Slashdot Mirror
Prey Review
- Title: Prey
- Publisher: 2K Games
- Developer: Human Head Studios
- System: PC (360)
Instead of the protagonist's racial background being a footnote, or something you only find in the manual, Human Head brings a version of Native American spirituality to the fore by tying it directly into gameplay elements. Tough-guy Tommy doesn't believe in 'that crap' when the game starts, but soon enough he's leaving his body to walk about as a being of pure spirit (which comes in mighty handy around auto-turrets). This 'out of body' experience means that, for all intents and purposes, Tommy can't die. When you do deplete your health bar, instead of reloading the game you're taken to a grim-looking plateau and given the chance to fight for your life. Your spirit-bow is quite adept at taking out the bad spirits surrounding the place, and every one you destroy returns a little health or spirit energy. After a set time span, you're sucked back down and out into the living world to face your foes again. It was great not having to worry about saving and reloading, but after the third or fourth time the simple shoot-the-spirits game got a little old. It would have been great if the spirit world had become a tougher place further into the game. And while the occasional chat with your dead grandfather was enjoyable from a plot perspective, the lack of gameyness to your trips into ancient New Mexico disappointed. The designers took us on an in-game spiritual journey, but there was very little to actually 'do' as that journey progressed.
While there are spirits in the game, most of the shiny comes from alien technology. Portals are a great tweak to time and space, and already look like they're going to be a permanent fixture in FPS gaming. Opponents and some simple switches can throw open oval passageways to 'someplace else'. Not just a loading gimmick or gag, the portals physically link areas that are otherwise inaccessible. Early in the game they do a bit of showing off by walking you past a glass box with a small rock in it. You're left wondering what exactly it is, as it has no obvious purpose. Just a few moments later, though, you're stepping through a portal onto a rocky spheroid inside a glassy enclosure. It's a cheap trick, but effective at getting across the technology's potential. The gravity flipping trick is a more straightforward puzzle element, requiring you to alternate the orientation of 'down' in order to gain access to various surfaces in a room. In most cases it's fairly simple to see what's going on, but there are several great Escher-esque moments that require you to exercise your three dimensional thinking skills. The 'undying protagonist', gravity-flipping, and already adopted-portals are all great gimmicks, and I find myself actually hoping that I'll be seeing copycat game mechanics in future FPS titles.
Unfortunately, the overall vision of the game falls somewhat short of the greatness it was striving for. The techno-organic (read: drawn on a trapper-keeper) motif that your surroundings and enemies display begins to look exactly like every other game made with the Doom 3 engine after you've killed your tenth identical bad guy. So far, every game we've seen made with this technology have been visually arresting, but more or less artistically bankrupt. Prey, at least, takes the gooey look to its fullest; many of your weapons are actually alive, and some were formerly pieces of enemies. As you're walking along, your weapon might hiss at you menacingly. This little touch is so clever and appreciated that it makes the boring sameness of the enemies and corridors that much more drab.
Even more frustrating is the ease with which most veteran FPS players will complete this title on 'Regular' mode. There's a solid fifteen hours or so of gameplay here, but for the first half of the game you're probably going to find yourself trying to remember what the spirit world looks like. The second half is more challenging, but only at a level the first half should have ramped up to. That said, I would far and away rather games be too easy than too hard; it's a lot of fun to finish a game and I think a lot of modern titles don't keep that in mind when gauging difficulty. The challenge level felt as though they were purposefully teaching you as you went; the integration of new elements into your knowledge of the game world was accomplished at a brisk but digestible pace. Just the same, once the game really got rocking I found myself hoping for more intelligent baddies to fight; not every bad guy can be from F.E.A.R., I guess.
Visually, Prey acquits itself well against its contemporaries. The Doom 3 engine is still a solid platform to wrap a game around, and the dark-n-moody atmosphere it fosters was fairly appropriate considering the setting. The 'generic alien squishiness' did get old after a while, though. Even more annoyingly, the alien designs felt uninspired on first brush and just kept hanging around throughout the game. There just aren't that many types of baddies to face in this title. While I'm not looking for a menagerie to start hunting me down, I would have liked a little more variety; the ground-level grunt was particularly boring. The spiritual children, at least, were interesting from a background standpoint. Encountered in a few choice areas, their creepy appearance and haunting laughter was one of the few genuine chill-inducing elements of the game. Aurally, there wasn't much beyond those laughing children to look forward to. Forgettable music and fairly standard moans and groans from your enemies dog your steps through the game. Weapons sounds were serviceable; while not anything amazing, they did lend a passable feeling of weight and power to your arsenal. My favorite audio element was actually the occasionally overheard snippets of radio broadcasts from Earth. Quiet moments could be spent preparing for your next run by listening to (real-life radio host) Art Bell receive calls from bewildered humans experiencing the alien invasion on the ground. The only real humour in the game, the vignettes were well written and produced, and well worth the time it took to listen.
Prey, with its retro-inspired corridor shooting and tired alien antagonists, could have fallen victim to retread gameplay and genre boredom. Instead, Human Head has managed to lift the simple shooter out of mundanity by give us some new things to see and do while we're mowing down generic baddies. A serviceable plot and a spiritual twist, on top of new-tech portals and gravity flipping, is just enough to make everything old seem somehow a little bit new. The 'classic' shooter is something I'm starting to get tired of, but with Prey at least one more title has made aiming and shooting fun enough to recommend. If you're a fan of the FPS genre, especially the early work of id software, you're going to have fun with the new toys given to us by Human Head Studios.
I personally prefer humorous violence. For example : WORMS!!!
I prey that there's a lot of funny Doom 3 cracks in this thread.
Amen.
But does it run linux?
Without a Linux port I will not be buying a copy.
What ever happened to Co-op mode? That available back in the days of Quake and DN3 and was hugely popular. It was fun battling the computer with a buddy. Then for some reason it just vanished from most titles. I say bring back co-op mode and breathe a little life back in this tired genre.
http://religiousfreaks.com/Compared to the pc version, the 360 version is a joke.
ATI really botched things up or Microsoft messed things up for ATI or whatever. Regardless, my mid-range pc makes the 360 look like a wimp.
It took at least a year for high end pcs to even touch the first Xbox.
From the summary: They are a combination table-top gaming and computer gaming studio, and their completion of Prey some nine years after it was first shown to the gaming press is nothing short of extraordinary.
SWG was developed in that time frame...granted, it sucked - but still, it was a persistent, complex MMORPG. It takes 9 years to develop a first person shooter? Really??
Prey is so bad it's good?
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Do you have spiritual powers that allow you to see in the dark. Or do we have to download a duct-tape mod?
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
I loved the "It's so dark, I feel like I'm doomed." :)
Much better than Doom 3, [...]
Off course. Carmacks' strength lies in designing game engines and renderers, not games. Most of ID's profits are made up of licencing engine technology to companies that know how to make games rather than the engines.
I played the freely available single-player demo; for the hour or so of gameplay it gave it was amazingly interesting. The portal technology (gimmick) really makes me want to play Valve's Portal to see what kind of player-made content (read: puzzles) we can get out of it. I agree 100% with everything said about this game in the review; the rock discussed was even in the demo. Go check it out.
Prey was fun to play. It would have been much much better if there was some variation. Those aliens visited various planets to harvest, but nothing of the alien planets were encountered in the games. It's was the same bio-tech space ship every level.
Another things that was to bad was the lack of the indian trials, it was about to become interested to perform those trials. But it never happened.
Being developed from one of the few game developers in the midwest and being from Madison, WI myself, I will be checking out this game just for the sheer purpose of helping out the locals. Though it does look actually look fun while trying a few new things for the tired genre.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
I kinda wish game reviewers would start including this information in the review. It sounds like a neat game, but I have one very simple requirement before I'll buy another PC game:
It must run without the CD in the drive.
I wish reviewers would include information on how the copy protection is on these games. If I had known that WarCraft III would find a way to kill my CD drivers, I'd never have bought it. (Seriously, I had to reinstall Windows to regain access to my CD drives.) I'm sick of putting up with video games that require the CD for no good reason, and am simply furious at the games that attempt to install driver-level code.
Can Slashdot reviews please start containing information on how the game handles copy protection? I'm willing to put up with registration keys and online activation. I'm not willing to put up with having to have the CD in the drive just to run the game.
Prey sounds like it's a game I might be interested in playing - assuming that the copy protection isn't too severe.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
The voice acting and characterization are really strong in this game, and these elements really help to bring credibility and immersiveness to the experience. In a genre of famously mute protagonists it's really nice to BE such an expressive guy for once.
Play the demo and you'll see what I mean. You'll agree with me 110% when you hear him say "Nasty!" near the beginning!
http://gamingexcellence.com/xbox360/games/400/revi ew.shtml
"That said, I would far and away rather games be too easy than too hard;"
Um where I'm from, the harder a game is the *better* it is. I read that line and the one about 15 hours of gameplay and thought, wow.. this is why i dont play offline games. I was going to download this game even, on account of the trailers, but now im not so sure. What kind of game reviewer thinks that a game being easy is a positive point? Easy to understand, easy to get the hang of sure, but easy puzzles? easy fighting? sounds lame to me. Easy is for n00bs.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
...ex-army guy from a Native American reservation. Snatched from a bar with your grandfather and girlfriend ...
Stereotype much?
I played Prey on my PC (P4 2.6 @ 2.8, a gig of ram, and a 6600 @ GT speeds). Very smooth at max details and 4xAS in 1024x. From a technical POV, everything's fine, except for savegames. Thankfully they let you save any time you want, but the files take up quite a bit of space (about 300 megs from autosaves only) so enable the NTFS compression if you need/want. The other problem occurred when I ran out of space and it crashed while writing a quicksave. I wasn't able to load it, of course, but after deleting it even the previous saves refused to work for some reason. Maybe it is/will be fixed in the latest patch. Anyway, I'm not gonna write a whole review now, but just go over a few key points.
Maybe calling it revolutionary is a little too much, so I won't, but the game featured a huge amount of refreshing ideas (portals, gravity tricks, immortality, and somewhat the weapons, and some minor stuff) but, as Zonk said, had its weaknesses in enemy variety and behavior. So, after finishing the game, I didn't immediately want to play again through the whole thing, but I did to take a few screenshots and found it hard to stop when I got to the place I wanted.
BTW, did anyone notice the aliens changing the jukebox to JP when you return to the bar? Now a less rhetorical question: under what conditions does the Blue öyster Cult appear on the jukebox? I didn't think it was special when I took the screenshot, but it wasn't there the second time I tried.
I just want to make sure Prey is NOT using StarForce. I absolutely refuse to buy or play any game that uses that malware. Can anyone confirm this? Thx.
That's at least how it's reported.
I rather enjoyed the multiplayer. It's rather fun to go into spirit mode and score some cheap shots against someone before they manage to knock you back into the real world... but you gotta hide your body, because it's easy for others to hear it when you're in spirit mode (I seemed to have a knack for finding my opponent trying to hide this way).
The sunbeam weapon (read: the weapon that sucks in those balls of the walls, with the "light" balls) is fun to wield, but also sucks to be killed with (it's equivalent to that gun in Half-Life 1 that uses the nuclear energy packs and goes WHIIIIIR... forgot what it's called :( oh well).
Portals are fun too, especially since you can wedge yourself BEHIND some (others can still figure out you're there because the portal is open) and fire through where the portal is with most weapons. Hehehe.
It's another wolf3d clone! Wow! Where's the entropia reviews? 15 hours is pretty short, and there's no mining, crafting, or pet raising...entropia's a first person shooter, it's got co-op (team hunts), pve, pvp, looting pvp, building, mining, cars, 3D graphics and environments, maps that take more than 15 hours to run across, hundreds of different guns, knives, mortars and other heavy weapons, and brawling weapons, clothing that appears on the player, made by other players, and much more. Why would a POS like this game 'prey' get a big slashdot coverage, when entropia never gets mentioned anywhere???
Prey is one of the better FPS games to come out recently. Unfortunately that's like saying someone is the best ukelele player in Fargo.
We've seen just about every possible variation there is to the FPS theme, and the portal bit helps make Prey different, but what we don't really have is a game that really draws people in. The original Half Life did that. HL2 also did well in that regard. The problem is with the real lack of innovation in the genre - at the core the difference between Prey and every other alien shoot-em-up is a few tweaks in gameplay mechanics.
The FPS genre is starting to get played out, and while Prey is a noble effort, it just isn't enough. The AI just isn't challenging enough, and the portals and other gameplay additions keep the game from being a failure, but they're not enough to make it memorable.
I wish I had some magic solution for what would renovate the FPS genre, but I really don't. Better AI would certainly help, and more interesting art direction would also differentiate games from each other (why does every game that uses the Doom 3 engine look the same?). FPS titles seem to be losing their "spark" and maybe some creative title will create a new wave of innovation in the genre, and while Prey makes an admirable attempt to bring some new life into the genre, what makes it innovative tends to get overwhelmed by what makes it look and play like every other title in the genre.
I was one of the first internet gamers, playing in the first Australian national competition contested by 12 teams, each game played 4-8 a side. I then went on to be a part of the first Australian quake team playing Japan.
Since then I have found very little in online gaming that could possibly compare with that experience. Since then clone after clone of the original quake game with no innovations other than a little tweak of the graphics here and there has been released. Team fortress was probably the first and last (very obvious) true innovation for this genre. Every title that has been released since then has really only done one thing and that is splinter the online gaming community into smaller and smaller inconsequential parties, the differences between each party only being measured by the bank accounts of the distributors of these overly rehashed games.
There has been far too much emphasis on single player gameplay, I find playing single player is a little like getting out the playboy magazines and locking yourself in your room in favour of meeting up with your girlfriend and then there's the same leap in excitement going from adhoc multiplayer games to organised team play (ie where each game you're representing a team with the same team mates).
Whats more exciting throwing a football about in the park with a random selection of friends ? Or playing in a team in a large competion ? Anyone who has done both will tell you the thrill of playing with serious intent in an organised competition is far more exciting.
Personally I really don't care about graphics or whether I'm a genetically modified army doink, or an indian. Once you're immersed in a real competition such subtlties are really of no consequence, it's a bit like the quality of the turf at a football field, it really doesn't impact on the intensity of the game play.
What it comes down to is basically people in the industry know there's no need to really create anything new, they can just schlopp up the same old swill into the trough year after year and people will keep buying it. It's a cheap and easy buck and a shore fire way to make money, but it totally lacks vision.
I bet galaxies away some mutant alien is crying because of all the stereotyping it's the target of
Countering my post about stereotyping real people in a generally negative (maybe being in a bar is not a negative stereotype for all, but obviously is so for NA's) by trying to relate it to a necessary survival function (eating) of some potentially made up beings. I'm glad to see that my tax dollars for education are not going to waste.
I really liked the demo: It gave me a very good impression of the game (both single player, as multiplayer), and immedeately bought the game.
The innovative gravity-shifting is great, and the other extra options make a great base for some fun mods/maps.
Also funny to note is that the main weapon in Valve's Portal, has been recreated in Prey; Still a few bugs, but the basic idea (shooting an entrance-portal, then shooting the exit-portal) seems to be working.
Also, last night I found out that Portal has been based on Narbacular Drop (afaik the Digipen students got either hired, or at least compensated for their initial idea), which you can download from here.
Ok, back on topic: I've bought Prey, and am very happy with it; This has partly to do that I create maps myself, and there are alot of options that these new gamemechanics bring.
The single player (think I am halfway through at the moment) is great, and gives me enough diversion to not bore me: The multiplayer is also quite good, definitely considering I never quite liked DM other than Quake 1; But the wall-walking definitely adds some groovy... sometimes nausiating... new gameplay.
Only lacking thing, as always with single player shooters, is the AI; Which isn't too complicated, and has some flaws where enemies don't quite react the right way, or are stuck in their loop of walking from one spot to the other.
Lemme post this AC, since it's off topic --and maybe I'm just ignorant.
i f
Can somebody tell us what the icon for FPS games is supposed to be?
http://images.slashdot.org/topics/topicgamesfps.g
Is it a gun? Is it some strange type of straight razor? Appliance from an infomercial?
There's gotta be a better icon for FPS.
Enough with the shameless self promoting link.
Please make this guy stop.
C'mon guys. He won't stop til you start modding him down for it.
15 hours of gameplay is assuming you play the game twice. This game is far too short and far too easy. Every review of 'Prey' reminds me of a small child being entertained by jingling keys. We understand portals are new and shiny but that isn't an excuse to give the game a passing grade.
ut2004's invasion mode was a really nice twist on coop mode. good for lan parties.
I believe this was the first game to come up with the concept of "portals" in FPS. It was originally a student's project.
o p.html
http://www.nuclearmonkeysoftware.com/narbaculardr
that game was boring !
I've been waiting for this game to come out ever since I read the first reviews of it three or four years ago and now that I got my hands on it I'm certainly not disappointed.
This game certainly turns the way you have to think during a FPS game on it's head. You'll hear the sound of an alien grunt shouting at you and start to get hit but to begin with you'll have trouble remembering to look right above you for the gunfire. When you do find them and blast them off the ceiling they drop down to the floor (or if you are on the ceiling they stay down there). It's very easy to get disoriented and not know which way was up. I've gotten to the point where I build up a mental map of areas as I play them but I lost my direction quite a few times when the floor suddenly becomes the ceiling.
The spiritual children referenced in the article are pretty freaky to being with as they make childish comments while constantly coming after you. Between the freaky children, the mind-warping gravity effects and the very crazy violent ways the aliens act towards the humans I actually had to take a break and left my save game named "I can't take this anymore" which is quite an accomplishment. Unfortunately, after I took my first break I never found myself getting that off-balance again, even if my mouth was hanging open time and time again.
The spirit mode was interesting and was used very well in a couple of puzzles but most of the time what you needed was right next to where you would use it. I also found that you could use the spirit mode to explore areas and fight the enemies and most enemies wouldn't see you until you attacked them. However, this made the easy enemies even easier so it was a catch-22. I was glad to see that the transition from regular to spirit mode was instantaneous.
The weapons in the game were very different from each other and quite well designed but even so you'll likely end up using your first gun throughout most of the game anyways until you start to pick up which weapons work best on which guys. My favorite weapon was the Leech gun that you had to recharge by drawing power out of terminals on your way through the game.
The place that sorely disappointed me was the AI as the last FPS game I had purchased was F.E.A.R. and these enemies mostly just stand and shoot at you. There are a few that do things a little differently such as ducking into outlets on the wall to pop out elsewhere. I read that the AI does get better during the harder difficulty but I haven't decided to replay yet. However, that brings me to the next problem I had.
When you die in the game you can see your body fall as your spirit steps outside and you end up in another world. Your body starts up way high in the sky and slowly works it's way back down through a hole in the center back to your body. It's a nice touch that if you look down the hole you'll see the exact place your body fell in the real world. You do play this little minigame where you fight spirits to regain spiritual energy and health. While it is a nice break from having to constantly save in the crazier areas it leaves you with very little reason to play well. The game designers do use this well in that you end up fighting larger and crazier battles than you would in a game where death means reloading a game, but it also means your main motivation for not dying is because you don't want to play the minigame again. Then again, when was the last time you played an FPS where you can have full ammo on all weapons yet still run out during a big battle? If you were feeling really crazy you could run through the game and use only the melee weapon for most of the game.
The portals are nice and can end up with strange effects (such as croutching to enter a box only to see you crouching to enter a box) but they end up mainly being a doorway you can't pass back through. Most of the time it's pretty obvious where you need to go at each area as you just keep going through portals. I think they could have come up w
I've been enjoying oblivion so much I hadn't noticed anything good was out. A friend had even mentioned it to me. Though, I thought he was joking. I went to the web site and dl'd the demo. Very nice graphics, mind blowing portal+gravity physics, easy to deal with weapons, and a good taste of the story pushed me out to get it. Oblivion can wait a week, and maybe a couple of LAN parties.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
IMHO the FPS genre hasn't come far since Half-Live in other areas than graphics. After seeing the first sign of intelligence in my opponents with that title I was hoping to see more title with something else but the standard event driven, scripted stories. But nothing has happened! I want to see clever aliens and monsters - cooperating, sneaking up on you, chasing you, responding to your actions. These games just get repetetive too fast nowadays.
In the area, the protagonist makes the comment "Wow, it's really dark. I guess I'm doomed."
Good to see the Duke Nukem humor is still alive in FPSes :)
http://www.3drealms.com/history2.html
:(
Yes, Prey was due out in 1998. This is 3d realms, and they finally released Prey, now imagine if Duke Nukem comes out this year. They'll have nothing to work on
The funniest thing is that they tout portal technology. Portal is due out with Episode 2 of HL2, producing a more interesting a better version of dynamic portals made by the player.
Feel free to laugh at meantions of DNF also on that history page.
> "Wow, it's really dark. I guess I'm doomed."
Well, of course he is! That's where all the grues hang out.
Prey makes basic deathmatch fun again (at least for a few weeks, I guess). I love standing on the ceiling and having to deal with several different gravity fields when I'm aiming grenades. The spirit walking adds classic risk/reward stuff - shall I abandon my body to go through the forcefield and get ammo? It's also a great way to deal with standoffs or being chased. The combination of portals and variable gravity really helps dispell the linearity common in level design - did he go left or right? becomes left-right-up-down-behindtheportal-throughtheporta l.
We finally have a deathmatch game MC Escher would be proud of.
Uhm, that's pretty much all Carmack does. He hands over a new or revamped engine to the team and they do the rest, from design to implementation. I'm sure he has plenty of input into the process, but if you'll check .plan archives, interviews and the like you'll see that he's well into researching and implementing new engines and techniques before whatever id's current game is complete, or he's off in the desert trying to launch someone into space.
-= I can't think of anything witty, creative, or insightful for my sig, so deal with this. =-
Prey is a great game. It finally gave me a way of categorising games that're just like Half-Life:
First Person Spanner .
Do you see what I did there?
I just finished playing the demo, and I can honestly say that I feel ill. All the portals and gravity-craziness made me carsick.
Awesome!
From where I'm fun, "hard" is realitive and not an indicator of quality play. For the legions who play The Sims, hard isn't even in the equation and yet a fun game. Reguardless, the key for games is to present a challenge a player can readily feel is difficult and yet conquerable. Game designers actually want players to feel good that they accomplished something, not punish by throwing them at a brick wall to slam against for hours on end. You can make a challenging and fun game that is 5-10 hours long. I'm pretty sure it doesn't look like Prey though.
My feeling is that Prey isn't that it is too short but it doesn't have enough challenges. It feels (and smells) like they held back for the expansion especially given the ending. Just pumping up the number of monsters or lengthing the game isn't going to help fix it. I'm just not satified with the game because it felt I didn't accomplish enough.
ps. Anyone else wondering what is up with the spiking machine? Hello completely unnecessary deaths. Why not just kill the grandfather right away instead of watching him being impaled?
"I liked this game better when it was called Turok 2."
I've been saying it for years: id is not a video game company, it's a video game engine company. That's what they really produce and make money from. The actual games they produce are usually not very good as games, but they're excellent tech demos for really good engines.
http://www.gametrailers.com/gamepage.php?id=13
The trailer shows the use of a portal gun that seems to be an evolution on Valve's Gravity Gun from HL2, so you can pick up objects and such while traveling through portals. Watching the trailer made me really want to play with that technology, and after reading the review, I might have to try Prey when it's a little cheap.
Does Prey have multiplayer? I'm thinking that almost any of the multiplayer games based on Steam would be insane with the portal gun thrown in.
--Excyl
Being based on the OpenGL Doom3 engine, has anyone tried the demo with Wine or Cedega?
How does it run?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I seem to remember some of the same comments being made about Serious Sam, that it was a lot of mindless blasting fun and not some overly complex find-the-switch-and-kill fest.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
I recommend Lego Star Wars (EP 1-3 with EP4 bonus level), a hack'n'slash with some puzzles. LSW 2 upcoming (EP4-6). Has a really nice 2 player co-op.
Also quite nice is X-Men Legends (1+2), a WoW/Diablo-style RPG. Nice in 4 Player co-op. Although you could argue that co-op in a RPG is pretty standard, looking at the MMORPGs.
"We've seen just about every possible variation there is to the FPS theme..."
Well let's see. Tron 2.0 is a FPS with some RTS, and puzzle elements. Max Payne was a FPS with a nice back-story, and some stealth elements. F.E.A.R was a FPS with some mind-games, and stealth elements. Painkiller was just plain FPS. Farcry was a FPS with lots of stealth.
Read the review, decided to go buy it. Came back, installed it, and it crashes. Doesn't load up or anything. Just changes the screen resolution and then dies. How did this get to be a retail release version?
This game was in development back in the late 90s..... under Epic I believe.
You've pegged Carmack but Prey (at least the demo) has the same id/Carmack failings. Giger love ought to be banned as an influence. How much more interesting would the game have been using even the equally touchstones as Escher or Bosch to inspire the level and art design? Did we really need _more_ Quake demons + Alien?
An aside: don't brag about how much fake money you made using the bar slot machine. You've done the same thing your grandma does on games.com except you don't have points toward a discounted subscription to Scrapbooking Monthly.
Feeling so good natured I could drool
I disagree with some elements of the review - I thought the music was well composed, and suited the mood of the game perfectly. I found the character I was playing to be a likeable guy, with some funny comments to make as he makes his way around. Picking up the leech weapon early on in the game makes him comment, "This should rock some shit!"
I found spirit mode to be a very interesting addition to the game play and strategy. Sometimes the gravity stuff seemed gratuitiously used - used for the sake of doing it - but in other places in the game it was downright brilliant, as were some of the portal based puzzles.
Not one of the weapons is a "classic" FPS retread - no pistol, no shotgun, no chainsaw, no "nail gun". There's a rocket launcher of sorts, but interestingly it's only usable on a handful of enemies.
I did find the game to be a tad on the brief side - it definitely left me wanting more. I replayed the game immediately in "Cherokee" mode. The primary difference between "Regular" mode and "Cherokee" mode is there are no health packs or health rechargers - anywhere. This difference forced me to play far more aggressively.
Something else not mentioned in the review is that the game has a dynamic difficulty level - how well you play, and what weapons you favor has an effect on what enemies show up, how many show up, and what kind of ammo you are going to find in the ammo closets and lying around. If you think you are a tough guy, play like it, and the game will ramp up the difficulty for you. Something else that's off in the review is that the spirit world - where you fight for physical and spiritual strength when you die - does change in difficulty throughout the game, with more obstacles blocking your shots, and a tendency to not give you enough of the "kind" of spirits you need. The spirits will also attack you more frequently and rob you of strength.
I never once got lost in the game - its very linear, which is odd given is decidedly non-linear architecture and level design. You will never have to guess where to go, or what to do. Some people might not like this, and enjoy a real brain buster. This game isn't for that. I solve quite enough puzzles at work thank you - I play games to have fun. This game is fun from start to finish, and I really recommend it to people who also look for fun from their games.
[*spoiler warning*]
Maybe I am a softy, but I really felt terrible having to kill off the one person I had been fighting to protect for the first half of the game. There was an emotional intensity both to the character's devotion, and his reaction to that event that made playing the second half of the game even more fun - I was on a trail of vengeance, leaving a wake of death behind me. Having the character yelling at the aliens as he slaughters them was a great addition. Kudos to the designers for making me give a crap about what was going on in the game.
planet texture maps and more
Not to wtfpwnz0r people online after turning playing into this mechanical process you constantly tweak to win.
Although the game worked fine the first time I launched it, it later refused to start after a crash. Deleting the config files (in the game folder, IIRC) helped, since the problem was somewhere with the hardware settings.
"What it comes down to is basically people in the industry know there's no need to really create anything new, they can just schlopp up the same old swill into the trough year after year and people will keep buying it. It's a cheap and easy buck and a shore fire way to make money, but it totally lacks vision."
*looks around*
Nope. Looks like Mikedownunder doesn't appear to be part of the game industry (certainly not a consumer, you "non-swill" looker you). Just another slashdotter commenting on the state of the restaurant industry with his face pressed against the glass, looking in. We'd all be more impressed if you had produced the best "swill" that no one bought.
On the one hand, I agree he is spamming his link when he could just put it in his sig.
:)
On the other... I REALLY hate religious people.
So, I'm going to let it slide
Turok, with Portals.
Ok the Asteroids are kick-ass too.
A lot of laptops allow you to insert a second battery into the slot normally occupied by the CD/DVD drive. You take out the drive, and put the battery in its place. This gives you a lot more battery time. It's especially useful for making games like Prey run for longer than an hour and a half. Of course, if you have to have the CD in for the game to work, you need to have a CD drive, so you can't use the extra battery.
I just would like to see some discussion about new ideas for FPS Genres. We all have realized that there really hasn't been much new stuff to the genre since, maybe half-life... And if you want to be real hard on the industry, maybe even Duke Nukem 3D.
That isn't to say that they are no fun anymore, it just means that maybe we could use some fresh new ideas. But what are they?
I have a couple.
1. Give the character your playing a little bit of realistic physics - Have you noticed that when a rocket hits 3 feet to your left, you have a certain percentage of damage done to you, based on the damage it does at ground zero? How about it also knocks you off your feet and slams you into the wall, or whatever is in your way. You would need to balance the game a bit so you are not hit so frequently with projectiles, or you would never recover, but having getting hit by some kind of powerful enemy fire knocking you around the level a bit might add a little bit of realism and fun to the game. You will feel like you are actually in the battle taking the damage yourself!
2. Unique monsters shouldn't be just for bosses anymore - Too many FPS have the same fricken monsters. How many bi-pedal monsters carrying a shotgun do I have to fight in my life. There is nothing that says that all monsters need to be pretty much like humans that fight using human tactics with uglier faces. I want monsters that effortlessly jump from the floor to the wall, they get in close and explode. Big monsters, this doesn't mean big as in tall human like monsters, but inovative designs that take up a lot of space. How about when a monster has a gun grafted to it's arm, you can blow that part off, but it will still keep coming.
Other Ideas? Hate mine?
You take it, I don't want it...
The actual games they produce are usually not very good as games
I'd never heard this until Doom 3, which is a very good game, just a slight disappointment. I remember reading the PCG review, and most others, they pretty much raved about it. Then Half Life 2 became the darling of the media. Half Life 2 is undeniably a great game, but saying that ID does not produce quality games is wholly inaccurate.
Quake, Quake II, Quake III (which is a masterpiece of simple, chaotic gameplay) were all critically acclaimed, smash hits. Return to Castle Wolfenstein (the Q3 engine version, to say nothing of the original) was quite good. As were Doom (obviously) and most every other game they produced. Even Hexen II was good. It seems gamers have a short memory and are quite subseptable to that heard mentality. Perhaps Doom 3 was a disappointment because people's expectations were sky high.
Now Quake 4 is mostly rubbish. It's OK, but not really good. But Quake 4 was developed with the Doom 3 engine by Raven Software.
What about the music from KMFDM? They made some music that was licensed exclusively for Prey, and thus they haven't been permitted to release it to the world.
I'm not a KMFDM fan (anymore), but I was always curious to hear what they made for an FPS...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
I found these on an old Duke Nukem CDROM I had bought.
http://xieke.com/prey.php
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
Prey, at least, takes the gooey look to its fullest; many of your weapons are actually alive, and some were formerly pieces of enemies. As you're walking along, your weapon might hiss at you menacingly. This little touch is so clever and appreciated that it makes the boring sameness of the enemies and corridors that much more drab.
Ah, so like Half Life and Opposing Force then? Nice to see cutting edge ideas.
meh
I would much rather software TRUSTED ME.
I liked those little lightbulbflowers in HL endgame, Zen. They were just pretty decorative addition but it still was touching to see them react when player came close, not by attacking in blind berserk mode like all the other monsters, but by hiding.
Dumb FPS = you can see your weapon at all times, it is pointed forward at all times, magical levitating crosshair in the middle of FOV, you can't see your legs when looking down, all enemies attack, no wall breaks unless scripted, you can't steal enemies' equipment; they only "drop" something random, but there's lots of equipment in crates and barrels which you can only open by... that's right, by SHOOTING them. Dumb FPS means also that: violence is good, sex is bad.
(could we please start killing already those pro-violence, anti-sex people? I mean if they think it's good maybe they won't object to being killed.)
Though they may be old, mods for Half-Life like Sven Co-op (obvious from the title) and Brainbread are still fun. They look like crap compared to anything on the Doom 3 or HL2 engine, but if it's gameplay you want, this is a great way to go. By now half life is CHEAP and can run on nearly any computer still operating - I used to play it on my Pentium 120 that had no 3D card (1MB 2D Video, winner).
:D Repetetive? Yes...but if you play any game enough it'll get repetetive.
Brainbread also lets you become a zombie if you get infected, and you have to kill your buddies or the computer allies (Marines) to earn enough points to play as a gunner again. It's fun to throw a wrench in your buddies' gears
Dark Alliance 1 and 2 are decent console co-ops, though they're not FPS. They're fun if you just like to hack and slash with a buddy and have ample time to burn up.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
Personally, I found Quake 4 to be better than Doom 3 in most parts. Especially since it didn't have nearly as many monster closets. Also, I found the enemy design in D3 to be a bit bland, although it got somewhat better in the expansion (the Brawler is a wonderfully crazy creation). I really like the design of the Stream Protector (robot spider thing) and the Gladiator (dude with shield and railgun) in Q4.
Both games did really good with flashing images quickly on ingame monitors, for instance with the giant tower guard in Q4 when you enter the hangar control room.
Eat the rich.
Sure, not everyone is playing the same game anymore, but the market is much bigger as well. The important thing is the community, and if you have 3 friends willing to play with you, that may be all the community you need.
Has any one played this before? it is a Mod for Quake 3 built on the quake 3 engine they have made a very very nice Dragon Ball Z type of fighting game. Although they had to drop all DBZ refferaces the feel is still there. the team capture the dragon ball (flag) is great. the level desgines are up to par with other mods on Quake. plus you can use any quake toon mod to make your player look different. Or you can revert back to Quake and have a Goku toon to play with and in stead of holding a gun the builts or what not comes out of the palm of your hand. pretty sweet.
I actually thought Doom3 was fairly solid, but again, didn't really break any new ground or do anything very interesting. It took the classic FPS rehash formula and added in some of the old Half Life innovations, which have pretty much become part of the standard FPS rehash anyway.
Now, I understand some people around here are really about the multiplayer, in which case it's mostly about the engine and weapon balance. On that score, id may be a fine company. But even in multiplayer, I haven't thought id was exceptional in any way, and definitely lacked in level design.
Hehe, nah, they're all too busy with clubs. These kids NEVER go home; they're even at school for summer break. It's kinda scary, actually.