2 just stopped offering anything new after the Hydroponics deck. You're stuck fighting pipe hybrids, shotgun hybrids, blue monkeys, midwives, protocol droids, maintenance droids, and worms for the rest of the game. No grenade hybrids, red monkeys, spiders, assassins, security/assault droids, rumblers, or psi reavers ever show up. You'll never find any weapons after the wrench, pistol, shotgun, laser pistol, grenade launcher, and stasis field generator. And all the levels after are more boring than the Rickenbacker, plus you have to backtrack through the Von Braun three times to finish the game. That's what Prey's second half is like.

 

[JDR13]

I thought the enemy variety was fine. Sure, it could have have used a few more enemies, but so could most games.

I agree about too many neuromods though. There should be about 20% less.

 

[luj1]

I played SS1 original and the remake. Original > remake. SS1 > SS2.
Guess what: Prey is great

It's the greatatest towel and coffee cup battle simulator

 

[Latelistener]

ok so now i played mooncrash and it;s very overrated. the whole roguelite-like genre is overrated and i really have passionate dislike towards them.

I don't really like it either, but Mooncrash arguably doesn't even have any of its good parts.

 

[ciox]

One enemy that was quickly hacked together to add some variety was the Poltergeist.
To this day I'm not sure what the Poltergeist is supposed to do. I bought the game and Steam patched it regularly, but the Poltergeist never does anything besides play creepy music and tank bullets for me.
Apparently it can sometimes randomly kill you with no warning, but it's never done that to me, I've only seen it on youtube.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Apparently it can sometimes randomly kill you with no warning, but it's never done that to me, I've only seen it on youtube.

It killed me plenty just fine. It puts lift under you and slams you against the ceiling and I think can also throw objects at you but I'm not sure. But that lift deals a lot of damage. To the point where if I realized there was a poltergeist around I just sprayed gloo everywhere. It was top priority for me, above mimics and phantoms.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

Because there's nothing to say about any of these, it's done better in other games.

Get updated bot. You're behind your programming.

What does it do that no other game does?

Crafting? Already done in many other games

Elements reactivity? Already done in other games

Powers? Already done

Immersion into a space station? Already done

Metroidvania level-design? already done

The game is a big déjà-vu.

Prey has so much going on creatively it actually loops back around to undermining itself with too much choice.

I know that sounds like a meme but it's true.

It's like the developers were like "we need people to be able to HACK into rooms! oh oh, and leverage! Oh but what if we also added a nerf gun! Oh and we should also add some walls to gloo-climb. Oh oh, what if they could also recycle the door!"

It feels like they were going for the Deus Ex "multiple approaches to problems" style of gameplay. But in Deus Ex, you get multiple distinct skills with distinct options (lockpicking is generally good for acquiring items and opening back doors, electronics is generally good for disabling security systems, with some overlap between the two). Deus Ex is not afraid of outright blocking you out of non-critical areas or making things WAY harder if you don't have the tools for the job. If your lockpicking is good enough, you can outright bypass the entire NSF warehouse return mission and grab the datacube you need instantly.

Prey on the other hand, will add super small areas (in some cases one ROOM), and then add 5 different ways to access it. In theory this is cool, because players get to utilise their skills. But it ends up resulting in virtually identical gameplay. If I hack the door, I enter the room and pick up the items. If I use leverage to move the crates blocking the ventillation shaft to enter the room, I enter the room and pick up the items. If I nerf gun the button next to the door, I enter the room and pick up the items. There's virtually no discernable difference between builds, and the skills will more often than not undermine themselves because you can just pick 1 of them and ignore the rest, since they all access mostly the same areas anyway, and wherever you can't access with the right skills you should be able to nerf gun or recycle your way into.

It is as if someone took the core ideas from previous immersive sims, only understood the surface level concept of "more player choice == good", and then copy-pasted it everywhere around the station.

The problem isn't Prey's lack of gameplay, it has far too much gameplay with far too little depth to really be compelling, resulting in a sort of "imsim soup" where it has all the elements of a good imsim and they all function correctly, but they are mostly consequenceless.

But your logic sucks anyway. It's reductive to the point of being absurd. Everything has been done before, and I can use your same logic to basically refute any games quality, even classics. For example:

What does System Shock do exactly?

Wire puzzles? Many games of the time and before contained far more complex, interesting puzzle mechanics already.

Combat? The combat in system shock is clunky and horrible. It came out the year AFTER doom and it's combat is a step backwards in every possible way.

Respawning enemies? Already done in countless games, including Ultima Underworld, it's clear inspiration and on the same engine.

Cyberware and a cyber inferface? That's just a clunky mouse-driven HUD, which pretty much every first-person PC game of the time had. Again, look at Ultima Underworld, it's direct predecessor, which has a very similar interface in many ways.

Metroidvania gameplay and selectable gadgets? Plenty of other games already had this.

 

[kangaxx]

Good post, but I still enjoyed Prey a great deal... just more as a very nice looking theme park that was fun to explore and ransack. On another note, Deus Ex is my pick for best game of all time. No shame in being found lacking compared to that.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

I also enjoyed Prey.

I don't want to give anyone the impression that I hate it or think it's not worth playing. I will just totally understand if someone decides to quit halfway through, or doesn't find the gameplay compelling because of it's huge flaws.

The only imsim worth hating is Bioshock. Seriously, fuck that game.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Bioshock is fine if you see it as slower paced FPS and not an imsim.

 

[RoSoDude]

Bioshock is a dogshit FPS/RPG first, disgrace to ImSims second.

• Terrible gunplay (have you seen those animations? WTF is that 1-frame recoil? enemies don't even react to your bullets), SS2 honestly has better feeling guns from its barebones recoil simulation and hit stun. Seriously, look at a video of BioShock's guns and tell me that those things were satisfying compared to shooters of 1996, let alone any other era
• Nonexistent resource management. Doom is more competent in this regard, at least when you hit stack caps there you can strategize around it, here it happens with every ammo type, medkits, and the rest. So much of the game is just scavenging for shit you don't need and can't even carry
• Vita chambers allow you to lemming rush every single enemy with zero consequence for failure. "Just turn them off" wasn't even an option on initial release. Yes, you could just load a save when you die, but this just reveals how embarrassing the game design is here
• Thinly disguised corridor level design with fairly mediocre encounters. They still made it idiot proof with a big fat arrow on the top of your screen to tell you where to go (IIRC this also couldn't be turned off in the original release)
• Waste 20% of game time playing a shitty hacking minigame that pauses the game world and has zero integration with other systems other than requiring you to slot enough engineering tonics to make some hacks possible. They give you an option to buy your way out of the hack or build autohack tools for a strict loss in gameplay terms, just because they know you'll be so bored of the minigame you'll take a more expensive skip button.
• Crappy RPG lite systems that add almost zero depth. The perks system is super restrictive, you can't decide to slot more engineering tonics to make a hacker build, every player's build is going to be very similar and you get enough points to unlock everything by the end. Use the engineering tonics that let you win the otherwise impossible hacks, and then choose from a series of boring stat upgrades. For Christ's sake, the Sports Boost II tonic increases your movement speed by a measly 4.44% since they were afraid of letting the player get ahead of the cutscene scripts. The only fun ones here are the ridiculous wrench damage + lifesteal perks that let you cheese enemies to death while they're occupied by bees
• Boring shitty research system that seems totally ignorable at first but becomes required for essential damage bonuses when the same exact enemy types you were fighting before suddenly balloon to 5x health. The research system doesn't add any actual choice or mechanical depth, it just slows you down with needing to take in-game screenshots before you start fighting

Yeah, there's some okay enemy types and the plasmids have some moderately cool (hardcoded) interactions, I'll admit they tried here. It still ends up pretty mindless due to all the other systemic flaws.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I kinda loled at that last paragraph, since the fact that you're basically fighting one enemy through the entire game (and said enemy is not interesting, cool or scary in the first place) is imo easily the outstanding flaw of bioshock.

 

[kangaxx]

Agreed, Bioshock is absolute balls. And the sound propagation on PC is an abomination.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

I'm totally fine with Bioshock being average or bad, I don't generally dwell on low quality games.

What really pisses me off is how Bioshock has garnered a reputation of being a "Complex and deep immersive sim experience, a worthy successor to System Shock 2", to the point where literally every immersive sim list I have found online contains Bioshock prominently near the top, a few have it above Prey, and a small number commit the cardinal sin of putting Bioshock above the System Shock games. My general experience especially among younger people is that a lot of gamers see Bioshock as a replacement for the older System Shock games, basically "the same thing but more modernised and less clunky".

My theory as to why things are this way is because Bioshock is, essentially, a fraud. While the game design generally sucks, the developers have absolutely mastered the art of making players feel smart (something that pretty much every AAA game does now), while infantilising them and providing gameplay so easy and reductive that even the most casual of gamers can understand and master it. Bioshock simultaneously tells you that you're not playing a typical FPS by front-loading a lot of philosophy, starting you out with the wrench, and giving you a few non-standard ways of killing enemies right at the start (like zapping the water), while at the same time not daring to provide anything resembling a worthwhile challenge, depth, or strategy. After the first (highly scripted!) section, it very quickly reveals itself to be a bog-standard shooter, and barely even provides many opportunities for it's prescribed "interactions" outside of a few obviously-telegraphed spots (A bunch of enemies standing in a broken fountain with water up to their knees, I wonder how I'm supposed to deal with them??), and the game starts to completely unravel to anyone paying attention. Every aspect of the game functions this way - useless research system that's literally point-and-click at enemy? Frame it as a camera. Suddenly you're "doing research" and "experiencing Rapture" and "fusing gameplay with narrative". The philosophy is the same. It front loads you with quotes and metaphors and philosophical messages, but the actual message of the game essentially boils down to "Libertarianism bad", and the "surprise" detour to criticise player agency doesn't work when you realise the game itself offers nothing but linear setpieces. Bioshock successfully scammed everyone into thinking they are smart for playing it, and of course given the choice of unfairly praising the game or admitting they were duped, most players elect to save face and praise the game.

The way Bioshock handles player agency reminds me a lot of the way Spec Ops the Line handles player agency. Both games are overrated garbage with rabid fanbases that defend them for being "clever and smart" in regards to player agency while each contains next to no actual player agency. Spec Ops guides you through a series of linear maps where you have no free choice or agency whatsoever, only to then slap you in the face for performing a war crime you had no choice but to perform. Bioshock does the same thing, and frankly I don't understand this argument at all. Do these people seriously think that morality works that way? It's like they think if a malfunctioning machine kills someone we should send it to jail for misbehaving.

Every element of Bioshock from it's gameplay design to it's user interface seems specifically designed to dupe you into thinking it's smarter than it is. The moment you start the game the ""emergent"" electricity-water mechanics are literally shoved in your face and not emergent at all, and yet the game acts like you're a genius for figuring out this "unique interaction" and hints at more interactions like this being available, only to deliver nothing. Looting enemies gives you a little menu where you have a choice to take things or not, as if hitting "Take All" isn't literally the only real option because there is no inventory system. The complexity is a façade and it's clear to me that this was done deliberately.

I have absolutely zero respect for Bioshock and it's developers. They knew what they were doing and most people fell for it. Had bioshock been purely marketed as a "First person shooter with light RPG elements" and not pretended to be smart or "one of the big boy immersive sims for hardcore gamers", it would have been forgotten years ago, but I would also have more respect for it, because at least then it would be honest.

I guess Irrational learned the hard way that good games don't sell, and decided to play on their customers emotions instead.

This is why Bioshock isn't just bad. It's evil. It's irredeemable and reprehensible and we should actively work to undermine it's positive reputation for the sake of all the people it managed to hoodwink.

 

[Zombra]

Well I guess the word Prey was mentioned once.

 

[Spukrian]

In the first half of the game you're getting introduced to new enemies all the time. Mimics, phantoms (normal, thermal, etheric, voltaic), operators, cystoids, weavers, technopaths, telepaths, poltergeists, the nightmare. This is up to the Arboretum, at which point you've been able to find a wrench, pistol, shotgun, GLOO gun, stun gun, and Q-beam. All the while you're exploring, fighting, collecting, crafting, and upgrading. It's great stuff!

The thing here is that you're talking from the viewpoint of an experienced and skillfull player, who has experience with immersive sims. Most players won't explore as much. Most players won't find the stun gun or Q-beam before Arboretum. Most players won't encounter technopaths, thermal phantoms or poltergeists before Arboretum. Most players won't engage the weaver before Arboretum (yeah, they'll definitely see it though).

An apt comparison would be if System Shock 2 just stopped offering anything new after the Hydroponics deck.

Yes, but compared to Prey 2017, System Shock 2 is a very linear experience. Prey 2017 is more of an open world in this regard.

 

[Average Manatee]

Let's not forget more biocock sins

- "moral choice" system which is supposed to reward being evil but you actually get the same or better rewards with the good option.

- weapon mods are free and just found as you progress. They are impossible to miss. You always pick the basic bitch damage upgrades to counter constantly rising hp

Yes, but compared to Prey 2017, System Shock 2 is a very linear experience. Prey 2017 is more of an open world in this regard

Not sure why you say this. I would consider SS2 and Prey to be approximately the same in non linearity

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

There's absolutely no "experience" or "skill" needed for Prey's semblance of challenge to break and fold shortly after the tutorial area.

 

[Spukrian]

Yes, but compared to Prey 2017, System Shock 2 is a very linear experience. Prey 2017 is more of an open world in this regard

Not sure why you say this. I would consider SS2 and Prey to be approximately the same in non linearity

In Prey 2017, as soon as you finish the objective to get the Looking Glass servers working again, January gives you a key that lets you go to almost everywhere on the station. Nothing comparable happens in System Shock 2.

 

[RoSoDude]

There's absolutely no "experience" or "skill" needed for Prey's semblance of challenge to break and fold shortly after the tutorial area.

No, there is. I don't think you realize the gulf of difference between a player who tries to play Prey like an action shooter (especially if unskilled at such) vs. a player who can quickly internalize stat-driven features of combat. Prey's combat can actually be rather difficult if you just try to run and gun, as enemies have poorly telegraphed attacks that can kill you instantaneously, however if you understand the systems interactions from various tools in your arsenal you can completely declaw enemies and dispatch them easily.

For example, the GLOO gun is capable of stunning most Typhon and grants bonus damage for breaking enemies out of GLOO, but player movement is greatly slowed while firing. This means than phantoms soft counter the GLOO gun with nearly undodgeable melee swipes and projectiles, despite also being susceptible to GLOO stun (at a slow rate). The better strategy for phantoms is the stun gun (found later in the Hardware Labs unless you do some vertical exploration in the Neuromod Division), or using explosive canisters/charged wrench hits from stealth to put them in a chain knockdown state. The wrench itself is substantially more effective when charged, as it drains the same amount of stamina for double the damage along with the knockdown effect. Players who try to GLOO and swing wildly like it's BioShock's "zap em and whack em" based on lessons learned from the mimics will get owned by their first phantom in the lobby, let alone the thermal phantom in the infirmary or the etheric phantoms encountered after the Hardware Labs.

Look online and you'll find people complaining about bad combat, bullet sponges, running out of ammo because they don't understand any of this. These are cerebral elements that come from observing systems interactions, rather than just dodging and shooting. Experience with ImSims or other hybrid action RPGs will make a big difference here, something I've seen firsthand.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

I guess Irrational learned the hard way that good games don't sell, and decided to play on their customers emotions instead.

This is why Bioshock isn't just bad. It's evil. It's irredeemable and reprehensible and we should actively work to undermine it's positive reputation for the sake of all the people it managed to hoodwink.

while i might agree and appreciate, yours is the bioshock of posts: front loaded with philosophy, but reality is much simpler, bioshock belongs to the era of "journos will tell me what to think". and time cements mass-suggestions.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

Well I guess the word Prey was mentioned once.

You expect Prey discussion in a Prey thread?