Prey Review

Built with the Doom 3 engine and touting numerous innovations on the First Person Shooter genre, Prey is a study in contradictions. While it delivers on many interesting twists and environmental elements, the low difficulty and hackneyed character design drains some of the novelty from the experience. Despite frustratingly similar corridors and brain-dead enemies, the quality of the innovation somehow combines with the touchstones of retro-gaming to create that ephemeral quality: fun. Much better than Doom 3, and with the new-car smell that Quake 4 was lacking, Prey is a fully functional refit of the corridor-shooter genre. Read on for my impressions of Human Head's latest.

• Title: Prey
• Publisher: 2K Games
• Developer: Human Head Studios
• System: PC (360)

A reader of 2003's Masters of Doom would already know that id software was based, briefly, out of Madison, Wisconsin. The inclement weather sent Carmack and co. packing for balmier climes, but there are still fingerprints on the city from that brief period. Raven Software is probably the best-known developer in town, with hits like Jedi Knight II to their name. Human Head is a smaller developer, but no less talented. 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. While staying true to the thin gameplay elements shown those many years ago, Prey carries an obvious vision from its new handlers.

Prey promises a lot in the way of unique experiences and subtle tweaks on classic genre tropes. It's a shooter where you kill aliens - but instead of a tough-as-nails marine you're a young ex-army guy from a Native American reservation. Snatched from a bar with your grandfather and girlfriend, you don't care about saving the world; you just want to free her and go home. You haven't undergone genetic engineering or cybernetic enhancement to gain your special powers: you tap into the spiritual reservoir your grandfather reveals to you. 'Portal' technology moves you seamlessly from place to place, and the laws of gravity are subject to negotiation.

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.

Comments

Too Much Serious Violence

[neonprimetime]

I personally prefer humorous violence. For example : WORMS!!!

Re:Too Much Serious Violence

[kfg]

This game is rated E, because I'm not shooting people, I'm weeding my lawn.

Violence is in The Eye of the Beholder.

KFG

Re:Too Much Serious Violence

[Tackhead]

> I personally prefer humorous violence. For example : WORMS!!!

All violence is funny. You can't spell slaughter without laughter!

All new 3D Shooters are missing one thing...

[gasmonso]

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/

Re:All new 3D Shooters are missing one thing...

[Retron]

What ever happened to Co-op mode?

Scripting killed it. Back in the day when the most dynamic thing happening was a door opening somewhere or a block falling down to reveal a passage, having multiple players crawling around blasting things was easy enough to support.

That said, even in the Doom days there were plenty of levels that would break if one player did something when the others were in the wrong area, such as sealing off the starting area so that when you died you faced a brick wall rather than empty corridors.

As things became ever more complicated it seemed to become harder and harder for the developers to ensure that there were no catch-22 type setups and after Hexen II and (IIRC) Quake II it pretty much seemed to vanish from games, Serious Sam excepted.

Re:All new 3D Shooters are missing one thing...

[VendingMenace]

Man, it seems like there should be a fairly easy fix for that. Every time you respawn, you respawn next to your team-mate (pretty standard) and the game should have a mechanic where you can press a key and warp to the position of your team-mate at any time. It seems like this would be decently easy to introduce -- especially in a sci-fi universe -- without losing much credibility.

Re:All new 3D Shooters are missing one thing...

[Trurl's Machine]

While co-op mode in corridor shooters is indeed dead as 8-track tape, the co-op multiplayer is now getting some kind of return to fashion in family oriented games. "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" and "Narnia" are good examples of games with EXCELLENT co-op multiplayer (it's developed to a level in which single player can be annoying in some levels - you can just see that they were designed with two or more human players in mind).

I feel you pain because I was always a co-op multiplayer fan. We just feel the squeeze of the invisible hand of the market on our cojones (to quote Stephenson's "Confusion"). The market has decided that "Quake 3"-like multiplayer games are what the public wants, so there's no more common exploration of dark corridors.

Re:All new 3D Shooters are missing one thing...

[hudsonhawk]

Perfect Dark Zero offers an excellent online coop mode. It's probably the most innovative part of the game, but didn't get a lot of fanfare.

In a lot of ways it's much better than the flawed single-player mode.

Re:All new 3D Shooters are missing one thing...

[StarvingSE]

Or even easier, make it an actual challenge and once a team mate dies, they are gone until the next stage. That would make it all the more important for the players to work as a team instead of running for powerups all the time.

If unlimited respawns were introduced, the game would be way to easy.

Re:All new 3D Shooters are missing one thing...

[patmfitz]

Scripting killed it.

Halo has a great co-op mode. When you get to a "scripted" point it just warps the other player up to you. Also, if one player dies he will respawn only if the second player is not in combat. This leads to a certain amount of cheese, because in a rough part of the game you can send one player out to thin out the enemy ranks, keeping the second player in a safe spot. Then when the first player dies, he respawns back by the second player. Lather, rinse, repeat until you make it through. For casual gamers this is a great feature!

Re:All new 3D Shooters are missing one thing...

[vux984]

Then when the first player dies, he respawns back by the second player. Lather, rinse, repeat until you make it through. For casual gamers this is a great feature!

A "great feature" like that would only be appreciated by idiotic players not casual players.

I don't know what kind of player you are, but suggesting that -any- sort of player would consider a game that encourages them to perform tedious borderline exploit tactics to beat the game a "great feature" isn't thinking straight.

A "great feature" for casual players is multiple difficulty levels so they can play the game at a challenge level that matches their skill. A "great feature" for casual players is the ability to pause and save anywhere so they can leave and go do something else without losing their progress.

Its true that games that allow unlimited saves anywhere DO allow players to respawn crawl through levels, but players rarely ENJOY playing like that, and I can't think of a single person I've ever met who, when they felt "compelled" to respawn crawl, thought it was a "great feature". Every single one of them thought it was a STUPID and UN-FUN way to play the game, and the only reason they did it was that restarting the level over from the beginning over and over and over was deemed even STUPIDER and more UN-FUN.

A game that allows save-anywhere should be designed to discourage the "respawn crawl" playstyle. Seriously, what sort of idiot would WANT to play games like that?

One way of discouraging it is to limit saves per level per session so that you can save if you need to go, but can't save after every room unless you want to quit and re-open the game every couple deaths. Another way is to put a time limit between saves... you can save anytime, anywhere, but once you've saved, you can't save again until either 10 minutes have passed or you cross an auto-save checkpoint. Yet another way is to allow the player to change the difficulty between deaths -- if he's 10 hours into a 15 hour game on "Hard", and he was doing fine, but as he got deeper the game got harder to the point that he's now dying every other room - give him the option to drop the difficulty a notch.

Adding this choice gives the player a more attractive option than the three he's currently faced with: a) restarting the game at a lower difficulty which would be exceedingly boring - to play through the 10 hours you already beat on an -easier- setting (yawn), or b) continue forward banging your head on the wall because you can make virtually no progress at all and you have to keep playing the same part of the same level over and over and over again (double yawn), or using respawn-crawl to inch through, which is both boring AND lame.

Timetable

[IflyRC]

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??

Re:Timetable

[AKAImBatman]

It takes 9 years to develop a first person shooter? Really??

No, not really. Prey was (wisely) shelved after the developers couldn't work the kinks out of the Portal Engine. The concept was revived years later, but running on a commecial engine (Doom 3) rather than on the original Portal Engine. What's amazing is that:

1. The game came out at all. (This just doesn't happen in this genre; DNF not withstanding.)

2. They managed to maintain a lot of the portal effects without using a Portal Engine.

Re:Timetable

[Ant P.]

They do use a portal engine. Pretty much everything since Quake 1 uses portal rendering, even some Doom sourceports have it now. This is just the first time drawing it "wrong" has been made part of the gameplay.

Re:Timetable

[AKAImBatman]

They do use a portal engine. Pretty much everything since Quake 1 uses portal rendering, even some Doom sourceports have it now.

Portal effects and Portal Engine are not the same concept. Portal Effects are merely the ability to render through a warp in space. (e.g. Create a jumpgate that shows through to the other side.) A Portal Engine, on the other hand, is built with Portal Space (4 walls and two ceilings, even if there's no physical object at that location) at its core. Portal Engines allow for things like modifiable/destructable terrain and zero-cost for invisible polygons.

Everything from Quake to Doom 3, however, is still based on the concept of pre-generating level information inside a BSP tree. If you try to modify or destroy the terrain in real-time, you run the risk of rendering objects incorrectly. Worst case, you could slow the engine to a crawl.

There's a good article on building a Portal Engine here. I think you'll find that it's stupidly easy to grasp once you understand the basics, but very difficult to build a complex engine on top of.

The Most Important Question

[Cornflake917]

Do you have spiritual powers that allow you to see in the dark. Or do we have to download a duct-tape mod?

*spoiler comment from the game*

[ShadowsHawk]

I loved the "It's so dark, I feel like I'm doomed." :)

Doom III Engine Doom II the Game

[Enselic]

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.

Lack fo variation

[El_Muerte_TDS]

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.

What's the copy protection like?

[_xeno_]

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.

Re:What's the copy protection like?

[Rellik66]

You can take solace in the fact that 3DR will remove the CD protection in a future patch. No word when the plan on doing that though.

or you could download Prey via Triton, and have no need for a CD whatsoever

Excellent voice acting and characters

[spyrochaete]

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!

Re:Does it run linux?

[Total_Wimp]

Does it run Linux?

Yes, yes, the game has a full version of Linux in a virtual machine and on that version they've taken the liberty of preinstalling Tux Racer. You'll have just scads of fun as you pause the game to play TR whenever you want. But why stop there? You can pause the game and balance your checkbook on Linux, use OO.o to write a letter, or even develope your own high-end video game with all the included development tools.

Yes, it runs Linux, and after installing the 8th DVD you too can enjoy this beautiful operating system and just ignore this game as long as you'd like.

TW

Better review...

[murphball]

http://gamingexcellence.com/xbox360/games/400/revi ew.shtml

too hard is bad?

[crabpeople]

"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.

Re:too hard is bad?

[ShadowsHawk]

The reason a game like this appeals to some people is that they don't have to sink 100+ hours into it. Not all of us have unlimited time to fine tune our 'skills'.

Re:too hard is bad?

[gknoy]

Agreed. I'd mod you up, but I want to reply with an example.

Halo for PC. I played it through on normal (or was it easy?) difficulty. Awesome game, excellent story. As I played, I got better, and decided to play it again on Legendary.

Wow. Big difference; lots and LOTS of reloads. It became more a game of "survive this checkpoint and reload till you get the next". I eventually got to the point where it was TOO HARD. I could NOT beat the initial fight on the Truth and Reconciliation ship (after taking the elevator up from the landing zone).

I lost count of the reloads. A large portion was luck (which doors were opened first? could I get an initial sticky grenade on the first guy? Were my teammates a bunch of retards?), but the fact is, I was unable to progress past that point in the game at that level of difficulty. In this case, harder was not completely "better". If that had been the only difficulty level, that would have been poor game design.

I don't mind 30 hours of game play. I do object when 5-10 hours are spent on the same checkpoint with no progress. (I might have reattempted it, but after patching the game, my savegames got toasted and I did not feel like slogging through that level again. *shrugs*.

Had I co-op mode available, this might have been more do-able. As is ... screw it. I have better ways to waste my time.

Re:too hard is bad?

[ChaosDiscord]

Um where I'm from, the harder a game is the *better* it is.

I trust you're a big fan of NetHack, because by that standard it is possibly the perfect game. *

Harder is not in and of itself better. As Zonk notes it's not that easy is better than hard, it's that too easy is better than too hard. "Too hard" means "I have no hope of finishing it," or maybe "I've got better things to do than replaying the same 5 minutes of game for the next month until I'm good enough to move on." That's not fun, it's just frustrating. At least with the too easy option I can see the story play out and look at the pretty graphics if I'm into it. Depending on the game, I may be able to add my own limitations that make the game harder ("No grabbing health packs," "Only use the pistol," "No building tanks.") If the game is too hard, I'm just done.

Of course, ideally the game is Just Right, hard enough that I feel challenged, but easy enough that I beat it before I get pissed off and give up. Of course how difficut that is varies from person to person, making it a tough balancing act.

(* NetHack is a brilliant game, but is because of the depth of gameplay, not because it's so brutal that it's self selected to a very small community.)

Re:Dear Lord,

[stupidfoo]

There is one or two Doom 3 jokes in the game. You enter a dark hallway and your character says "It's so dark in here... I'm doomed!"

One of my favorite parts of this game is towards the end when your character actually gets pissed off and he starts yelling "Die you mother f@cker!" and other expletives as you're killing aliens.

My impressions

[mobby_6kl]

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.

Does it use STARFORCE? I'm not buying/playing it.

[SpecialAgentXXX]

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.

SecuROM v7

[emarkp]

That's at least how it's reported.

Re:Does it run linux?

[pshuke]

>> But does it run linux?

No. It seems that many believed/hoped it would, since it uses the doom3 engine. However, apparently ``There just really isn't any big demand for it" - see this post in this thread.
There isn't supposed to be a mac port either, so save your time if you're not a windows/xbox user.

Re:This game has nothing for it..

[The MAZZTer]

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.

Just A Variation On A Theme

[WombatControl]

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.

Re:Just A Variation On A Theme

[Astin]

The argument could be made that every book or movie that comes out is just a variation on a theme. Heck, they have names for these themes - action, mystery, thriller, horror, romance, pr0n....

FPS was revolutionary when it first came out (Wolfenstein 3D, Ken's Labrynth, etc.), and it's definitely mature now. What it takes to make it engrossing is a strong sense of what's being aimed for. Half Life had a strong story (heck, you don't play for the first 2 or 3 levels, you just walk through the events), Serious Sam is an unapologetic shoot-em-up. Doom 3 was pretty much "look at our new engine!", so it got great reviews on its look, but poor ones on gameplay (outside of the tension).

Half Life does SO well because it combines the "Wow!" factor of engine upgrades with an engrossing plot. But a plot isn't necessary for fun, as long as you're honest about what it is. It's the halfway efforts that fall flat. All the new tricks in the world can only attract people, they won't stick around if they don't enjoy it.

Where are the innovations ?

[MickDownUnder]

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.

Re:Where are the innovations ?

[badmammajamma]

Sure, being in an international competition is exciting but it really has nothing whatsoever to do with the game itself. It has to do with the high and the pressure of a competition of that nature. None of this has anything to do with the innovation level of FPSs. Halo is a huge innovative leap from quake. There's simply no conparison between the two. Halo is brilliant. I loved every minute of it whether I played single or multiplayer and I've played every FPS game worth mentioning since Wolfenstein.

You need to learn to separate the *feeling* of the good ol' days when you were doing international competitions and now (which is probably jack shit). Seriously, you need deep psycological counceling if you really think there's been no innovation in the FPS genre.

Re:Where are the innovations ?

[SorryTomato]

Anyone who has done both will tell you the thrill of playing with serious intent in an organised competition is far more exciting.

From your post it comes across that what you enjoy is not the game (football or a computer one) but the competition. While that is as valid a way of enjoying oneself as any; it is not necessarily one that all people will enjoy. A large number of people enjoy games only in a non competitive settings.

***SPOILER ALERT***

[wolfemi1]

Actually, the game is pretty much light enough to see everything, except for one area.

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 :)

Fun little history 1998 Prey.

[kinglink]

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.

Re:Don't Bother With The 360 Version

[Total_Wimp]

Compared to the pc version, the 360 version is a joke.

I was actually quite interested in how this game compares to games available on the 360 and games that will be available for the PS3. Without regard to whether the port is any good, the grapics on the PC version look great compared to screen shots I've seen of other games on next gen consoles. Being a long time PC gamer, I remember when the PS2 came out how jealous I was of how good it looked. But comparing these screen shots to shots I've seen of 360 games, it doesn't look like the 360 has much of an edge, if any.

Slashdotters have been happy to point out that for the cost of a PS3 you can get an Xbox 360 and a Wii. Consider for a moment that everyone who has a console will also have a PC. Looking on the Dell site right quick I was able to outfit an XPS 400 with a 2.8Ghz Pentium D, 1GB RAM and an nVidia 7300LE video card for $720 (Free shipping). The lowest end entry level PC on the site, the Dimension B110 goes for $299. That means that the cost of a reasonable, mainstream gaming PC, more than capable of running this game, is cheaper than the cost of either the Xbox 360 or the PS3, plus a cheapy PC (360@$400 plus PC@$299 equals $799. PS3 is $200 more). The Wii is the exception, but it's particular market and gimick make it an apples to oranges comparison.

Without going into whether the types of games you'll find on a console are better, are you getting better equipment out of them? Are you getting better looking games? Is this the generation of consoles that the PC ends up winning? I don't know, but it looks to me like the PC is both a more powerful gaming machine and a better value.

TW

Re:Doom III Engine Doom II the Game

[apathyruiner]

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.

Re:No Linux port

[l_bratch]

It is worth noting that this game runs fantastically in Wine, I do so myself.

I Liked It

[Silvrmane]

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.