RPGWatch Feature - Prey Review

Myrthos

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Corwin checked out Prey and found many things he liked about it.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away there arrived a much under-appreciated game called System Shock which was light years ahead of its time. I rarely replay games, but this one I have played three times and could easily play again. A few years later saw the advent of a sequel, amazingly called System Shock 2. Now comes a new game Prey which at the very least has been made as an 'homage' and a spiritual successor to the original SS.

Some may argue that both System Shock and indeed Prey are not really RPG's, but I beg to differ. You are most definitely playing a specific character who grows and develops throughout the game, though not in the same manner as your more traditional RPG; there is no experience, for example. Instead, as you solve and complete quests you are able to open up and unlock new skill trees which allow you to customise your character precisely in the way you choose to do so. For example, there are three main ways to fight in the game; melee, guns, and psi-powers. You can choose to focus on developing one of these, or spread yourself around. Either way, at times, you will need to use all three.
More information.
 
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Here is Corwin's view on Prey.
 
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Meh game. And sorry Cowin, but meh review. :p

I mean, replayability? Man, it took me a serious effort to finish the game and I don't want to see it ever again.
 
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Thanks, Corwin. It was genuinely not even on my radar until I read this, as I rarely enjoy first person point of view in games. Maybe I should re-consider. It certainly seems like you had a lot of fun with it.
 
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Thanks for the review, @Corwin;. :thumbsup:

Also: @Myrthos;, the star-based rating is not showing here. Did you do some recent update? Or the reviewers won't need to rate the reviewed games anymore?
 
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Yes, that is intentional. It has been changed recently.
The rating is text only and is also explained in the "How we Review" link at the bottom of each review.
 
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Good call. I find numerical scores just sponsor tedious bickering, and are of very little value.
 
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Good call. I find numerical scores just sponsor tedious bickering, and are of very little value.
I like scores. More specifically a metacritic done proper would be nice. I often use it to quickly find a new game to play (+ some background checking after I find one). I guess I don't feel like reading 20 in-depth reviews to make up my mind. Takes too much time :)

Ideally, such an aggregation site should take into account my taste *automatically* (more weight to scores of sites/people I value o more). But I guess that's what the recommendation site of steam already does. I only want to it to be much better.
 
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I thought Prey was decent but it won't enter my personal hall of fame.

The best part for me was the early game when things were still dangerous (I played and finished on 'hard') and when it was fun to explore and upgrade your character with neuromods.

But after a while it reminded me too much of Doom 3 BFG with annoying respawns and all too samey looking levels. It took me almost 60 hours according to Steam to finish the game and I think this game would have been better off being a 25-ish hours affair.
There was simply too little variety in the levels and also in the enemies.

I actually ran out of steam after about 40 something hours and then only recently got around to finally finishing it.
I ran out of steam mostly because I already had all the skills I wanted long before finishing the game. I did not want to pick up any alien powers and when I finished the game I had all human powers maxed out plus dozens of neuromods in reserve (plus the resources to craft many more).

So I did not have any motivation to keep going. The story did not grab me enough to keep trucking on. That's why I took a long break before finally finishing it about a week ago.

Overall a 7/10 for me. The beginning gets a 8/10, maybe even a 9/10 for short bursts, because it's fun to explore the levels, to figure out the alternate solutions to get to places, to fly around in zero g and to try out ways to defeat the enemies.
But later on it fell apart for me. Too little variation, too many respawns, way too much backtracking (with too little fast travel options) for the main story and some of the side quests, a fairly thin story which is rather poorly presented (mostly just audio logs and transmissions) and no more character progression for the last third of the game.
 
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I enjoyed Prey a whole lot, much more than I expected to. The environment and storyline are great, and it has a lot of nice touches of detail throughout the game. The immersion into the environment was top notch for me. I did not get tired of it at all, which is not the case for Dishonored 2 and especially 1.
 
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Yes, that is intentional. It has been changed recently.
The rating is text only and is also explained in the "How we Review" link at the bottom of each review.

I agree that numbers ratings can be confusing/troublesome from a purely analytical standpoint, though this isn't initially apparent.

Take a five star rating system, for example. Query what does it mean. Lets translate that into percentages -- break 100 percent into 5 parts, and get:
1 star = 1-20 percent
2 star = 21-40 percent
3 star = 41-60 percent
4 star = 61-80 percent
5 star = 81-100 percent

Confusing because most ppl think that 4 star means 80/100. But in fact 4 star means 80 at most, or better said, 70 +/- 10. So yeah, confusing

A 10 star or x/10 system is also confusing since by the same reasoning above, 10/10 actually means 90-100 (95 +/- 5 -- on a scale of 100).

IMO it really doesn't become intuitive until we opt for a full blown scale of 100 (x/100) rating system.

Bell curve would work better than strictly linear, but that too is confusing without lots of definition.

Long story short. Hope the new system works for RPGWatch.

Edit -- On topic: thanks for the thoughtful review. :)

__
 
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Thanks for the review. The game sounds more rpgish than I expected. I guess I'll pick it up when I buy a new computer. My current one certainly can't run it.

I like the new system. The game rating explains exactly what the rating means, since different people might think a 5/6 means different things. Here is clearly stated what a very good game is, and what kind of game the reviewer considers it to be. With a number the reviewer and people who read the review could have completely different ideas what that number means. Also we now have fair, good, very good, and excellent instead of 3,4,& 5 stars, so there is a little more room to decide how good a good game is.
 
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The first few hours were really good. Became a chore later on. Story was :rolleyes:.

A generous review, as usual.
 
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Great review. Loved the game, even after i tried the demo on the xbox and did decide not to buy. Ended up buying it to my pc after some reviewers compairing it to system shock and loved playing every minute of it. Bought it to my xbox as well and awaiting a replay on my xbox one x, whenever that thing arrives. :)
 
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Good review even if I don't agree with everything he said. Two of the cons he listed (Resources being scarce and some areas being hard to reach) are more pros than cons to me.

Prey reminded me of the way I felt the first time I played System Shock 2, and that's saying something. It's a much better spiritual successor to the SS games than the Bioshock games were.

The only common complaint I agree with is that it's too easy to accumulate the different powers. They should have made neuromods harder to find and obtain.

It was easily the best non-RPG I've played this year, and the second best game overall after ELEX.
 
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Good call. I find numerical scores just sponsor tedious bickering, and are of very little value.

Metacritic will ignore The Watch if there are no numerical scores!! :p

1 star = 1-20 percent
2 star = 21-40 percent
3 star = 41-60 percent
4 star = 61-80 percent
5 star = 81-100 percent

Five star systems usually start at the equivalent of an F grade. E.g. 5 stars is an A+, 4 is a B+, 3 is a C, 2 is a D, 1 is an F, or something like that. My point is, you don't start out at 0%.

For instance, Joystiq was miffed at Metacritic for making this very same mistake, and stopped rating games completely as a result.

https://www.engadget.com/2015/01/13/joystiq-isnt-scoring-reviews-anymore-and-heres-why/
 
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Good review even if I don't agree with everything he said. Two of the cons he listed (Resources being scarce and some areas being hard to reach) are more pros than cons to me.

It was easily the best non-RPG I've played this year, and the second best game overall after ELEX.

Resources aren't scarce. Get the recycling ball or whatever gadget that turns stuff into mats blueprint and go grind.
Dunno what areas were hard to reach, everything seemed pretty easy to reach to me except I had to backtrack through respawned trashmobs which turned easy to reach into boredom to reach.

In my case the best game overall this year is Blue Horizon hands down. The utter brokeness of that product and it's patches being distributed almost daily is something I've never seen before.
I would never put Prey on a list "best games in 2017". It would go on a list "overrated forgettable games of all times".
 
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I enjoyed it too but it was too long. I did like the various endings. I played my way and watched an "endings" youtube video for the rest. I liked Prey much better than Elex or DOS2, but that's probably because single-character vs party. My GoTY would probably be the Enderal mod.

I barely remember any respawns at all tbh.
 
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blue horizon ? It has a 41% approval rating on steam. I guess you are among the minority :)


In my case the best game overall this year is Blue Horizon hands down. The utter brokeness of that product and it's patches being distributed almost daily is something I've never seen before.
I would never put Prey on a list "best games in 2017". It would go on a list "overrated forgettable games of all times".
 
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