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

[Israfael]

Colantonio basically threw himself under the bus to ship this game even in this neutered state (and sales tell us that it's not that popular as compared to the typical popamole) so it's actually a great sacrifice on Arkane's part to put its future on this. Hopefully Hines and co won't put them into Zynga coalmines

 

[Icewater]

Prey's a decent all around game but suffers from not being strong in any one particular area. It's a decent throwback to our favorite games of yore but doesn't innovate on them. Also as others have pointed out it clearly wants to be a horror game on some level but mostly fails at that because it's too much of an FPS and it's too easy to just blast shit dead with your shotgun.

 

[Zakhad]

Well, Exotic matter is the most common element in the game. I had it in maybe three times the amount of anything else, so I'm not sure how much that storeroom could have helped you.
It's the other two, grey and orange (I think mineral and synthetic?) that typically need some management. And they are required as well to craft neuromods (the skillpoints).

Agreed with most of what you said, but not sure about this... recycling weapons gives you synthetic/mineral material (I never broke them down for spare parts, not once), whereas synthetic comes only from typhons, the two store rooms, a couple of stashes in rooms, and that one volunteer if you decide to, uh, process him...

Whereas synthetic/mineral you get from everything... but maybe it's just cos I tend to recycle any turrets I find using recycler charges, and those give you about 1 point of each, I think, plus whatever other junk/destroyed operators you throw in to the mix.

I agree there can be some challenge in balancing ammo vs. xp vs. weapon mods, but I'm not sure how *balanced* it was... once you knew that was the trade-off, and that there was no trade-off with exotic, I stopped running short of the other two cos I hunted more for them.

One major flaw I noticed, on the other hand, is that attempting a "No needles"/typhoon only playthrough is an experience bordering masochism because of inventory management.
You'll lack both the improvements to your inventory (which at this point I think should have been "physical upgrades" to your suit outside of the skill tree) AND skills to dismantle items in your inventory. As a result you'll constantly run out of space literally five minutes after visiting a recycle station, and that's if you already renounced to keep some of the weapon types with out (which is bad for variety, given the arsenal is already pretty limited).

yeah, the "only alien powers" run is wayyyy tougher, but I think the idea is to go nearly purely powers and ignore weapons/recycle them... which could make for a fun game? Haven't tried it, but the increase in grey/orange material from recycling wepons and amo and not crafting them could lend itself to mass crafting recycler grenades and just spamming those as traps combined with lift power etc.? Only issue is that it takes a while to get the fab plan for those, so you're running around without any real weapons skills until psychotronics, then need to balance psi-points using operators until you get the recycler charge schematic.

The flaw with no human upgrades is even more annoying, though: upgrading your psi points and your psychoscope is under human abilities so you can't increase psi, or use more than two psi-boosting chipsets! Would love them to patch that achievement to include those upgrades. At the moment it's only really viable for masochists or else for speedruns/easy-normal mode...

 

[Zewp]

I still haven't finished this game. I really enjoyed roughly the first half of the game, but the second half felt as if it took a real tone shift. The first half had me really scrounging for every bit of resources I could find just to survive, and then suddenly around the halfway mark I found myself swimming in ammo, able to easily take down the just as abundant enemies. I got tired of it at one point near the end and just never went back to finish it.

It was also marred by a myriad of really strange technical issues and weird design decisions. I still don't know who thought that combat music that sounds like an explosion in an alarm clock factory was a good idea. Not to mention that random NPC/operator dialog regularly played over story critical voice overs, meaning I often missed out on important info/dialog.

Overall I think it's a success story only because it's a lot better than any AAA game published by Bethesda can be expected to be. I might even go back and finish it one day.

 

[Ash]

Colantonio basically threw himself under the bus to ship this game even in this neutered state (and sales tell us that it's not that popular as compared to the typical popamole) so it's actually a great sacrifice on Arkane's part to put its future on this. Hopefully Hines and co won't put them into Zynga coalmines

Citation needed. Because FO4 has a survival mode that does a ton of shit like reduce effectivness of healing items, increased enemy resistances, introduction of sleep, thirst and hunger systems as in New Vegas, ammo has weight, only lets you save when sleeping, companions are no longer quite so invincible, and so on. PREY's neutered systems couldn't be added to its higher difficulty level why? Or worked on as a patch as soon as the game shipped, and promised to keep people like us screaming decline?

I don't see how PREY merited any major sacrifice. It starts off moderately well (not exceptional, but good) then becomes a train wreck half way through. It's also arguably easier to get into for the mass market than Bethesdas games. It doesn't throw you into a huge open world with little direction, it doesn't have huge perk charts or a unconventional pip boy interface, inventory management is minimal while in bethesdas games it's always present. it doesn't do anything more demanding than Bethesdas games. I'd argue it's less demanding.

Hmm, I suppose I could see one scenario where they intended the neutered systems to be in the game for all, but then Bethimax said "no, that's too demanding for the mass market, scale it down", but scaling it down would not have took a great deal less effort than to make those features exclusive to higher difficulty levels. I wonder what chain of events led to those features being outright removed, as opposed to difficulty-dependant.

 

[Zewp]

I think you mixed up the quotes by accident, because that quote is definitely not mine.

 

[flyingjohn]

Liking prey over system shock 2 is really weird.

 

[Durandal]

To be fair, SS2 being elevated to cult status did a lot to make people react like "dude LOL" when hearing something like Prey is better than it.
In a lot of respects it is, but the decline in quality as the game goes on is felt more strongly in Prey given its sharp downfall as opposed to SS2 being more or less constant with a depression towards the end. That and the initial psychological thriller atmosphere of Prey is lost past 2 hours into the game and the main story sux whereas SS2 had a lot more immersive horror atmosphere and a better sense of pacing.

 

[Icewater]

SS2 was a better game in 1999 than Prey is in 2017

 

[Ash]

To be fair, SS2 being elevated to cult status did a lot to make people react like "dude LOL" when hearing something like Prey is better than it.
In a lot of respects it is, but the decline in quality as the game goes on is felt more strongly in Prey given its sharp downfall as opposed to SS2 being more or less constant with a depression towards the end. That and the initial psychological thriller atmosphere of Prey is lost past 2 hours into the game and the main story sux whereas SS2 had a lot more immersive horror atmosphere and a better sense of pacing.

Shock 2 does pretty much everything better pure design-wise. The little superiority of PREY is mostly engine and hardware-dependant (graphics fidelity and general presentation), and therefore is irrelevant when it comes to comparisons.
To be fair, Shock 2 could have been less clunky regarding things like movement physics simulation, even at the time, and PREY sometimes has more open levels, though not necessarily better-designed levels.
Nonetheless, PREY is still a decent-ish game and all fans of the genre should probably give it a go. Will have to repeat that often since resident Arkane fanboy's tear ducts are sore.

 

[Durandal]

Fuckus ex is barley a game whule prey is fuckhourned at least can be played confty with a controller

doos ex works fine on my PS2

 

[RoSoDude]

Fuckus ex is barley a game whule prey is fuckhourned at least can be played confty with a controller

Deus ex on ps2.
Prey on pc ps4 and xbox.
Mankind divided has better stelth .
Case closed

Your current appraisal as "Literate" deserves some scrutiny, to say the least.

Not sure if modern tard low-S Arkane fanboy, or just bait.

To be fair, SS2 being elevated to cult status did a lot to make people react like "dude LOL" when hearing something like Prey is better than it.
In a lot of respects it is, but the decline in quality as the game goes on is felt more strongly in Prey given its sharp downfall as opposed to SS2 being more or less constant with a depression towards the end. That and the initial psychological thriller atmosphere of Prey is lost past 2 hours into the game and the main story sux whereas SS2 had a lot more immersive horror atmosphere and a better sense of pacing.

Shock 2 does pretty much everything better pure design-wise. The little superiority of PREY is mostly engine and hardware-dependant (graphics fidelity and general presentation), and therefore is irrelevant when it comes to comparisons.
To be fair, Shock 2 could have been less clunky regarding things like movement physics simulation, even at the time, and PREY sometimes has more open levels, though not necessarily better-designed levels.
Nonetheless, PREY is still a decent-ish game and all fans of the genre should probably give it a go. Will have to repeat that often since resident Arkane fanboy's tear ducts are sore.

Question, since I have yet to play it: would you say that Prey's level design (at least in the beginning of the game) carves out a unique space compared to SS2? I ask because in SS2, the RPG mechanics don't strongly affect how you are able to traverse the level -- instead, they're mostly tied to combat, the resource economy, and looting. Maybe I shouldn't say unique, since what I've seen of Prey's level design suggests that they're trying to simultaneously ape SS2's and Deus Ex's approach. But it's one area where it seems like it might not be a strict downgrade from SS2, just something different.

Basically, I wonder if you think Prey gains something over SS2 in having more player-driven interaction with the levels, even if it falters elsewhere (including the RPG mechanics, which are of course tied to how well this sort of thing works). I think it could go either way, since SS2's level design was highly compelling without having traversal significantly influenced by character progression.

 

[Ash]

Question, since I have yet to play it: would you say that Prey's level design (at least in the beginning of the game) carves out a unique space compared to SS2? I ask because in SS2, the RPG mechanics don't strongly affect how you are able to traverse the level -- instead, they're mostly tied to combat, the resource economy, and looting. Maybe I shouldn't say unique, since what I've seen of Prey's level design suggests that they're trying to simultaneously ape SS2's and Deus Ex's approach. But it's one area where it seems like it might not be a strict downgrade from SS2, just something different.

The level design is generally good and separates itself from Shock 2 in a meaningful way.

Aesthetic/thematic diversity is good on a per-map basis. Layout is logical and believable, while simultaneously serving gameplay (though more general challenges, and more testing ones, would be nice). There's a lot of verticality, which is always nice. Space walks are ruined by annoying objective markers when a map or good visual signposting may have done the trick. Also the suit integrity system being neutered adds insult there. Enemy placement is not so good. General rule: enemies patrol the center of an area or main paths. Rarely there is an exception to this rule, beyond harmless mimics. It's bland, repetitive and predicable in that regard. Not like Shock 2 where you walk into a storage cupboard and get attacked by flying killer wasps, and you don't feel safe anywhere (even though there is the occassional safe zone), but the respawn system applies here also which PREY doesn't have. Mechanics play into level design a little more than Shock 2, yes. The second half the game is incredibly boring, and level design is no exception, at least regarding cold storage, cargo and the reactor. Level design sometimes throws in gameplay modifiers, e.g low G, but many of these instances I didn't find to be executed well. There is sometimes good inventive ideas in the level design that should be recognised, but I wont spoil them for you. Aesthetically, there's so much attention to detail that trumps the thought and effort put into gameplay by a mile as is the norm for modern games (artists are typically the highest paid production role/art gets a significant portion of the budget), really, visually speaking its exceptional, but we don't give a fuck about that, or shouldn't, until modern devs sort out their god damn shit neutered gameplay, generally-speaking.

There's a little summary. Its level design is one of the better aspects of the game, and goes on relatively strong until second half or final third. I'm not sure if I'd say it is better than Shock 2's or not, all things considered. It's the only thing that contests Shock 2, that's for sure. Some aspects are better, others worse or ruined by other aspects of design (e.g space walks). Ultimately it probably loses out to shock 2 for the utterly boring later handful of levels. Rickenbacker and BOTM may have been flawed, but at least they were novel, climatic, and engaging regarding gameplay.

 

[ciox]

Well the very intro of the video explains everything, he's played SS2 once recently without looking into its community and played Prey three times while immersing into its community, so he thinks that Prey invented gameplay with enough freedom to do no-XP runs or other limited runs because it has achievements for them, that's not the only feature that SS2 had 18 years ago, he also praises the XP acquisition system which is almost identical to SS2's and another of its innovations from 18 years ago, the similarity goes all the way down to the upgrade system having visual motifs of eye slots and needles associated with it.

He complains at some point that difficulty doesn't change much in Prey and it's mostly monster damage and health, well he's right about that, SS2 changes everything with difficulty even in vanilla, replicator prices, loot drops, the prices for upgrading your abilities, your maximum psi points for casting psi abilities, it goes way beyond damage dealt.

No mentions of how Prey takes a page directly from Bioshock's book and prevents you from having any build freedom at the very beginning, making it so you have to go through a long sequence where you only have 1-2 weapons before you start getting some freedom and can decide to specialize in either weapons or psi/plasmids, Prey does it a little better by letting you get passive abilities relatively early on but still delays the Psi significantly because it needs to follow the Bioshock holy book of introducing new gameplay elements with wide spacing between them so that even beginner players can adjust from the very first run through the game, even if that means turning the first quarter or third of a game into a tutorial. But the guy doesn't seem to notice this problem and that it's not present in SS2.
He does notice that the game needs more monsters, weapons, and ways to do damage so that there's more specialization, things which are in SS2.
Another thing he notices is how weird the combat is, with the flickering effect (I think that's the phantom's spooky light flickering effect which is bugging out) and the bad repetitive combat music, where SS2's was at least decent and in some levels was a dynamic part of the level's soundtrack.

There's more but I don't think I really need to go on, the verdict that Prey beats SS2 just isn't believable since there's too many aspects where SS2 tops it, if something is going to beat SS2 at being SS2 it's most likely going to be SS3 if they don't screw it up.

 

[Lyric Suite]

They will.

 

[sullynathan]

Well the very intro of the video explains everything, he's played SS2 once recently without looking into its community and played Prey three times while immersing into its community, so he thinks that Prey invented gameplay with enough freedom to do no-XP runs or other limited runs because it has achievements for them, that's not the only feature that SS2 had 18 years ago, he also praises the XP acquisition system which is almost identical to SS2's and another of its innovations from 18 years ago, the similarity goes all the way down to the upgrade system having visual motifs of eye slots and needles associated with it.

He played system shock 2, all three Bioshock games and Deus ex games before Prey. I'm not sure why you think he thinks prey invented any of these even when he clearly says he thinks prey did these things the best not first

 

[ciox]

Well the very intro of the video explains everything, he's played SS2 once recently without looking into its community and played Prey three times while immersing into its community, so he thinks that Prey invented gameplay with enough freedom to do no-XP runs or other limited runs because it has achievements for them, that's not the only feature that SS2 had 18 years ago, he also praises the XP acquisition system which is almost identical to SS2's and another of its innovations from 18 years ago, the similarity goes all the way down to the upgrade system having visual motifs of eye slots and needles associated with it.

He played system slick 2, all three Bioshock games and Deus ex games before Prey. I'm not sure why you think he thinks prey invented any of these even when he clearly says he thinks prey diffs these things the best not first

I've played them all too, including all the Bioshock DLC, for research you see.
I think it because he mentions them with a tone of wonder that suggests he hasn't encountered them before for 90% of the video before dropping some basic details at the very end about some of the similarities but again not really what he was gushing about at the start of the video which is Prey's amazing potential for self-limiting runs and freedom in building your character.
I also said he didn't play SS2 multiple times not that he didn't play it at all, or he'd tell the massive difference multiple runs can make to your build in that game vs Prey, Prey only has the advantage when it comes to story divergence from run to run.
I don't see how the video proves Prey does many things better given he clearly complains about Prey's limited difficulty settings, frustrating no-XP runs, limited beastiary, limited arsenal and weird combat aesthetics like the music and visual effects, even inside the limited viewpoint of that video there's a lot of advantages on SS2's side.

 

[DeepOcean]

Question, since I have yet to play it: would you say that Prey's level design (at least in the beginning of the game) carves out a unique space compared to SS2?

Prey level design is inconsistent.

Some levels like Talos 1 Lobby and the Arboretum offer multifloor spaces that are quite open and allow for complex verticality and exploration, those levels are obviously influenced by Dishonored and are better than System Shock 2 starting levels that are alot more claustrophobic (while you could argue that they were designed to be claustrophobic on purpose).

However, the quality on level design doesn't remain consistent with the majority of the levels being rather straightforward and unimaginative, not all that unique from something like Deus Ex Mankind Divided or other "immersive sims" of the last few years. I would say the Prague Hub on Deus Ex Mankind Divided beats and spits on most of the levels of Prey combined with a few exceptions that I already mentioned. This is actually one of the worst problems of the game on my opinion, you were already not that interested on the weak story and the unimaginative level design on a big portion of the station just brings it even down. The exterior trips to the outsider station at first looks like something unique but it is a barely developed section of the game with very little content on it and the leading screen walls separating it for the rest of the station just shatter the illusion of continuity the designers were trying to convey.

Those modern "immersive" games all have a design philosophy of not trying to enforce specialization that hard on the player, you wonder, if all paths are equal gameplay wise with the differences truly boiling down how do you open a door or how you apply your DPS with guns or space magic, are there truly different paths on there? Or is it the old Bioware tradition of illusion of choices? System Shock 2 old school design of forcing specialization alot harsher alone provide a much better gameplay on my opinion.

 

[Ash]

The exterior trips to the outsider station at first looks like something unique but it is a barely developed section of the game with very little content on it and the leading screen walls separating it for the rest of the station just shatter the illusion of continuity the designers were trying to convey.

That's a point, I wonder why they didn't use a decompression chamber to hide level streaming, and thereby retaining continuity between space walks and the station.

 

[v1rus]

So, whats the hiveminds final judgment upon this Prey?

 

[Darth Roxor]

So, whats the hiveminds final judgment upon this Prey?

It's cool, just make sure to uninstall once you get to derp storage

 

[v1rus]

So, whats the hiveminds final judgment upon this Prey?

It's cool, just make sure to uninstall once you get to derp storage

Derp storage would be around which % of the game?

 

[Darth Roxor]

Roughly 66-75%

 

[Wulfstand]

So, whats the hiveminds final judgment upon this Prey?

It's good, and is being sold for cheap. Definitely worth the 20 eurobuck.

 

[Mynon]

So, whats the hiveminds final judgment upon this Prey?

It's fucking awesome.