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

[fantadomat]

Shrug, of course I know about sales. I was just curious whether or not you're a hypocrite. Seems you are, and your persistent evasiveness isn't helping. Still, what do you care what people think? You be you, matey! Updated my .txt.

What do you have in your txt?

 

[Latelistener]

Shrug, of course I know about sales. I was just curious whether or not you're a hypocrite. Seems you are, and your persistent evasiveness isn't helping. Still, what do you care what people think? You be you, matey! Updated my .txt.

You weren't curious, it was a provocation, plain and simple. So it's only natural that you get the same kind of answer.
My purchase history is none of your business, and it isn't going to change the fact that modern gamers aren't interested in immersive sims.

 

[Zombra]

Nope, I was sincerely curious. Only your natural suspicion and evasiveness turned it into something else. It seems that you are one of these selfsame "modern gamers" you're complaining about who didn't buy the game; i.e. you yourself are part of the problem you're complaining about. If that's none of my business, fine ... my curiosity is satisfied at this point anyway.

 

[Darth Roxor]

i pirated it

 

[Latelistener]

Nope, I was sincerely curious. Only your natural suspicion and evasiveness turned it into something else. It seems that you are one of these selfsame "modern gamers" you're complaining about who didn't buy the game; i.e. you yourself are part of the problem you're complaining about. If that's none of my business, fine ... my curiosity is satisfied at this point anyway.

This was suppose to be your second comment, but you actually write it first:

Then shut up about people not paying the full day one retail price like you're some last hero of incline.

You were ready for the punch line, but then something unexpected happened, as I wasn't going to play your game, and now you're annoyed by it, so I had to become a "hypocrite", a "modern gamer" and a "part of the problem".
Just in case you have anything else in your vocabulary, please use Inbox.

 

[Zombra]

Nah, if you need the last word so bad you can have it.

Whoops!

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Errant Signal is retarded and actually spent time making a GTA review that focused on story and themes

To be honest I generally even like that sort of in-depth analysis or review (see: the Joseph Andrew video about Prey that was linked in this thread) and I still find the guy one of the most insufferable, pretentious wet farts on youtube.

 

[fantadomat]

Whooo that "modern gamer" was unnecessary.Be civil guys.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

I've got to ask, is there any game in the mold of SS2 that doesn't suck at the end? SS2 struggles at the Rickenbacker and just flops at BOTM, Prey falls apart at cold storage, Bioshock loses what little merit it had after the twist.

I wonder if these games (moreso SS2 and Prey) rely on resource scavenging so much that they just fall apart once you get so much ammo/nanites/whatever that it's no longer worth looking for. Or maybe this is just where they run out of budget or something.

 

[ciox]

I've got to ask, is there any game in the mold of SS2 that doesn't suck at the end? SS2 struggles at the Rickenbacker and just flops at BOTM, Prey falls apart at cold storage, Bioshock loses what little merit it had after the twist.

I wonder if these games (moreso SS2 and Prey) rely on resource scavenging so much that they just fall apart once you get so much ammo/nanites/whatever that it's no longer worth looking for. Or maybe this is just where they run out of budget or something.

Almost all seem to have this problem along with general balance issues, or they're just never good i.e later Bioshock games. Kinda makes the case for a "short, sweet and ultra replayable" type of entry in the genre.

Maybe the first Deus Ex is the least affected in this sense, you still have power creep / balance issues towards the end but there you don't have that meteoric drop in content/story quality.

 

[Zombra]

I wonder if these games (moreso SS2 and Prey) rely on resource scavenging so much that they just fall apart once you get so much ammo/nanites/whatever that it's no longer worth looking for.

"Ransacking" type "gameplay" just can't sustain interest over the course of 20-40 hours, because the only challenge involved is being able to recognize what is a garbage can and what isn't. Once you've figured that out, it's busywork. I always feel like the stuff should just go straight into my inventory when I walk into a room, instead of making me walk around clicking on containers. Identifying barrels and crates does not make me more immersed in the environment; on the contrary, I tend to ignore the environment as I skim for "blips" on my loot detector.

 

[ciox]

It wasn't nearly that bad before though, it's only in the modern entries in the genre that "processing" the average room takes time and is an ordeal.
Hacking/etc is also free in the latest ransackers so you feel the need to hack everything instead of picking and choosing what to hack, more time wasted.

 

[Nirvash]

Come on, even with flaws this is still a good game, even more for the dumb AAA landscape. (i will remember the foam gun forever)

And le't be real, i have little faith for a legit ss3 (if ever) to actually not fuck up big time.

 

[ciox]

Come on, even with flaws this is still a good game, even more for the dumb AAA landscape. (i will remember the foam gun forever)

And le't be real, i have little faith for a legit ss3 (if ever) to actually not fuck up big time.

It's worth the 60 bucks and it's a nice experience the first time with lots of old LGS feels but I don't really wanna play it all over again, especially since the modding impetus seems to have fizzled out after a promising start.

 

[Ash]

SS2 doesn't "fall apart" near the end. It becomes less about resource whoring, and more about actually USING those resources and ramped up challenges. It becomes Quake Shock, by design. This is a good thing.

 

[Hines]

Over the past month, and despite a permanent 33% discount, sales for Prey have plateaued on Steam. I wonder why?
http://steamspy.com/app/480490

 

[LESS T_T]

Over the past month, and despite a permanent 33% discount, sales for Prey have plateaued on Steam. I wonder why?
http://steamspy.com/app/480490

Permanent price change isn't discount and doesn't send wishlist alerts. Also, it already had a 50% discount during Summer Sale so it's not even historically low price. I guess next real discount will do the job.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

SS2 doesn't "fall apart" near the end. It becomes less about resource whoring, and more about actually USING those resources and ramped up challenges. It becomes Quake Shock, by design. This is a good thing.

It would maybe be good if SS2 had better combat mechanics. But as it is, if I'm going to play Quake I'd play a game with a much better foundation for that kind of gameplay like, uh, Quake. The level design in the Rickenbacker and BOTM is also pretty trash. SHODAN's realm is interesting (if only because it's ripped straight from SS1), but it's short and capped off by an awful boss fight so meh.

I dunno. Maybe I liked the endgame when I first played it many moons ago, but these days I usually just turn the game off when I hit the Rickenbacker.

 

[Master]

Try Dead Space 1, much better shooting.

 

[Zakhad]

An endgame is always going to be more linear, by necessity. When the whole strength of a game is in the freedom, that linearity can really kill the buzz. It's like hitting max-level in a game where the fun is in the levelling. There've been a few games where I hit level cap, or came close, and quit almost immediately.

It's also budget, though. Why bother investing heavily in the areas that only the smallest number of customers will see? No investor would support a company that prioritised that. Same reason the high-level perks in Fallout 3 were all game-breaking or useless and generally idiotic, if you play to that stage you're already on the hook and they don't have to spend much time making sure stuff appeals to you or gives you the value you paid for.

 

[RoSoDude]

SS2 is solid, if increasingly rushed, right up until "Where Am I?" which is a poor excuse for a level. But the Rickenbacker and the Body of The Many are actually great levels on the whole. Good mix of obstacles and encounters that force you to make use of the tools you've acquired, and most game systems are still impressively represented. SHODAN's realm is a garbage nostalgia trip with virtually nothing to offer from a gameplay perspective, which is a disappointment because a cyberspace reconstruction of bits and pieces of Citadel Station (especially the Giger-esque Bridge deck) could have led to some disorienting platforming and shooting.

Anyway, finally got around to finishing Prey. Quality veered sharply downward after the Arboretum, as others have said, but I did find parts of the endgame fun if just a bit tedious. I had been wise enough to prioritize upgrading my Disruptor Stun Gun and happened to have installed a chipset that reduced damage from lasers (not that I knew I had done this, since the suit chipsets are so boring I never checked what I had on), so they were a fun iteration of combat rather than a total chore. But there were still far too many of them, and the amount of Q-beam ammo I salvaged was ridiculous -- I had already been saving up for when I could fully upgrade it and melt every Typhon. Other complaints:

• Combat in this game is far too binary. Encounters would end with me dying or coming out without a scratch (Nightmare difficulty). This meant that I was barely using medkits (save for the occasional "pause and spam health items" degeneracy during fights). The reason casuals were complaining this game was too hard is that the difficulty settings don't really influence how hardcore the game is. Nightmare has you do 0.8x damage, and Easy gives you a 10% boost, with enemy damage to you scaling more heavily with difficulty level. If you use the correct tools for each enemy encounter, Nightmare is barely harder than Easy, since your enemies will be stunlocked and it'll only take 37.5% more damage to kill them. The game is at its hardest if you don't know how to counter each enemy type, and consequently expend a lot of resources to out-damage your foes. Since you die in only a few hits on Nightmare, this means that the player is most encouraged to learn the best tactics on the harder difficulties and will thereby have a greater abundance of resources than people shotgunning and medkit-spamming their way through Easy. Seems a bit backwards.
• Stealth systems in this game suck. Enemies can acquire line of sight through objects and you can't reliably enter a crawl state. If there's going to be stealth as an approach to combat, it should be developed and communicated appropriately to the player. I am still baffled by the fact that Mimic Matter doesn't buff stealth other than giving you a smaller form factor. You'd think playing Prop Hunt with Mimics would be encouraged.
  
• The Nightmare was lame. Too easy to avoid by hiding in closets, would have much preferred an Alien: Isolation style enemy that'd persistently hunt you rather than just having a 2min timer to give up on you and leave the level entirely. Once I had fully upgraded my Q-Beam, all it took was a single Nullwave grenade and the thing didn't have a chance.
• Character building was only okay. The hacking minigame is one of the worst I've played in recent memory, the human skill trees are mostly quite boring. I had the most fun with the spare parts economy in the beginning, repairing turrets and electrical hazards and dismantling equipment and operators, but soon found myself flooded with spare parts as turrets were becoming less and less potent. I found a way to abuse the constraint-based physics to push Leverage II and III objects with only Leverage I, but there are already other tactics to accomplish that effect (recycler grenades, using explosions to push objects around) so it wasn't a big deal. While the Deus Ex-ish lock and key level design made certain aspects of the RPG systems fun, I didn't feel it had enough influence on combat (compare to Dishonored where the upgrades essentially ONLY influence stealth or combat). I didn't really try many alien powers since I usually avoid arkane magicks in my first runs of games, and I think I was missing out. Finished the game with 25 extra neuromods because crafting is bonkers, and felt more limited by Mineral/Synthetic material than Exotic. Barely dipped into my Organic material since medkits were in abundant supply for the reasons mentioned earlier.
• Weapon choice is nonexistent. I got through 98% of the game with only one inventory space upgrade, holding a copy of every weapon with space to spare for ammo, grenades, health/psi items, food, and plenty of junk. That there are only 6 weapons including the nerf gun (and not counting the reskinned pistol fuck you) in a Shock clone is unacceptable, and one area where I felt this game hinged too much towards BioSchlock. Compared to choosing between four weapon classes in Shock 2 with various strengths and weaknesses, Prey feels gimped. Even Shock 1, with its 7 weapon slots, had you making significant choices about which of its 16 weapons you wanted to carry. I understand that roleplaying as a garbage man requires that some inventory space be dedicated to the junk you find lying around, but I don't think weapons being larger in the inventory with a few more to choose from would break this. Finding an assault rifle or that Disc Rifle with a depressed guidance AI would have helped this a lot, and also made exploration more rewarding as the game went on.
  
• Physical perks with randomized locations weren't good in Dishonored, and they aren't good here. Chipsets are better than Bone Charms in that exploration is done in a contiguous space with no awful Heart mechanic and their effects are less idiotic, but the bar is set pretty low. As I said before, I barely remembered what I had installed in either my suit or my scope. A fully fleshed out Chipset perk system, maybe involving some expansion of the crafting mechanic, could have been really cool. Dammit Arkane.
• Cut survival elements would have done a lot of good here, along with rebalanced combat to chip away at you and give you status effects. Having to deal with weapon degradation and persistent traumas, as well as limited oxygen in space would have really increased the tension which I found lacking after Mimics became less common.
  
• The linearity of the progression was a disappointment since the Crew Quarters, Deep Storage, Cargo Bay, and Power Plant levels are all varying degrees of slog. Had the game opened up here with nonlinear optional objectives and free exploration, I'd have had a much better time. I love the "Hole in the Bucket" quest progression in Shock 1/2, but it feels really uninspired here.
• ...oh, and the story was a snoozefest. Didn't care about a single audio log, email, or book. Why do the writers think I care about the crew's boring lives before containment was broken? I don't want to hear about your dumb romances and petty squabbles, I want to hear about how you're dealing with an infestation of paranormal aliens. The PnP RPG thing was cool until they made a big deal out of it. It was much more fun to find Captain Stabfellow's character sheet and speculate, rather than calling attention to it. Honestly, audio logs could have been dropped here in favor of direct communication with surviving NPCs, as I don't find the "everyone records their long-winded phone conversations" very compelling. Overall, I wish the story had focused more on the amnesia stuff, accentuating how characters viewed Morgan and making it unclear who you can trust without looking more into their character through emails and the like. As it was, I found myself clicking through emails for passcodes and skipping reading material, which never happened in Deus Ex (despite JC not being big into books).

There's other stuff, but I can't be assed to remember it. Despite my whining, I mostly had a good time with Prey, but my engagement wasn't very high. It's disappointing that almost 18 years on, the design of SS2 has still not been surpassed. Prey has a lot of untapped potential, but I don't know if it could really be fixed by modders or even Arkane themselves at this point. The chaff's too mixed in with the wheat, and there's a lot of both.

 

[Zombra]

Are the navigation controls all console toggles, or can I press and hold a key to crouch, walk, sprint, then release the key to stop doing that, like a PC player?
I hate games where the controls are "tap C to crouch" and "tap C to stand up".

 

[RoSoDude]

Are the navigation controls all console toggles, or can I press and hold a key to crouch, walk, sprint, then release the key to stop doing that, like a PC player?
I hate games where the controls are "tap C to crouch" and "tap C to stand up".

There is no slow walk, just the normal walk and sprint. By default, you hold to sprint but toggle crouch, with no way to change them. I want to say that the Prey Interface Customizer lets you change these, but I'm not certain (will check when I'm home).

 

[Krzysiek]

 

[Zombra]

you hold to sprint

Cool. To be absolutely clear, you hold to sprint ... not the console "start walking, then tap X to sprint until you stop moving"?