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

[Wulfstand]

This game is p. great, am honestly gonna wait until my next paycheck comes in and buy it and then continue my playthrough.

 

[Darth Roxor]

max upgraded shotgun firepower, both security weapon damage upgrade skills = everything dies in 2-3 point blank shotgun blasts, lmao

the difficulty/resource management in this game becomes a joke p. quickly i have to say - stopped caring about resources roughly around hardware labs, and difficulty no longer concerned me more or less around the start of arboretum

(this is nightmare)

 

[Cyberarmy]

max upgraded shotgun firepower, both security weapon damage upgrade skills = everything dies in 2-3 point blank shotgun blasts, lmao

You can even kill nightmares easly with that setup without reloading shotgun, hell 3-4 is enough if you crit. Nightmare my ass...

 

[toro]

max upgraded shotgun firepower, both security weapon damage upgrade skills = everything dies in 2-3 point blank shotgun blasts, lmao

the difficulty/resource management in this game becomes a joke p. quickly i have to say - stopped caring about resources roughly around hardware labs, and difficulty no longer concerned me more or less around the start of arboretum

(this is nightmare)

You mean the game is no longer difficult because you are hording everything, you read about the game on forums and you go for the best damage dealing build !?

 

[Darth Roxor]

You mean the game is no longer difficult because you are hording everything

I'm "hoarding" because the game doesn't force me to spend all the things I get.

If anything, I'm now sitting on like 60 of each crafting material and physically restricting myself from splurging it all on neuromods and completing my transformation into a demigod. And that 60 doesn't even include the 75 psi hypos that I never use and could recycle into another gold mine.

you read about the game on forums and you go for the best damage dealing build !?

Except I haven't read anything like this, oh dumbfuck village idiot weasel.

 

[Israfael]

I'm "hoarding" because the game doesn't force me to spend all the things I get.

Hate to be devil's advocate, but should it force you to do that? It's actually the same question to cyberp/ash and other 'decline popamole' people here. Aka game vs simulation

Also, as far as I remember, trash items are much less common in the other sections of the station (which can be intentional from either gameplay or station architecture logics PoV, as cargo bay/shuttle/power reactor/life support are probably less 'livable' than other parts)

 

[Darth Roxor]

I'm "hoarding" because the game doesn't force me to spend all the things I get.

Hate to be devil's advocate, but should it force you to do that?

if i'm running around with 50 medkits and i've spent like 5 throughout the entire game on the highest difficulty, i would say there is some kind of a problem here

by 'force me to spend' i mean the difficulty is not high enough to force me to spend my resources adequately to their supply, this has nothing to do with game vs simulation

 

[Cyberarmy]

Hate to be devil's advocate, but should it force you to do that?

Well, if you play the game the way you supposed to play (doing side quests and exploring) you will hoard like a dragon. There are food everywhere, sick load of GLOO ammo and shit load of psi hypo. While game only throws you sinlge phantom, 2-3 mimics, 1 phantom and his pet mimic in the first half.
Maybe if you rush like mad to the end, doing only main quest and shooting everything instead of wrenching you'll starve but that's a big maybe.
And I'm always talking about nightmare difficulty, without alien powers.
I'm still amazed by how early reviewers crying about "you cannot become overpowered in late game". New age Gamung journalusm at its finest...

 

[Jasede]

I'm "hoarding" because the game doesn't force me to spend all the things I get.

Hate to be devil's advocate, but should it force you to do that?

if i'm running around with 50 medkits and i've spent like 5 throughout the entire game on the highest difficulty, i would say there is some kind of a problem here

by 'force me to spend' i mean the difficulty is not high enough to force me to spend my resources adequately to their supply, this has nothing to do with game vs simulation

And how often did you reload?
I am hoarding/collecting everything, only 50% through the game, have played 25hours (lots of exploring and backtracking) and am at 20 each material, low to ok on ammo and I am playing on Hard. And I am not terrible with games. It's quite possible you simply reloaded a lot, play very carefully / conservatively or, perhaps, avoid back-tracking so as not to have to deal with as many enemies. Perhaps you also enjoy using the wrench a lot, which I don't.


Now all this said and done, I do find it quite difficult, what with me having to reload a bit. I would be very interested in hearing about how often those Nightmare-crushing juggernauts are quickloading? If it's not very often: congrats, you really are good with these games! In my humble opinion I am having a harder time than on SS2 impossible. But of course, I know everything about SS2 and have played it many, many times, so my perception is likely skewed.

Also, somewhat in stark contrast to the opinions of our highly-skilled, elite-gamer Codexians, this game has had a lot of complaints on NeoFag and Reddit for being 'way too difficult' - reviewers also seem to consider it brutal, which is a given with how inept they are these days, and somewhat amusingly, in TV Tropes, this game is classified as "Nintendo Hard" (their hardest difficulty.)

 

[Cyberarmy]

They are probably talking about the first flaming phantom or the poisonous one. Which you can easly sneak pass.

Ps. I only quicklaod when I 'm dead. Which happened a bit too much against the first technopat I encountered, my mind can't handle zero gravity controls well enough. :/

 

[Jasede]

Yes, I also only quickload when I am dead, but I die quite a bit. Mostly to the electric things and broken power junctions which zap me from nowhere, heh.

How far in are you?

I also suggest replaying SS2! It's really easy in retrospect, and I imagine Prey is a lot easier if you played SS2 before. (Kind of how people claimed Dark Souls was easier than Demon's Souls but forgot to account for them having had an entire game's worth of practice which mechanics that directly translated into the sequel.)

Edit: that said, being able to craft Neuromods is an obvious concession to modern "I wanna do everything!!!" retards. People used to playing games the old way - which means hoarding everything assuming the game will be too hard otherwise - are going to be able to max out like 3-4 out of the 6 skill trees...

 

[Darth Roxor]

And how often did you reload?

not particularly often

It's quite possible you simply reloaded a lot, play very carefully / conservatively or, perhaps, avoid back-tracking so as not to have to deal with as many enemies.

the most i reloaded (on death only, mind you) was in the early game when i couldn't really go guns blazing due to lower domoges and a bit more scarce ammo, now i only reload when i get distracted and something manages to keal me (so, again, on death only)

i wouldnt say i play very carefull/conservatively given that i now even don't bother wrenching mimics or setting up turrets, just spray everything with those cheapo 9mm bullets

and i backtrack like sheeeeeeeet all the time

 

[SharkClub]

I can see the complaints about the lack of difficulty for people who are experienced with this sort of game and don't take on enemy engagements like a dumbfuck Xbox player would, but let's not pretend that System Shock 2 or other games in the "immersive sim" genre that came out around the same time are hard at all even on Impossible difficulty. In that game you can have an endless supply of hypos of all types, never run out of ammo once you're out of the early game if you use the right ammo or right weapons on the appropriate enemies (3 shotting rumblers with a shotgun or instagibbing giant robots with the bugged grenade launcher in that game that gets a 100% damage increase upon upgrading it instead of 10%).

The only truly difficult games in the genre are Ultima Underworld 1+2 and System Shock 1 and much of that comes down to the controls (which are a non issue in SS1 Enhanced or mouse look mod) and also in SS1's case some of the later enemies being really cheap and just raping you with ranged attacks almost instantly, but I guess is still valid and forces the player to find ways to deal with those enemies. Shock games also have the single-player respawning gimmick that Prey lacks so that balances itself out if you're playing within the confines of the game without reloading a save every time you die.

 

[Luckmann]

I'm "hoarding" because the game doesn't force me to spend all the things I get.

Hate to be devil's advocate, but should it force you to do that? [...]

Yes, yes it should.

There's two things the game really should've done harder; maintain an intense feeling of abject poverty and force prioritization, and reward resource discovery/searching.

As much as I like the game, currently, it only does the first right at the beginning of the game, and it never really does the latter. Yes, it still rewards me for exploring by giving me access to various things, even if it's just an extra key or an audio log, but that's not what I mean.

Throughout most of the game, you never really lack resources. Some people complain about ammo, but that's because they're either shit at the game, or simply retarded, like the reviewer that said that he never had enough ammo, yet also said that he never really found a use for the fabricators. Yes, sure, you'll run out of certain materials at times, especially since you can fabricate neuromods, but under most circumstances, there is never the feeling that you'll have to prioritize between the creation of a Neuromod, a Medikit, Ammo, or a Wrench (lol), especially since many of these use different resources to different degrees (Neuromods could've really used eating up some of those bio-materials and more exotic materials, btw).

And there's never really a feeling of reward in discovering materials/resources. Not only are you never really consuming food/drinks except to free up space and then just recycle it all into Materials, but the items are ubiquitous; it's a constant small trickle. Which makes sense, of course, and there's no inherent problem with that at all, in fact I enjoy the scrounging aspects, I'm just saying that you never get a feeling of "Yes! Score!". Even if the costs for everything would be increased, it wouldn't help in itself, because you'd still approach resource gathering the same way. And it wouldn't help (enough) with resource scarcity/prioritization either, because most of the time, you don't actually need to fabricate anything aside from occasional ammo and Neuromods (which you'll end up with too many of from a ability pacing/character build perspective).

There are several ways this could be rectified, but it all involves creating a much more "hardcore" experience that casual faggots would whine incessantly over, even though it would objectively turn the game into a more interesting and intense experience:

• Increase the cost of all fabrication. It doesn't need to be by much, it will compound over time.
• Have more instances of chipping away at the player's fatigue and health. You don't need to do a lot of damage, just a little at a time, to create a feeling of oppression. Instead of the often save-or-die situations we have now, where you either take no damage or practically get raped, you could increase the number of mimics, make them more aggressive, but also more likely to run away and hide as soon as they take damage, make it harder to catch them, and make them regenerate over time (if not fully, then partially). Especially Greater Mimics are laughable, because they often don't even try to do hit-and-runs.
• Radiation doesn't matter in the game. It flat-out doesn't. Radiation levels should be additive over time and not decay unless you chew Anti-Rads, increasing the relevance of both radiation and anti-rads. Make me want to avoid radiation, not because it reduces my health, but because it would add to my radiation. Increasing the instances of radiation would also be a good idea, such as flooding some areas entirely with low levels of radiation.
  
• Reduce alternative healing. Food items should be primarily for food and resources/recycling, not healing, and healing at all from a water faucet is terrible, because it leads to unwittingly degenerate gameplay where you drink from all the faucets in a toilet repeatedly.
• Introduce permanent injuries. Whenever we suffer a fuckup like the save-or-die I described or fuck up a fall, make us bleed or twist our ankle, and force us to use medikits to remove most of them. Then also reduce the healing from medkits. Force us to actually use the medkits in the world.
• Make us need food and drink. Again, this doesn't have to be debilitating. There doesn't have to be a meter or a gauge, just something first warning you that you're hungry/thirsty, and then only maybe 30 minutes later, maybe more, maybe less, start suffering small penalties. It doesn't have to be full starvation/dehydration. This is also just to enforce a feeling of lack, and make you consume things you may have been wanting to recycle.
• Increase the recycle value of weapons and some equipment by a lot. You practically never need another gun, or another crossbow, or another shotgun. Once you have one, you're fine. You'll carry that forever. But weapons are also relatively rare in the game. You don't actually find that many shotguns or pistols or anything, likely because it's never actually needed. By increasing consumption and costs, you've created a feeling of lacking and oppression, and by increasing the value of something (such as weapons), you'd be creating a feeling of reward. When I see a weapons rack, I want to think "I need to get fucking in there so I can grab those". When I get them, I want to feel that something has been achieved, that now I can convert these to ammo or something else that I actually need.
• Fabrication Licenses was a good idea. Not only would it again reinforce this feeling of having to prioritize, informing you well in advance of your options ("I don't have many ammo licenses left, I need to be careful"), but it would also create a reward discrepancy between "Yes, I found another license!" and "Fuck yes, unlimited license!", acting as a form of gated pacing. Some things (such as medkits) could be unlimited from the start based on in-universe logic (Why would emergency supplies be limited?), and others simply could just not have an unlimited license (Neuromods, I'm looking at you).

There's a lot of relatively easy thing you could do to improve the system.

 

[Jasede]

I feel like that last point is a good idea: fabrication licenses would make an excellent exploration reward. What would be a better find, a license for 10 more neuromods, or 4 neuromods? Using licenses you can impose some limits on ammo, medkits, etc, and have a nice reward for exploration.

That said, the modern gamer has a brain the size of a peanut so I am sure we'd get all kinds of "BOO I RAN OUT OF AMMO PERMANENTLY" complaints.

 

[Luckmann]

[...] those Nightmare-crushing juggernauts are quickloading? If it's not very often: congrats, you really are good with these games![...]

Assuming you're talking about the Nightmare and not the nightmare difficulty, the level of difficulty in dealing with them comes down to how you approach them. With Psychoshock, Firearms 2 (which I never aspired to take, I just ended up with so many neuromods that I practically had to max out Engineer/Scientist/Security because I didn't want to take more psionics) and an upgraded Shotgun, the Nightmare poses absolutely zero issue to anyone, even if you're a CoD-playing downie with average IQ of an australian aboriginal.

You simply get into a good position, Psychoshock the bastard so he can't throw psychic spergballs at you, simultaneously taking out a ton of his health, and then blasting him from as close as possible; the last 2-3 shots can easily be at point-blank, because he'll take so much damage he won't have time to actually attack you physically.

If you don't have those tools at your disposal, though, then yes, the Nightmare is fucking scary, and will tear you a new asshole and make you waste your ammo. The most important thing remains to shut down his ridiculously strong spergballs, though, since they home in on you and can pass through basically everything (which is incredibly unfair, considering that your psychic abilities can't even pass through breakable glass) and that can be done with a Null Grenade.

I feel like that last point is a good idea: fabrication licenses would make an excellent exploration reward. What would be a better find, a license for 10 more neuromods, or 4 neuromods? Using licenses you can impose some limits on ammo, medkits, etc, and have a nice reward for exploration.

[...]

Yes, the beauty of licenses is that you can hand them out as meaningful rewards without ruining the resource economy, since the total amount of materials will still remain the same, making it possible to create an aspect of prioritization and a feeling of scarcity without it necessarily being debilitating by it's very nature (because you may run out of some licenses, but you'll likely have some others left).

I can see the complaints about the lack of difficulty for people who are experienced with this sort of game and don't take on enemy engagements like a dumbfuck Xbox player would, but let's not pretend that System Shock 2 or other games in the "immersive sim" genre that came out around the same time are hard at all even on Impossible difficulty. In that game you can have an endless supply of hypos of all types, never run out of ammo once you're out of the early game if you use the right ammo or right weapons on the appropriate enemies (3 shotting rumblers with a shotgun or instagibbing giant robots with the bugged grenade launcher in that game that gets a 100% damage increase upon upgrading it instead of 10%).

The only truly difficult games in the genre are Ultima Underworld 1+2 and System Shock 1 and much of that comes down to the controls (which are a non issue in SS1 Enhanced or mouse look mod) and also in SS1's case some of the later enemies being really cheap and just raping you with ranged attacks almost instantly, but I guess is still valid and forces the player to find ways to deal with those enemies. Shock games also have the single-player respawning gimmick that Prey lacks so that balances itself out if you're playing within the confines of the game without reloading a save every time you die.

I think that comparisons to SS2 are fairly irrelevant in this, honestly, and I don't think it's so much as issue of actual difficulty as it has to do with the feeling of oppression and difficulty. In terms of actual difficulty, you could likely play on Nightmare and get through the vast majority of the game with just a Wrench and sneaking, especially if you invest heavily in psionics, which is super-effective, resource-wise. Far more cost-effective than any weapon.

Pure "difficulty" is often just a matter of numbers inflation and eventual save-scumming. You could make every enemy one-hit you and the game would be more "difficult", but it wouldn't actually improve anything. The feeling of difficulty lies in manipulating the player into feeling that things are difficult without encouraging them to simply reload when something goes wrong, and the best way to do that is really to make them think that they can die at any moment, even though you actually rarely hit them with sledgehammer shots, and force them to manage their resources.

And real increases in difficulty involves adapting your playstyle and mastering the mechanics, optimizing available resources, not just making things more deadly or harder to kill.

 

[Darth Roxor]

i was jetpacking around the nightmare from a high vantage point and spraying him full of lead while laughing in his face at the psychoballz that kept flying past me, which was admittedly very cool and hilarious

altho i must also admit he first got a few hits in before i took off

it was the first moment in the game when i had to use a medkit in mid-combat

 

[Parabalus]

....

I don't really care much for survival elements in these games, they can just up the difficulty with more and harder enemies, ie. the FPS element.

To implement all of your suggestions you'd have to revamp the inventory with a weight system to prevent hoarding. What would food or O_2 consumption mean if I can stack 100s of food?
It'd also encourage backtracking to a central stash so you never throw anything away, personally CBA for that.

Since all those items are finite you're also effectively setting up a soft time limit, meaning you are punished for every step in a non-optimal direction.

There will be mods to add that for sure though.

Reduce alternative healing. Food items should be primarily for food and resources/recycling, not healing, and healing at all from a water faucet is terrible, because it leads to unwittingly degenerate gameplay where you drink from all the faucets in a toilet repeatedly.

You can't save people from themselves.

I thought faucets where a one-off thing, when I realised they have a 5sec timer I just knew there would be some degenerate out there sitting and drinking from faucets.

I'm guilty of playing at 20 hp all the so I can use the automated regen from med kits and to make combat harder, but at waiting around next to faucets seems kms territory.

max upgraded shotgun firepower, both security weapon damage upgrade skills = everything dies in 2-3 point blank shotgun blasts, lmao

the difficulty/resource management in this game becomes a joke p. quickly i have to say - stopped caring about resources roughly around hardware labs, and difficulty no longer concerned me more or less around the start of arboretum

(this is nightmare)

I have a shotgun with 3/5 upgrades with security expert and I needed 10 shots to kill a technopath or telepath, can't imagine the last two give that much of a boost.

The management is that everytime you pull a shotgun trigger you are shooting 1/12 of a neuromod at them. I'm going up to the Arboreum and got limited by mineral materials after making only 40 neuromods while having others left over, so the cost is there IMO.

 

[Cyberarmy]

How far in are you?

Finished, 35 hours. Did everything I could, got cheevos for reading all them mails and listening all them records. I only failed at finding all the staff because some of them vaporized. Either a bug or we probably cannot find spesicific people after spesific quests.



There are brilliant bits in this game
While trying to ghost Dahl,

Spoiler

I shut down my tracker, Dahl congratulated me and then told me that he's after Alex's tracker. The thing is I had his bracelet on me and those military ops were ambushed me again D:

Or the whole treasure questline with its "awesome" reward.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I have a shotgun with 3/5 upgrades with security expert and I needed 10 shots to kill a technopath or telepath, can't imagine the last two give that much of a boost

With 5/5 upgrades and max security waffen expert, my shotgun does 80 base damage. Now count in the bonus from sneak or crit attacks, and that enemies (I think?) take more damage when stunned. I kill telepaths in 3 blasts with full honesty. However...

I'm going up to the Arboreum and got limited by mineral materials after making only 40 neuromods while having others left over, so the cost is there IMO.

methinks i've identified yer problem

 

[Parabalus]

methinks i've identified yer problem

How many did you fabricate before getting to the Arboreum? I really don't think I missed much resources, I fabricated maybe 3 boxes of ammo up until this point.

With 5/5 upgrades and max security waffen expert, my shotgun does 80 base damage. Now count in the bonus from sneak or crit attacks, and that enemies (I think?) take more damage when stunned. I kill telepaths in 3 blasts with full honesty. However...

Hmm, both were in zero-g so I might have been a bit further off.

How do you stun them? I used EMP on the Technopath but didn't notice any damage amplification, range of the stun gun while drifting kinda threw me off.

 

[rezaf]

I've been playing this over the weekend ... but it looks like I've been hit by some kind of bug.
Only the starting weapons spawn for me.
All those advanced melee weapons, the SMGs, the Assault Rifle, Grenade- and Rocket-Launcher, the scifi guns ... yeah, I got none of that. Pretty annoying to kill lategame enemies when the peashooter pistol is your only ranged combat option.
Well, even the bug is bugged and I did get the crappy beam cannon, but it's only moderately useful.
I hope they'll release a bugfix soon.

 

[Darth Roxor]

How many did you fabricate before getting to the Arboreum? I really don't think I missed much resources, I fabricated maybe 3 boxes of ammo up until this point.

I limit my neuromod fabrication to the minimum in order not to break the game completely, only produce single ones when I'm at the recycler and see that I lack 1 to some ability unlock. I don't think I've produced more than 10, maybe 15 at max.

How do you stun them? I used EMP on the Technopath but didn't notice any damage amplification, range of the stun gun while drifting kinda threw me off.

Well, actually, I don't honestly know if the disruptor/emp actually 'stuns' them per se. That is to say, I just assume they're stunned once I make them lose control of the turrets and stop casting the fkn ball lightnings so

 

[Durandal]

I had 30 psi hypos by the time I found a Psychoscope. On my alien power playthrough, I barely even found myself fabricating ammo anymore, finding supplies through exploration was already enough to sustain me. Though I mostly used wrench and magic, I did use the weapons time to time to output more damage against tougher enemies, and even then I had no scarcity problems with any of my supplies, even though I intentionally didn't spec into Hacking so I couldn't access locked loot caches for more supplies.

Right now I still have 50 psi hypos, though I don't use alien powers offensively that often. I already have the chipset which slowly regenerates mana, though it's not fast enough so I still have to use hypos mid-combat. I intentionally didn't equip the chipset which increases my chance to knockdown enemies with the wrench as the chance turned into 100% and let me stunlock every Phantom to death, aside from Electric ones. At times I wonder how the game would turn out without crafting, trash items, and recycling period, since I'm doing a fine job without it.

 

[Cyberarmy]

How do you stun them? I used EMP on the Technopath but didn't notice any damage amplification, range of the stun gun while drifting kinda threw me off.

EMP is godlike, not only it stuns techopat it also stuns its lackeys (if its flying with turrets, turrets will fall down and even break if its high enough) Probably you missed the EMP.
Stun guns range is really short but it completely wrecks technos, you don't even need to fear reloads its stun is long enough without upgrades. Sneak attack with a fully upgraded stun gun is 180+ damage against that fuckers.

Edit :

Durandal
There is a side quest that rewards drinking water inside the space station give some (40?) psi too.