Prey

Excellent science-fiction immersive sim

Overall, a very good immersive sim with highs on par with System Shock but some issues holding it back from being quite as good. For the good, exploration is great and has plenty of solutions for most puzzles depending on the build you've put together. The music is pretty good and has a lot of nice ambiance. The storyline is mostly fantastic with good voice acting to benefit the audiologs For the bad, the enemy variety is heavily lacking alongside what enemies the game does have being pretty generic and samey looking. The audio design is terrible with constant obvious surround sound issues and random things being MUCH louder than the rest of the game. The amount of sidequests by the end of the game become really tedious with how much running around is needed. The storyline I was enjoying so much started to decline a good bit by the final act and it left me somewhat disappointed In general I had a fun time playing the game and easily would recommend it for immersive sim fans, but the joy of exploration over my playthrough gradually turned into light boredom and I was ready for my time with the game to end upon finishing it rather than itching to jump back into it.

Jogo bom. Vi coisas novas e que até o momento nenhum jogo tinha me mostrado nesse formato. Experiencia memorável.

It was fun :)

X_X

(I have a lot more hours on PS4.) One of my favourite games. Incredibly immersive and beautiful combination of art deco and retro sci-fi aesthetics. Taps into the kind of philosophy that I really dig in games, much like SOMA by Frictional Games. I remember at first being mortified of Phantoms because of the sound of their footsteps in the other room, and that should be a testament to just how solid the sound design and music of this game is. I love the design of Talos-I. As a massive level, the station is designed as described by the devs as a dungeon, and you come back to areas frequently with new abilities or seeking other items or specific enemies. Recycling is a fun mechanic (if a little broken when you can craft neuromods), and I love how injecting certain neuromods affect the environment (iykyk). Now for the bad, however. As much as I love this game, there's a big elephant in the room every time it's in conversation. This is not a sequel, reboot, nor a title that's in any way shape or form related to Human Head Studios' game of the same name. I wish something like Typhon or Psychoshock or Neuroshock was chosen for the game instead, especially since at its core this game is a love letter not only to Arkane's own Arx Fatalis, but also System Shock. With the obvious out of the way, I can tackle my other gripes with the game. Firstly is the enemy variety. I personally love the smokey, shadowy aesthetic of the Typhon. Mimics are an iconic enemy type within this game and remind me of the headcrabs from Half Life. However, the enemies in this game just look far too similar. There's a lot of Typhon designs that are just humanoids and blobs, and where there should have been some more creative enemies, they instead opt to make them elemental variants and call it a day. The only non-Typhon enemies are all machines: Variants of the floating operators, (which have such a great, chunky design) and also turrets if you play your cards wrong. I would have loved to see Arkane experiment with how far they could push the design of the Typhon, but they don't do anything majorly innovative outside of the mimics. They *almost* had it with the Nightmare, but the fear factor in a pseudo-stalker enemy that grows more frequent as the game continues and you use more Neuromods is completely eradicated when in actuality you can just hide until the timer counts down, or leave the area and come back to make him disappear. A fix could be to lock the player inside the area and make the Nightmare check hiding spots, but as is he feels a little half-baked, especially when he's just a bigger tankier phantom. I have slight mixed feelings on the Typhon abilities in this game. These are the abilities that allow you to perform inhuman actions, comparable to Dishonored's powers and Bioshock's plasmids. Some of these neuromods, such as metamorphosis, drastically change how you approach navigating the collapsing station around you, and open new routes otherwise locked off, but I noticed a surprisingly flaccid gamefeel from a lot of the abilities, especially when pitted against Arkane's own Dishonored, and especially Dishonored 2. This is a minor thing in practice, but it changed my perception of a lot of the powers, as there is something just lacking in summoning a small AOE in front of you without any view model animation respective to the abilities. This ends up making certain powers, like the electric shock and fire blast abilities, feel like reskins of each other rather than niche use cases like they are. It's not nearly game-breaking, but it made me miss the fun animations from Bioshock, which has some very comparable powers. The guns in this game are a lot more akin to an immersive sim in game feel than an FPS. The viewmodel on the pistol in particular is strangely pointed a little more to the left than you would think, and the reticle is slightly lowered, which to me is evocative of older shooters such as Halo. Gun feedback is mixed, in my opinion. The pistol feels very dinky, especially with the surpressor which lacks oomph, but this isn't necessarily bad, as the pistol by design is very petite and more of a peashooter than the shotgun, which is a must-have for clearing tougher enemies. The Huntress Boltcaster is a fun if very niche use utility weapon, and the GLOO Cannon is incredibly creative and fun to use for both support against enemies and to navigate the environment. The wrench is a staple first weapon in immersive sims, so it makes since that it would be present here too. The game's story relies heavily on audio logs and emails scattered across the station, letting the player pinpoint what exactly went to hell and how in each sector. Prey rewards the observant player in many ways, hiding safe codes in plain sight and scavenger hunts with big payouts. Aside from the scattered worldbuilding, most of the story is delivered through January and the protagonist Morgan Yu's brother, Alex Yu. Other minor NPCs are encountered, but Morgan, Morgan's cloned consciousness, and Morgan's brother are the focal point, and the game provides multiple options for the player to choose the outcome of Talos-I and its survivors. I've heard complaints about the game's twist, but personally I'm fond of it, and honestly wish we could have seen something come of it. Seems unlikely now though, with Arkane Austin laid off and gone. Hopefully the remnants of the team can make something beautiful and full of passion like Prey again. I will be there for it with a giddy smile. There's a lot more to this game that has to be said, and I highly recommend both this game and the really fun Mooncrash DLC. Pick them up on sale when you get the chance.