Tommy can also call upon his spirit guide – a hawk that tends to follow you around after a while – and can connect with his tribal roots, which will effectively allow you to leave Tommy’s physical body and run rampant as a spirit. You will often need to do this to open doors that you cannot initially pass, or to access hidden walkways and panels that are not visible to the human eye. Most places you need to do this are marked with a symbol, although thankfully it is not usually indicated what exactly it is you need to do, allowing for some exploring and brain power to pass some obstacles.
There are even warp holes that will transport you to other areas in the level. From a design point of view, it’s a cheap way to extend a level further than its design will let it, but there are instances where you will return to the same point and retread old ground to discover something new. The warps can be found in blatant circular rings, or they can be found within steel crates. The cool thing is, warps in physical objects do not appear thicker than a narrow block from the outside, making for some interesting puzzles. When walking through some warps you may end up going round in circles or even seeing yourself. Crazy shit.
Even dying is turned on its head in Prey. In a feature that is only welcomed by this reviewer (not because he’s naff or anything, but for reasons stated later), being killed will stop you in your tracks and transport you to a circular arena surrounded by demon spirits. In this ‘netherworld’ you are in spirit form and you can shoot the demons to help replenish more of your health or spirit for when you return to the human world. It’s handy because you can get right back into the action, and on an unfortunate level sometimes you can die a bit too cheaply by getting gang-raped by two or three hardnuts in a corner of a room. This ‘Deathwalk’ suppresses the anger felt when you actually do die in such a frustrating manner. The way the game is all laid out and presented means you don’t want to die or repeat anything – you want to see the rest of the game now, and you want to see what happens at the end. Sod death, get back in the game! The end is far more important!
And the end is quite literally the end for Prey. Sadly, the game is all too short, despite being roughly 22 chapters in length, and far too easy even on the harder settings. The Deathwalk feature is pretty much the reason for this, as technically speaking you simply return to the same spot. Perhaps a better system would have worked for later difficulties, such as a limited number of times you can enter the Deathwalk before actually losing. Overall, it’s a very entertaining but disposable experience, once you complete it there’s nothing to make you come back to Prey instead of, say, Perfect Dark Zero.
It really doesn’t help matters that Prey’s one saving grace for longevity, its multiplayer mode, is so utterly and completely flawed that it’s a crime. It doesn’t feel anything like the single player mode – inertia is altered and the action sped up, level maps are uninspired and poorly designed, and the whole game plays like a low-quality CCTV recording with characters jumping from one spot to the next and then, whoops you’re dead. It’s like playing a very poor online PC game, against three people who have ultimate lag.
Weapons aren’t balanced, for as soon as you obtain a grenade launcher you might as well have won. It’s a considerably atrocious multiplayer experience that perhaps would have been better left out than slapped on as an obvious afterthought. If time were spent extending and fine-tuning the single player mission instead of a wanky deathmatch mode (or even making the deathmatch mode not-so-wanky), Prey would deserve a lot more praise. As it stands, this is an Xbox 360 game that delivers on one front, but takes away on another.
SPOnG Score: B-
By daring to be different in some aspects of gameplay, Prey doesn’t suffer the ‘generic FPS’ fate . The main story entertains, but is far too short and has limited appeal once you’ve completed it. However, the multiplayer leaves a bad taste and is a shame to the Xbox Live service. Prey’s short-lived but intriguing story is really the main thing on offer here.
