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

[baturinsky]

Besides SS2, I think there could be some influence from Planescape. Amnesia, meeting your previous incarnations, etc.

 

[Edward The Mediocre]

Speaking of realism...

Can anyone actually tell me why the security pistols are SILENCED?

The US marines are doing testing on putting suppressors on their guns, the idea is twofold.
1.You can actually hear shit so you don't need to be closer to hear orders.

a.Apparently marines want to get rid of giving radios to 'team leaders' because it distracts them.​

2.It makes harder for the enemy to find where you're shooting from, even without the proper subsonic ammunition. As in you'll hear a gunshot, but there is no flash and you can't tell which direction the bullets are whizzing by.
http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/...arine-corps-experimenting-suppressors-rifles/
http://www.military.com/daily-news/...loy-rifle-suppressors.html?ESRC=todayinmil.sm

Also the basic fact that shit gives you tinnitus.

 

[baturinsky]

Maybe those guns work differently from our gunpowder ones and are naturally non-loud. Or bullets have to be slow/weak, so they do not destroy some vital life support equipment and/or pierce outer wall.

 

[Edward The Mediocre]

If you want a subsonic round you just load a heavier bullet since it takes more force to reach sonic speeds, so it kinda balances it out. For example the average box of 9mm is 116 grains per bullet (that's 7.5 grams for those mulism countries), and a sub sonic load for 9mm is 147 grains (9.5 grams). I also want to mention that the .45 acp, which depending who you ask is more powerful than 9mm, is already subsonic at 230 grains (15 grams). If the US gets it shit together and passes 'The Hearing Protection Act' you bet your ass that integral suppressed handguns are going to be a thing, hell some suppressor company has already made one.

 

[Habbonovio]

The only real bugbear I've got with it is that the monster design is pretty weak.

I agree with you completely.

To the lack of diverse and memorable enemies add the fact that 3 of them are just the same one, 3 phantoms with different elemental powers. That's lame and lazy.

Also, the tech enemies are just generic turrets and drones, what a blast.

 

[Azrael the cat]

I've gotten about 5 hours in the game, and so far I'm enjoying it quite a bit. The only real bugbear I've got with it is that the monster design is pretty weak. A lot of horror and pseudo-horror games released recently have gone for the "anthropomorphic blob" monster designs, and I don't know if this is indicative of a lack of creativity in modern game devs, but it doesn't really work and hurts the game overall, especially in comparison to System Shock 2, which had a large variety of well-designed enemies to fight. This wound up killing a lot of my interest in RE7 too, where in a series which has always prided itself in its variety in creatures to kill the shit out of, you spend the entire game killing either walking snot monsters or crawling snot monsters. Not fun.

Worth noting that the variety of enemies in SS2 contributed a LOT to the feeling that (unlike SS1) you've only missed the start of shit going down, the big initial massacre might have happened, but it's still all developing around you and you're only a few steps behind the rest of the survivors. You encounter the android nurses not long after they're created, hence the Many's WWHAT THE FUCK YOU MONSTER!!! reaction when you kill its children. The first Psi-Reaver you encounter is also THE first Psi-Reaver, i.e. he's the very first guy to have become infected (the 2nd, Diego, uses the auto-surgery unit to cut the mutation out of him, and uses his dying minutes to make adjustments to the weapon he's been building for the Many so that it's a super-weapon against them instead of against humans).

New enemy types appear at a steady pace, almost always preceded by visual cues and audio tapes that indicate that they've only just started appearing, either to fill some need the Many has (like the nurses), or in direct reaction either to your/Shodan's actions, or to the pesky Resistance that has formed out of the more badass survivors on Deck 7, who appear far more capable than the SS1 resistance, and are putting into play a very plausible self-destruct plan (the cyborg assassins - not part of the Many's life-cycle, and it's clear from the audio-tapes prior to your 1st encounter with them that they've only just been created b/c the Many has discovered it unexpectedly has a 2 front fight on its hands).

Very different to the Doom model, where enemy types are introduced early and then thrown at you at maximal variety and challenge. But it's a good illustration of how a SS2 style game can benefit from enemy variety, even on its own terms as a story-heavy rpg-element FPS. Lack of enemy variety hurt Bioshock for the same reasons - even though you had more interaction with other characters than in SS2, the lack of enemy variety put the story at odds with the gameplay, b/c you're just killing 1 kind of mook throughout, with no sense that the enemy is reacting to or trying to counter your (or other survivors') actions.

 

[rezaf]

Weapons is just one area where the game just misses a boatload of opportunities.
Even without using the limitless possibilities afforded by having 3D printers everywhere, there's still tons of things that come to mind they could have added, even on a non-military space station. A homemade flamethrower. A nailgun of sorts, adapted from a construction tool. A plasma welder or something. A baseball bat. A knife/dagger. A sword or katana someone kept in his room. Something built from a fire extinguisher. A reployer gun. A taser (higher ranged stun gun). A real crossbow or bow. And so on and so forth.
And then there's aforementioned printer, wouldn't it be cool to find plans for stuff scientists struggled to come up with throughout the game? Or attached to an email some SMG design? A mini rocket launcher of sorts, adapted from the jetpack plans that are already on board?
We know they at least had plans for the disc gun at some point.

To me, this is one of the major disappointments with modern game design. Back in the day when Shock 1 was made, the design mantra often was "when in doubt, keep it in the game", whilst somewhere along the road, this was changed to "when in doubt, cut it".
Every single shocklike game, from the Bioshocks to the modern Deus Exes to Prey, they all have less features than their ancestor, which is now closing in on being 25 years old.
Imagine buying a car today, and when driving it finding yourself longing for the olden days, to the cars of your youth. Remember the days? We had, like a radio in the car back in the day. For reals! We also had a gauge that told us how fast we were going? Sounds crazy, I know. We also had safety belts, I have no idea why they ever dropped those. And cars used to have a storage space in the back we called a trunk. No, I'm really not kidding, almost every car had that...

 

[Darth Roxor]

A real crossbow or bow.

I find it the most surprising that the toy crossbow never becomes "real". Just put some home-made rockets into it or something, damn you.

 

[rezaf]

I find it the most surprising that the toy crossbow never becomes "real". Just put some home-made rockets into it or something, damn you.

Exactly. In fact, when I first found the toy crossbow, I was kinda "I see what you did there". I expected to find plans for some way to modifiy the foam bolts so they'd immobilize the aliens, or to turn them into firebolts, or whatever.
But no, it remained strictly a toy gun which could be used to distract enemies - but the game is not Thief, and I never made use of it this way - or to press unreachable buttons - I found a single opportunity for this in like 30 hours.
Was this like a mainstay weapon for anyone in the thread?

 

[Zetor]

I used up most of my nerf xbow ammo in the second half of the game to quickly get rid of cystoid nests + cystoids, especially during spacewalks. Throwing stuff at them works just as well, but :effort:

 

[Kem0sabe]

The enemy variety and constant respawns are becoming a chore to deal with.

Going through the station doing side quests and there's always more phantoms, weavers, mimics to deal with.

Also not sure if it's a bug but I have had to deal with 5 nightmares so far, thought they would be rarer, and more difficult to shoot in the face.

Speaking about shooting, the fully upgraded handgun + sneak damage 250% dmg bonus is ridiculously overpowered. Just go around shooting everything in the face from distance while they are unaware.

 

[ciox]

A real crossbow or bow.

I find it the most surprising that the toy crossbow never becomes "real". Just put some home-made rockets into it or something, damn you.

Alas for all its incline, ammo types and firing modes were definitely something that was not intended for Prey.

There's a lot of stuff that's incline about Prey, but let's not forget they are still following Bioshock/Infinite very closely, constantly quoting its development mantras (say yes to the player) and what Levine is doing (narrative lego blocks). Ammo types and firing modes were both kept out of Bioshock Infinite and that game went to increasingly hilarious ways of putting them back in via different weapons. (e.g the SS2 grenade launcher settings for Bounce and Contact are now two different grenade launchers, with the bounce once having lots of red tape on it)

 

[Jaedar]

The enemy variety and constant respawns are becoming a chore to deal with.

Afaik, enemies only "respawn" (its more reinforce) when you progress the main story missions.

 

[rezaf]

The enemy variety and constant respawns are becoming a chore to deal with.

Afaik, enemies only "respawn" (its more reinforce) when you progress the main story missions.

That's definately incorrect, I've had several occasions of leaving an area headed for another area, then realizing I had forgot to replicate more ammo or something, heading back to the area I just came from and meeting additional enemies.
Early on in the game this could be a fatal incident, late in the game it was mostly annoying. Once I even had a Nightmare spawn this way. I triggered him, hid in a corner, and went to take a dump.
I'm not exactly sure I should consider this a highlight of my playthrough.

 

[Siel]

This game is a massive pile of shit. And they had the fucking balls to drag Looking Glass into their shitty game on top of that. Christ what an insult. The pretentious cunts at Arkane are not fit to lick Paul Neurath's boots nor breathe the same oxygen as the powerhouse developers that made up the real Looking Glass Studios.. Go fuck yourselves Arkane employees. You are ZeniMax's low rent bitches and will forever be in the shadow of the illustrious Looking Glass.

 

[ciox]

This game is a massive pile of shit. And they had the fucking balls to drag Looking Glass into their shitty game on top of that. Christ what an insult. The pretentious cunts at Arkane are not fit to lick Paul Neurath's boots nor breathe the same oxygen as the powerhouse developers that made up the real Looking Glass Studios.. Go fuck yourselves Arkane employees. You are ZeniMax's low rent bitches and will forever be in the shadow of the illustrious Looking Glass.

This is one of those videos you hate even when you agree in principle because the author is constantly bombarding you with every marker of butthurt autism there is. THANKS FOR THE TWO DOLLAR DONATION

 

[toro]

This game is a massive pile of shit. And they had the fucking balls to drag Looking Glass into their shitty game on top of that. Christ what an insult. The pretentious cunts at Arkane are not fit to lick Paul Neurath's boots nor breathe the same oxygen as the powerhouse developers that made up the real Looking Glass Studios.. Go fuck yourselves Arkane employees. You are ZeniMax's low rent bitches and will forever be in the shadow of the illustrious Looking Glass.

He complains about the game before actually playing it.

He complains about Harvey Smith but that guy did not work on this game.

His e-persona indicates he is a poseur but now he provided the proof that he is actually an intellectual poseur as well.

 

[Jick Magger]

Just finished the game last night. I'd say the game really starts losing its cohesion at around the point where you reach deep storage. At this point, you've basically encountered every enemy the game has to throw at you, have probably horded a huge cache of ammo and medkits to mitigate all difficulty, and've likely found the fabrication plans for weapon mods and neuromods to further neuter any real semblance of challenge the game had left. It only really falls apart in the finale though

Spoiler

With the sudden appearance of evil Russian mercenary Steve Blum and his army of bullet sponge drones, with absolutely no buildup or foreshadowing.

By that point, the game had thoroughly overstayed its welcome, and I just found myself running through areas just so I wouldn't have to deal with enemies.

Couple other points

- I agree with everyone here in that I absolutely cannot understand how anyone could find this game hard. If you don't rush through things, take your time to find schematics and recycle everything that isn't nailed down (i.e. play the game the way the devs intended you to), then the game is utterly piss-easy. Wish they included some kind've old-school difficulty mode which severely restricted things like salvage yields, number of neuromods you can get, and removed certain replicator plans.
- The game has a lot of little mechanics that you honestly will rarely ever actually find yourself needing to use. There's a myriad of methods the game recommends you use to avoid, trap, or ambush monsters, but they're seldom ever really necessary because honestly, it's much easier to just kill the shit out of everything you see just to make getting through levels easier. By the second half of the game, you'll just be running past every enemy you see to get to objectives.
- Nightmares: neat idea on paper, but in execution they wind up just being a minor annoyance. They're actually pretty trivially easy to kill, it's just that unlike, say, Nemesis from Resident Evil 3, for which each encounter was a risk vs. reward set-up, there is basically no benefit to killing one. Just run past them and they'll go away.

Overall, it's still a pretty decent game, worth a gander if you did enjoy System Shock 2.

 

[Wulfstand]

As someone who enjoyed the original Prey, I can not understand other people's bickering at how Arkane's Prey ruined hopes for that sequel to get released, especially when all we had known about it were concept arts and rumours. Fucking retarded.
Coming back to the game, I can easily say that it's among my favorites that I've played these past few years. Granted, I haven't finished it yet and am expecting the pacing to fall off a bit after a while, but the same happened to Alien Isolation, and that game still remained among my favorites as well (however I find Prey to be better than A:I in all departments except for sheer horror, I wasn't really all that afraid anymore once I upgraded my shotgun and combat skills).
And @ Razorfist, fucking hell. I haven't been a fan of Arkane's games past Arx Fatalis, but that didn't stop me from being curious enough to try out and enjoy the game. And all that hate on the presumed SJW undertones, jeez...

 

[Darth Roxor]

with absolutely no buildup or foreshadowing.

There is at least the slightest bit.

Spoiler

The flight log of a pilot on the bridge that says there's some super sikrit military base and vessel close to Talos. Not that this really makes Steve Blum's appearance any better, but well, it's there.

Fully agreed on everything else.

 

[rezaf]

I agree with everyone here in that I absolutely cannot understand how anyone could find this game hard.

It's about playing style. Several things can make your game considerably more difficult. Just regard your own comment about the Military Operators - I wrote earlier that I was borderline of abandoning the game at that point, but then I realized even unupgraded the stun gun utterly obliterates those ops. If you never get that idea, these are quite difficult enemies, especially in numbers.
If you forego the psi powers (which I did), the game automatically becomes more difficult.
If you try to play the game as a traditional shooter, the game becomes much more difficult (it's like playing Doom through with just the pistol). Mostly, this is because of the scarcity of ammo.
If you make the wrong upgrade choices with your weapons, the game becomes more difficult.
If you don't explore enough and fail to find some of the important recipes, the game becomes more difficult.
And so on and so forth.

Unexcpected for modern gamers, the game does a pretty poor job of nudging your in making the right choices (intentionally so, of course) - if you don't get the right ideas yourself (or look up the answers somewhere), the game can be quite difficult.
How hard is that to understand?

 

[you know what time it is]

I only got to the main hall or whatever it's called and i'm already bored. Them creatures ought to be the most dull and uninspiring enemies ever created. Not mechanics wise, but the way they are designed, after seeing mimics and phantoms I feel like I saw them all already and after quick googling, I'm not that far off apparently.

Of all things over the years I never thought i'd be so annoyed by enemy variety (lack of), but it happened twice now in a span of a year, first Tyranny and now this.

 

[Darth Roxor]

It's about playing style. Several things can make your game considerably more difficult. Just regard your own comment about the Military Operators - I wrote earlier that I was borderline of abandoning the game at that point, but then I realized even unupgraded the stun gun utterly obliterates those ops.

you realised only at the end that the stun gun, which is meant to be the anti-bot weapon, and which you get right at the very start, might be useful againts operators?

i have bad news for you son

 

[Israfael]

Actually you are supposed to know about the impending bot invasion for quite a while (blackbox project quest explains what you will encounter, also Alex says several times that restarting power and removing him from the control would send a signal to Earth (or other TranStar controlled object, don't remember) and the board would do anything to clean up the situation)

 

[rezaf]

you realised only at the end that the stun gun, which is meant to be the anti-bot weapon, and which you get right at the very start, might be useful againts operators?

None of the crappy ops you encountered up to that point required you to have a dedicated anti-bot weapon at hand. I stashed my stungun somewhere after stunning all the possessed humans ... was it in the cafeteria? Had to run back and fetch it for the bots.
Anyway, players for whom you'd have even worse news - namely those who fail to think of the stungun at all - will have a much, much harder time dealing with 'em military operators.