Prey

Ten years in the making, is Prey good or just good enough?

	Version Xbox 360, PC	Developer Human Head, 3D Realms	Publisher 2K Games	Genre FPS

By Alex Wollenschlaeger

At one point in Prey, lead character Tommy is walking through a dark, organic corridor in what seems like a never-ending alien craft. The walls are pulsating, fitted as they are with sickening, blood-soaked intestines that wind through the ship, and his heart is racing after a battle, seconds earlier, when he went toe-to-claw with a clutch of disgusting creatures armed with vicious rifles. Tommy surveys his grim surrounding and says, "It's very dark in here. I'm doomed."

Prey has been in the works in one way or another for over a decade - much like 3D Realms' other first-person shooter-cum-industry in-joke, Duke Nukem Forever. Somewhere in that space of time, development duties were passed along and the Doom 3 engine got roped into the process. And after much tweaking and customizing, out popped Prey.

Tommy is the opposite of Duke. He's a real guy, with real problems, including his grandfather, who's constantly on his case about his unwillingness to embrace his Cherokee roots. And then there's Jen, his girlfriend - Tommy wants nothing more than to escape his heritage and run off with her. But there are some things you just can't run from. The developers faced a similar predicament with Prey, but unlike Tommy, they had an easy way out - they draped a variety of new gameplay features (or gimmicks, if you prefer) onto the standard photophobia we've come to associate with the Doom 3 engine.

The most prevalent of these new features is Death Walking. Prey does away with the concept of death. Instead, when you're "killed" in the game you enter a spirit world where you need to shoot down spectral beings to regain health in a brief minigame. The idea behind Death Walking was to create something that stopped the save point crawling that has infected first-person shooters, and it's mostly successful. Some people will complain that this makes the game too easy, and they'd be right to some extent, but would you really prefer the alternative? I wouldn't.

Tommy can also enter the spirit world during the normal run of the game, though this is mostly confined to getting past geographical obstacles. Don't worry - you'll seldom wonder when you're supposed to use it. There are usually clear markers conveniently pasted near to where you're supposed to activate your spiritual self. The feature essentially allows you to be in two places at the same time, which sets up some satisfying, if predictable, puzzle elements.

The other major add-ons influence how you interact with the game world. First there's Wall Walking, which is exactly what it sounds like. Strewn throughout the alien vessel are tracks that wind up the wall and onto the roof. When these are activated, you stick to the tracks and walk onto the ceiling or along walls. Then there are the gravity inverters, which literally turn the world upside down.

There doesn't seem to be any reason for these things to be on board the alien ship, but they do force you to be more observant. If you don't adjust your thinking and pay attention to all six walls of a room you will miss enemies and exits and be stumped by the occasionally intelligent puzzles you're faced with.

If you were to ignore these gimmicky features you'd be left with a fairly generic shooter, but they're so fully integrated that it's not fair to consider the game without them. The save-the-world storyline and slay-the-aliens gameplay don't set it apart from the glut of similar shooters delivered in the last few years, but as a whole the game is very playable.

What helps it is the pacing, which feeds you just enough of the story to keep you interested in finding out what's going to happen next or what sort of ghastly humanoid creature you'll next be forced to kill.

There are a few technical problems that detract from the experience. The framerate on the Xbox 360 is about half that of the PC version, and it bogs down even further in some areas. Strangely, this doesn't happen in gameplay intensive regions. The multiplayer is also very rudimentary, with only deathmatch and team deathmatch modes available. It doesn't help that as you get closer to the server maximum the lag jumps.

There's every chance that the developers will add to the number of gameplay modes available through an Xbox Live update at some point, but the limited options available now aren't going to pull people away from Halo 2 or Call of Duty 2 any time soon.

And that's probably Prey's biggest downfall. Despite the obvious work and care that's gone into it, the overall package isn't going to shoot down the big games out there already. It will, however, serve as a great distraction in these barren months, and it's definitely an experience you should consider giving a closer look.