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

[Morgoth]

"Prey on PC showed me a fantastically explorable space station, but a game-breaking bug ended my run in frustration."

Somebody fire this dumb motherfucker.

 

[Morgoth]

http://steamcommunity.com/app/480490/discussions/0/1334600128975623840/

Prey - Steam Beta Update v0.5 - Patch Notes
A new update for Prey (v0.5) is now available via Steam as a Beta update – see below for instructions.

The Steam beta update v0.5 includes:

• Fix to prevent Save games from becoming corrupted. Fix also returns corrupted Save games to uncorrupted state.
  ----->Also addresses some additional crashes on map loads.
  
• Hacking during the Power Plant reboot no longer causes the reboot to fail to complete.
  
• Fix to prevent the Player from becoming stuck in certain circumstances.
  
• Nightmares will now always search for the player once spawned.
  
• Saving and Loading PC settings will now save correctly for users with special characters in their Windows usernames.
  
• Numerous fixes to GLOO to prevent breaking and bypassing collision, prevent corpses from passing through walls and floors.
  
• Updated Recycling to prevent infinite material creation.
  
• Fix for occasional combat freeze when attacking Phantoms
  
• Kaspar’s objective indicator should no longer disappear.
  
• Updates to audio mix to adjust volume of music, audio logs, cutscenes.

Note - The public-beta-patch branch shares the same game Saves as the default branch. If a previously corrupted Save is fixed by switching to the public-beta-patch branch, switching back to the default branch will reintroduce the chance of corruption (this issue to be fixed in a future patch). If a Save file has been previously edited manually, it may not function properly.
Deletion of level.dat files may cause game progression to not function properly.

If you run into issues or have questions please let us know in the Bethesda.net forums here: https://bethesda.net/community/category/166/steam-beta-update

Try again, Dan Stapledumb.

 

[Siel]

 

[Excidium II]

strangely inconsistent reviews. Scores all over the place.

 

[Morgoth]

http://www.gamestar.de/spiele/prey/test/prey,46802,3313604.html (German)

Score: 85%

 

[Hines]

There's going to be some very upset fellas in Maryland tonight.

 

[toro]

This is the most bizarre situation ever: For once Bethesda/Arkane has released an more than average game and they get bad reviews.

Or maybe this is karma's payback for the shit they pulled off with Fallout 3: New Vegas !?

Anyway Arkane is now in the same position as Obsidian was: people will be afraid to buy their titles because of technical issues.

I wonder what would be their next project.

 

[MuscleSpark]

I wonder what would be their next project.

Dishonored mobile game.

 

[Mynon]

This is the most bizarre situation ever: For once Bethesda/Arkane has released an more than average game and they get bad reviews.

Or maybe this is karma's payback for the shit they pulled off with Fallout 3: New Vegas !?

Anyway Arkane is now in the same position as Obsidian was: people will be afraid to buy their titles because of technical issues.

Except majority experienced no crippling technical issues. Hell, look at steam user reviews and discussions compared for ones for Dishonored 2 or, say, Mankind Divided.

But hey, this is that same IGN whose employee somehow managed to play PS3 version of Skyrim for "more than hundred hours" without noticing its crippling framerate issue or myriad of other potentially game-breaking bugs exclusive to that port's initial release.

 

[Burning Bridges]

One thing that I keep noticing is that the reviewers of these games always have short playtimes. For overblown popamole games like Prey, playtime is usually like 10-20 hours. Some people have 70 or so but the general trend is 20.
I have games where my playtime approaches 1000 hours, so I think that fact is relevant, and I sort out a lot of games based solely on that.

 

[V_K]

In all of the 7 days that the game has been out, people somehow haven't gotten to put 1000 hours in it. Shocking!

 

[toro]

Come on Ash

Play the game. We all want to hear your impressions.

 

[Heresiarch]

Heh, the reviews of IGN and Gamespot genuinely surprised me. I think it was a good decision for me to ditch those two sites for serious review reading.

Although there is one thing that I agree with some reviewers out there and that is Prey is trying too hard to be SS2/Bioshock. The game itself is great but lacks a certain something to identify itself from the other classics. Finding audio logs, reading emails, finding shortcuts, solving puzzles, using powers...all are good of course, but I can't help but feel like getting a lot of deja vu's of Shock games/Dead Space/Deus Ex/etc.

I have not been spoiled of the ending yet but so far even the positive reviews complain about the weak story and terrible ending...makes me really curious and want to read up how bad it is.

 

[Jarmaro]

They went down to 9:30

 

[Siel]

Heh, the reviews of IGN and Gamespot genuinely surprised me. I think it was a good decision for me to ditch those two sites for serious review reading.

Although there is one thing that I agree with some reviewers out there and that is Prey is trying too hard to be SS2/Bioshock. The game itself is great but lacks a certain something to identify itself from the other classics. Finding audio logs, reading emails, finding shortcuts, solving puzzles, using powers...all are good of course, but I can't help but feel like getting a lot of deja vu's of Shock games/Dead Space/Deus Ex/etc.

I have not been spoiled of the ending yet but so far even the positive reviews complain about the weak story and terrible ending...makes me really curious and want to read up how bad it is.

Problem is that theses reviewers point lack of originality as a problem but will hype open world garbage like Horizon because OMG IT HAS METAL DINAUSORS SO ORIGINAL.
I personally have more fun playing an unoriginal yet good game than some Ubisoft tier shit with original gimmicks.

 

[Luckmann]

Prey can't be doing that badly. It's still the second top-seller on Steam. It's easily in the top of it's pricing class. Only ones that comes anywhere close are Stellaris, which is currently on sale, Civilization 6, which is also on sale, Grand Theft Auto V, and Dawn of War III.

Heh, the reviews of IGN and Gamespot genuinely surprised me. I think it was a good decision for me to ditch those two sites for serious review reading.

Although there is one thing that I agree with some reviewers out there and that is Prey is trying too hard to be SS2/Bioshock. The game itself is great but lacks a certain something to identify itself from the other classics. Finding audio logs, reading emails, finding shortcuts, solving puzzles, using powers...all are good of course, but I can't help but feel like getting a lot of deja vu's of Shock games/Dead Space/Deus Ex/etc.

I have not been spoiled of the ending yet but so far even the positive reviews complain about the weak story and terrible ending...makes me really curious and want to read up how bad it is.

Problem is that theses reviewers point lack of originality as a problem but will hype open world garabe like Horizon because OMG IT HAS METAL DINAUSORS SO ORIGINAL.
I personnaly have more fun playing an unoriginal but good game to Ubisoft tier shit with original gimmicks.

There's only so much you can do, honestly, it's just fucking retarded to rip on Prey because it copies a formula of fucking Bioshock, who in itself is entirely derivative of System Shock 2; and poorly, at at that.

The influences on Prey are extremely clear; you've got the System Shock 2, you've got some Deus Ex, you've got some Bioshock, but the thing is it pulls this off very well. It starts off very System Shock 2 and then moves on more and more towards Bioshock, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with this, because it does it well and it doesn't sell itself off as doing something new. Innovation is great, but new for the sake of novelty is fucking cancer.

 

[Paul_cz]

So I finished it and yeah it is one of the best immersive sims ever. 41 hours, did every sidemission, explored everything. The ending stuck a landing better than I hoped, although I have zero doubt many people are going to hate on it.

I enjoyed it more than System Shock 2, which I loved too. But this game has no annoying as fuck The Many level.

Prey can't be doing that badly. It's still the second top-seller on Steam. It's easily in the top of it's pricing class. Only ones that comes anywhere close are Stellaris, which is currently on sale, Civilization 6, which is also on sale, Grand Theft Auto V, and Dawn of War III.

Prey has 160K copies on PC week after launch. It will not have much more on consoles, I would guess around 150K each. Probably around 500K total. These are not good numbers for an AAA game. Let's say they get 35 bucks from each copy, you get 17 million USD. The game probably cost around 30-40. It will be glad if it pays for its development.

Given how Dishonored 2 also sold lot less than expected, I am pretty worried for Arkane. They could be relegated to making some mass market bullshit like what happened with Eidos Montreal, who are now making Marvel nonsense.

 

[Luckmann]

Heh, the reviews of IGN and Gamespot genuinely surprised me. I think it was a good decision for me to ditch those two sites for serious review reading.

Although there is one thing that I agree with some reviewers out there and that is Prey is trying too hard to be SS2/Bioshock. The game itself is great but lacks a certain something to identify itself from the other classics. Finding audio logs, reading emails, finding shortcuts, solving puzzles, using powers...all are good of course, but I can't help but feel like getting a lot of deja vu's of Shock games/Dead Space/Deus Ex/etc.

I have not been spoiled of the ending yet but so far even the positive reviews complain about the weak story and terrible ending...makes me really curious and want to read up how bad it is.

Don't look the ending up and try to not get spoiled. I can say that going completely blind into the game probably made a huge difference to me. Even in the beginning I got a proper mindfuck. That said, I can tell you that the ending isn't great. Not because of what it is, but because it exists in the way it does at all. My key criticism of the narrative is probably the ending.

Spoiler

The first time interacting with the Looking Glass technology was fucking superb. Threw a glass into it and went wtf is going on.

So I finished it and yeah it is one of the best immersive sims ever. 41 hours, did every sidemission, explored everything. The ending stuck a landing better than I hoped.

I enjoyed it more than System Shock 2, which I loved too. But this game has no annoying as fuck The Many level.

ACTUAL FUCKING SPOILERS

I really didn't enjoy the ending. I think that the initial ending, with just a small vid and a quote was well-made and left me melancholic and wanting for more was actually great, once I gave it some thought and I got over the initial "Was that all?". It left you wondering what happened, and wanting for more, to continue.

And then there was the after-credits scene and it just sorta ruined the mysteries and serves as a forced and somewhat awkward cliffhanger that just sorta dumps the facts of what was going on all along in your lap, and makes me worry about the future of the game and it just becoming some weird-ass shooter-style game where you play the not!BadGuys and how things turn out rosy, instead of independent installments taking place in the same universe, or something along those lines. They really shouldn't have put that in there.

 

[willdunz]

Conspiracy theory: I think they are giving out low scores to spite Bethesda for not giving them early review copies.

 

[Morgoth]

http://www.4players.de/4players.php/dispbericht/Allgemein/Test/11048/82476/0/Prey.html (German)

Score: 90%

Seems like there's a bit of a trend. European sites generally like it and rate it highly, and Kwans trash it.

 

[Jarmaro]

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

 

[Ash]

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.

They could be relegated to making some mass market bullshit like what happened with Eidos Montreal, who are now making Marvel nonsense.

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.

Come on Ash

Play the game. We all want to hear your impressions.

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.

 

[Siel]

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

 

[Latelistener]

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

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

 

[Kem0sabe]

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.