Ok, so we finally got our hands on the eagerly anticipated demo for the first person shooter Prey on the Xbox360.
Though many of you with high end gaming PCs have been enjoying the unearthly delights found in Prey for a while now, those of us in the console community are just now whetting our appetites for alien blood. That is, if you can consider alien abduction, out of body experiences and mind bending puzzles in the form of gravity defying walkways, altering the direction of gravity itself and stunning portals through which not only do you travel but you can actually shoot at enemies on the other side and vice versa to be, delightful.
It's these seemingly impossible mutations of the laws of physics that really make Prey stand out from the typical FPS crowd. Imagine yourself standing on what only seconds before was the wall and shooting at enemies, who just popped in on you from a previously unseen portal. Then having gravity changed so that now your falling onto what you thought was the ceiling. That is the type of scenario you can expect when you delve into Prey. At first it is a bit disorienting, but once you realize how to manipulate these aspects of the game for yourself, you begin to use these altered physics to your own advantage. You realize the beauty and near genius in this radically different approach in the design of a shooter.
What follows is an experience that is easily comparable to the Half-Life series. Like Half-Life, Prey immerses the player in a believable unreality steeped in heavy atmosphere. Take for example the ship which you are now inhabiting. It is a gruesome merging of organics and metal that due to impressive visuals makes you truly question if advancing through the level is worth crawling through that sphincter in the wall. Or, I could point you to the inhuman results of the alien's experiments, prisoners who have been 'operated' on, for lack of a better term. These beings are used as a workforce in the alien ship and act much like the Borg race, out of the Star Trek universe. They don't immediately attack you, but once they sense a threat they can become dangerous. Then there are the alien weapons which you can find and eventually turn on your captors. These are akin to the ship in that they seem to be alive and very organic. Combine these with the space shifting portals and gravity switches with a general sense of sci-fi bizarro weirdness and you really begin to let yourself into your character's shoes and experience some of the emotions one might feel in this particular predicament.
As immersed as I was I do have to note a few minor details that to me have no place in games these days. There's a noticeable head bob which can be toggled off in the menus. While this is fine and I've always felt it helps you get inside your character better you may loose the illusion when you look down and notice you are a floating head with out a body. I hate it when games don't add legs. Also, in a few instances there are times when you can see yourself either in a reflective surface or at times through portals (looking at yourself through portals from weird angles is pretty trippy by the way) and you'll notice that the animation never changes whether your walking or running a la Halo:CE. That has always bugged me in games and I'm hoping will not be present in the final product. To me this game is all about immersion and anything that has potential to pull you out is a serious offense.
Immersive as the game may be, let's not forget the real meat and potatoes of any game worth it's salt. Gameplay. I found the shooting to be solid and after twiddling with a few options I found the controls to be fairly intuitive. The game gives you a couple of preset button layouts though I found the default controls to be more than adequate. Inverted aiming is standard at the start, but is easily switched to n00b controls from the menu. (Sorry guys, I played flight sims before shooters and that makes me hardcore). Aiming sensitivity felt right to me but can be modified. There is also an auto-aim feature for those of you out there who are intimidated by actually aiming, not that there's anything wrong with that . Movement might seem a bit sluggish to the Halo crowd but is paced well for the cramped interiors you find yourself in. The weapons felt pretty solid too and though you only get two guns to play around with in the demo, they both came with primary and secondary fire modes and were distinctly satisfying to use. My personal favorite was a sniper secondary mode on the first weapon you pick up which seems to be the standard weapon issued to most of the aliens you encounter in the demo. Not only does a creepy little eye come out of the weapon via a long tentacle to be used as the scope, but the resulting impact made on enemies was quite satisfying, often staggering them and in the case of the borg-like drones it would pop their little heads off .
The other compelling aspect of the gameplay aside from shooting at crap and makin' it go b00m! is the simply getting from point A to point B. There are subtle puzzles throughout the game that admittedly can be confusing at first. But, and that's a big but, once you become accustomed to what you are looking for and you figure out how to manipulate the environment you realize how these aren't your typical box shoving, lever pulling, key finding puzzles. When you begin walking on walls, and jumping through portals the game starts opening up to you. And then you learn to spirit walk. Enisi, as I said, acts as a mentor to young Tommy and soon teaches him how to leave his body in spirit form and use his spirit guide to get past obstacles. Tommy's spirit guide is in the form of a hawk that was once a childhood pet and often will perch in key spots to help you focus on what you need to do to get through an area. Also, in spirit form Tommy leaves his physical body and can pass through barriers, such as force fields, that his physical form is held back. In spirit form Tommy gains the use of his ancestral weapon, the bow, and can go unseen by most enemies. However, if his body is attacked while he is not occupying it, he is immediately transported back to defend himself. The game further employs this concept in the form of a shooting minigame whenever Tommy is killed. Life after death sees Tommy's spirit form shooting at the spirits of shamed warriors to refill his own physical energy. The catch is you only have a certain amount of time until you revive, but the more lost spirits you hit the more health you have when you do return to the land of the living. It's a neat concept that takes a lot of the sting out of dying. It keeps you competitive as you have the chance of reviving in the middle of a fight with very little health while it also keeps the flow of the game moving without the repetitious start, die, restart from save point, die restart from save point, die cycle that can be very frustrating in other games. Ever try Call of Duty 2 on Veteran? Yeah, then you know what I'm talking about.
Overall I think the demo is a sign of good things to come. I didn't get a chance to try out very much of the multiplayer, but in the one room I made it into the game seemed to be suffering some slowdown and 30 seconds later it closed. I can't really base any opinion on that so I'll leave that experience to the rest of you to decipher for yourselves. I'll be honest here, after seeing some screenshots and a few short videos of this game in action after E3, I originally wasn't all that impressed and figured I'd wait until I heard from some of my friends to decide whether or not I'd even play this game. But now, having experienced the demo, I'm downright excited ! All in all I found the thirtyish minute long demo to be quite fun and if the level design holds up we could be in for a heck of a ride when Prey ships later this month.
Guap
It's these seemingly impossible mutations of the laws of physics that really make Prey stand out from the typical FPS crowd. Imagine yourself standing on what only seconds before was the wall and shooting at enemies, who just popped in on you from a previously unseen portal. Then having gravity changed so that now your falling onto what you thought was the ceiling. That is the type of scenario you can expect when you delve into Prey. At first it is a bit disorienting, but once you realize how to manipulate these aspects of the game for yourself, you begin to use these altered physics to your own advantage. You realize the beauty and near genius in this radically different approach in the design of a shooter.
Demo Spoiler Alert
The demo itself starts you right at the opening scene of the game where you take on the role of Tommy, a Cherokee native who's less than enamoured with life on the reservation. The game starts in, of all places, the bathroom of a mostly empty bar in Oklahoma where his love interest Jen is making a living slinging liquor. All Tommy cares about at the moment is getting off the reservation and he's hoping to convince his girlfriend Jen that she should come too. If he only new what was about to take place then perhaps he might not think of 'home' as such a bad place. This is where Tommy's grandfather Enisi, a follower of the 'old ways', comes into play. As Tommy's teacher and apparent spiritual advisor Enisi tries to warn Tommy and tells him to be mindful of his heritage. Tommy merely blows him off and after a short yet colorful scene in Jen's bar things start to get weird. You know, Area 51 kind of weird. The next thing you know your in the bowels of some sort of alien craft being whisked away on a hanging conveyor belt alongside Jen and Enisi all the while hearing the screams and prayers of the many other unfortunate souls who have found themselves abducted by a sinister alien race.What follows is an experience that is easily comparable to the Half-Life series. Like Half-Life, Prey immerses the player in a believable unreality steeped in heavy atmosphere. Take for example the ship which you are now inhabiting. It is a gruesome merging of organics and metal that due to impressive visuals makes you truly question if advancing through the level is worth crawling through that sphincter in the wall. Or, I could point you to the inhuman results of the alien's experiments, prisoners who have been 'operated' on, for lack of a better term. These beings are used as a workforce in the alien ship and act much like the Borg race, out of the Star Trek universe. They don't immediately attack you, but once they sense a threat they can become dangerous. Then there are the alien weapons which you can find and eventually turn on your captors. These are akin to the ship in that they seem to be alive and very organic. Combine these with the space shifting portals and gravity switches with a general sense of sci-fi bizarro weirdness and you really begin to let yourself into your character's shoes and experience some of the emotions one might feel in this particular predicament.
As immersed as I was I do have to note a few minor details that to me have no place in games these days. There's a noticeable head bob which can be toggled off in the menus. While this is fine and I've always felt it helps you get inside your character better you may loose the illusion when you look down and notice you are a floating head with out a body. I hate it when games don't add legs. Also, in a few instances there are times when you can see yourself either in a reflective surface or at times through portals (looking at yourself through portals from weird angles is pretty trippy by the way) and you'll notice that the animation never changes whether your walking or running a la Halo:CE. That has always bugged me in games and I'm hoping will not be present in the final product. To me this game is all about immersion and anything that has potential to pull you out is a serious offense.
Immersive as the game may be, let's not forget the real meat and potatoes of any game worth it's salt. Gameplay. I found the shooting to be solid and after twiddling with a few options I found the controls to be fairly intuitive. The game gives you a couple of preset button layouts though I found the default controls to be more than adequate. Inverted aiming is standard at the start, but is easily switched to n00b controls from the menu. (Sorry guys, I played flight sims before shooters and that makes me hardcore). Aiming sensitivity felt right to me but can be modified. There is also an auto-aim feature for those of you out there who are intimidated by actually aiming, not that there's anything wrong with that . Movement might seem a bit sluggish to the Halo crowd but is paced well for the cramped interiors you find yourself in. The weapons felt pretty solid too and though you only get two guns to play around with in the demo, they both came with primary and secondary fire modes and were distinctly satisfying to use. My personal favorite was a sniper secondary mode on the first weapon you pick up which seems to be the standard weapon issued to most of the aliens you encounter in the demo. Not only does a creepy little eye come out of the weapon via a long tentacle to be used as the scope, but the resulting impact made on enemies was quite satisfying, often staggering them and in the case of the borg-like drones it would pop their little heads off .
The other compelling aspect of the gameplay aside from shooting at crap and makin' it go b00m! is the simply getting from point A to point B. There are subtle puzzles throughout the game that admittedly can be confusing at first. But, and that's a big but, once you become accustomed to what you are looking for and you figure out how to manipulate the environment you realize how these aren't your typical box shoving, lever pulling, key finding puzzles. When you begin walking on walls, and jumping through portals the game starts opening up to you. And then you learn to spirit walk. Enisi, as I said, acts as a mentor to young Tommy and soon teaches him how to leave his body in spirit form and use his spirit guide to get past obstacles. Tommy's spirit guide is in the form of a hawk that was once a childhood pet and often will perch in key spots to help you focus on what you need to do to get through an area. Also, in spirit form Tommy leaves his physical body and can pass through barriers, such as force fields, that his physical form is held back. In spirit form Tommy gains the use of his ancestral weapon, the bow, and can go unseen by most enemies. However, if his body is attacked while he is not occupying it, he is immediately transported back to defend himself. The game further employs this concept in the form of a shooting minigame whenever Tommy is killed. Life after death sees Tommy's spirit form shooting at the spirits of shamed warriors to refill his own physical energy. The catch is you only have a certain amount of time until you revive, but the more lost spirits you hit the more health you have when you do return to the land of the living. It's a neat concept that takes a lot of the sting out of dying. It keeps you competitive as you have the chance of reviving in the middle of a fight with very little health while it also keeps the flow of the game moving without the repetitious start, die, restart from save point, die restart from save point, die cycle that can be very frustrating in other games. Ever try Call of Duty 2 on Veteran? Yeah, then you know what I'm talking about.
Overall I think the demo is a sign of good things to come. I didn't get a chance to try out very much of the multiplayer, but in the one room I made it into the game seemed to be suffering some slowdown and 30 seconds later it closed. I can't really base any opinion on that so I'll leave that experience to the rest of you to decipher for yourselves. I'll be honest here, after seeing some screenshots and a few short videos of this game in action after E3, I originally wasn't all that impressed and figured I'd wait until I heard from some of my friends to decide whether or not I'd even play this game. But now, having experienced the demo, I'm downright excited ! All in all I found the thirtyish minute long demo to be quite fun and if the level design holds up we could be in for a heck of a ride when Prey ships later this month.
Guap
