Prey is a reboot of the game that came out in 2006 by Human Head studios. The original story focused on Cherokee Domasi “Tommy” Tawodi and his fight against alien abductions and an invasion. The game also featured gravity as its central point of gameplay. You could walk on walls and ceilings. To some, it made motion sickness a central feature (I was one of them). Prey 2 was planned, but fell into the dreaded development hell. In 2014, Betheda Softworks (known for Elder Scrolls and Fallout) bought the rights from 3D Realms. They released a trailer to the surprise of everyone at E3 2014, and on May 5th, 2017 Prey was finally released.
As for GHG, on May 27th, 2017, Prey is finally reviewed.
My expectations for Prey were on the same level as another franchise: Call of Duty (to which I refer to all of the games following Modern Warfare 2 as “Call of Dookie). But last year, Call of Duty: Infinite was a total surprise with how much fun the game turned out. Since no one at GodHatesGeeks, not even our Bethesda-loving Monsignor, picked up Prey–perhaps shockingly, seeing how hyped and anticipated it was until some rather middling word of mouth–I decided to get it after all the hype died down, load it into my Xbox One and wait for the install. Once ready, I was greeted with a great soundtrack and a nice UI. Then it all went to shit.
It started well enough. Morgan wakes up in the apartment and was able to interact with a lot of things. The whatever-gender-you-want protag read a lot of books, all thankfully at around one page each, ranging from Cooking to Astrophysics. Yu read emails, picked up boxes and drinking glasses. Yu was informed by my brother to put on a suit that was hanging on a door, and then the game starts. So, yeah — sans spoilers — it was all a lie. Yu was not on Earth. Yu was a scientific experiment. And Yu fights these creatures called Mimics, which can be anything from a human to inanimate objects like a box, or a potted plant, or a stack of papers. They are deadly and they are everywhere. Yu must stop them.
Progressing through the game, it didn’t take long to realize that Arkane Studios borrowed heavily from Bioshock. You have to inject yourself with nanites to gain abilites like hacking. Gee. My life was a lie, and a voice is talking to me via radio transmitter in my suit. Gee. You can go anywhere you like, but to advance the story you have to go to specific locations. Gee. The only thing missing are the “Vending Machines”. Oh wait… hold my beer. Neuromod machines are scattered about the station–just like Bioshock. You can shoot, gain weapons, and upgrade your suit to better control weapons and such. But unlike Bioshock, the game just isn’t fun.
Prey is boring, bland, and same old, same old. Nothing about the game makes me give a crap about the character. Just like Jack in Bioshock, Morgan Yu doesn’t talk; but unlike Bioshock, there’s not enough info being fed to you to give a damn about the mission. The other problem is gunplay. Your first weapon is a wrench, kinda like Bioshock (Pipe). After that, you are given this P.O.S. GLOC, a fire extinguisher that sucks donkey a******. Here, face-off against six crawling, spider-like jackasses with a gun that looks like a BFG, but has a fire rate of a constipated a******. Fun times, y’all! Then, Yu walk into the station’s lobby, greeted with a glorified boss — and all he/she has is what all he/she has. “Have fun”, says Arkane. (More like GFY!) I’m sure I’ll have someone tell me I didn’t play long enough. God damn right I didn’t; this Advocate was bored to shit and frustrated as fuck.
One positive: I didn’t pay full price for this game. If I did, I would have hung myself. This game is a waste of $60. I’d rather spend the sixty at Wal-Mart or buy 60 bones worth of Chinese food. Use the $60 bucks on gas for my car. This game’s only usefullness would to be used as a coaster for a coffee table. Maybe you could use Prey as a clay pigeon, but then you’d waste a bullet or a shotgun pellet on this trash. I can’t believe someone who gametested Prey gave it the thumbs up. Maybe it was Ken Levine — cause fucking hell they didn’t just borrow from Bioshock; they outright stole from it. I was waiting for the Murder of Crows to be selectable.
I’m sure Arkane studios and Bethesda both went in preying for greatness. They need to prey harder. As I said I went in with low expectations, I wasn’t let down. 0.5/5 Bibles.
@Dan Witt (Facebook)
Chances are by now that you may have played, or at least heard of, Rebellion’s Sniper Elite games — famous for their gruesome X-ray kill cam shots (think Mortal Kombat, but with bullets) that showcase what high velocity lead death stones can do to a human body. Dating back to 2005, the niche franchise sets the player in control of Karl Fairburne, an elite OSS Agent tasked with toppling the Nazi’s as a one man army in various stages throughout World War II. The latest entry, Sniper Elite 4: Italia, takes place in.. you guessed it.. Italy during the earliest stages of the Allied Invasion of Fascist Italy. I’ve always loved sniping, and in most shooters, it’s my go to. In Battlefield and Ghost Recon (hell, even in Destiny), it tends to be my go to, so one would reason this franchise is a dead-on headshot from a mile out plus wind… problem is, there’s not a whole lot of sniping in it.
In the first game, Sniper Elite and its remaster, Sniper Elite V2, the object was to infiltrate, find good sniping positions, and take out the enemy; the maps were linear and the objectives were clear, think early Metal Gear, just more of a focus on sniping and a little less on stealth. I loved it. I couldn’t play it enough. As the franchise aged, however, it utilized a more open world format to its missions, and gave the player loads of objectives to complete in mission, and it took away from the essence of the game: getting in, taking out the enemies without anyone knowing you’re there, and getting out. Here, more often than not, you’re acting like Rambo. Granted, you can still get to sweet spots and use the environment or sound masking techniques to be very, very quiet, because after all, it’s Nazi Hunting Season–which never goes out of style.
The story is straightforward and lean: stop evil Nazi leader from developing a super weapon that will definitely turn the tide of the war in favor of The Third Reich, but this is the third time in a row they’ve done this. Nothing new here. Nothing at all. There’s really cool melee kills, but, again, this takes away from the essence of the sniper. After completion, I have zero desire to play it again. The missions are way too long, sometimes taking up to two hours or more to complete. The maps are robust and detailed, with major respect to the sound and environment design teams, it all felt very immersive and clean on the PS4.
If you are searching for some tense sniping action, you’ll find that in multiplayer, if you can actually get in a lobby. The player base isn’t very large at times, so getting matched up can take a while. Aside from that, imagine a world where just about every second you’re certain someone is going to blow your brains out from a place you can’t see. You find a good spot, think you’re clear, you may even set a trap if you have one handy. You wait, motionless. Suddenly you see another player creeping along, hoping to find a place of their own to set up shop, he has no idea what’s about to hit him. You line up your shot, and then it happens; you get riddled with holes by the other guys in the match running around with sub machine guns. This happened. A lot.
Sniper Elite 4: Italia is not a fail. It’s a fine game in and of itself and I respect the effort. It’s a fun game if you are looking to play as the ultimate Nazi slayer, running around slitting throats and blowing up tanks, but if that’s not you, steer clear of the $60 price tag. As with the other titles in the series, there’s DLC where you can attempt to alter history and kill Hitler himself in some pretty hilarious ways, and that’s always a gas. It should just be called The Inglorious Bastard, as you’re essentially the LeBron James of that squad. 3/5 Bibles.