RSS
July 14, 2006 | 3:07 AM PST
While the movie industry racks up millions over the course of the hot summer months, assaulting consumers with the newest big-budget blockbusters on a weekly basis, the videogames industry falls into a cold spell as developers come out of E3 and gear up for release that typically falls into the fourth quarter of the year. While discussion regarding the sheer stupidity of such an arrangement can be saved for an AMN editorial, the immediate effect is a legion of gamers without anything fresh to play during the time of year when they arguably have the most free time to burn. Xbox Live has been a godsend toward easing the pain, as playing online against friends extends the replay value of almost any title, but the yearning for something new and exciting – if only for a weekend rental – is still powerful.
Certainly the most anticipated of the Xbox 360 releases slated for the summer months, Prey is a first-person-shooter that began its development back on the PC in 1997, when the idea of moving between distinctly different areas through translucent portals seemed amazing from a technological point of view. Shortly after being unveiled, the game was seemingly dropped as the talent pool behind it was reassigned to other projects, before recently being brought back from the dead by way of Human Head Studios and Venom Games, infused with a litany of interesting new gameplay mechanics, and made over with a heavily modified Doom 3 engine. Proving that sometimes it does pay to patient, Prey is an engaging throw-back to the more frenetic days of online PC frag-fests, and a fantastic excuse to put off working on that tan.
Gameplay
John Carmack, legendary coder of FPS powerhouse Id Software has infamously stated that “story in a shooter is like a story in a porn movie, it’s expected to be there but its not important,” and games like Prey stand as fairly strong support of that claim. At best, the story in Prey, which follows Native American car mechanic Tommy as he attempts to fight off an alien invasion, can be considered a creative means of providing the carnage and unique art direction players with a coherent context. Elements of the story were supposedly drawn from real Cherokee myth, but those elements are easily lost among the trite sci-fi elements brought into the narrative. Inoffensive but uninspired, the story is there, as expected, but not particularly important to the player’s enjoyment of the proceedings.
The game takes place on the alien ship dubbed ‘The Sphere.’ Not your average spacecraft, the ship is a sentient being that seems to be the leader of the forces that are invading the planet, and players will hear the being’s female voice giving orders its minions constantly, many of them based on the actions and events triggered by the player. Occasionally, the voice will also taunt the player directly depending on what they are doing, a nice touch that brought back memories of Shodan from the System Shock titles. As a living organism, the innards of the ship are characterized by a unique mixture of industrial metals, and organic matter reminiscent of tissue, mucus, pus, and all manners of slime. Furthermore, as a self-aware entity, the ship can react to the player, including moving pieces of itself to create or obstruct pathways, or attacking the player with anything from tendrils to explosions of bodily fluids.
A combination of alien technology and Native American mysticism provides the basis on which the laws of physics are bent and broken in order to create world full of strange and exciting possibilities, particularly in terms of level design and gameplay mechanics.
Prey
The manipulation of gravity plays a large role in the game, as the mechanic effectively transforms the player’s perception of normally unused or purely decorative surface area, such as the walls of a room with a particularly high ceiling and a variety of suspended catwalks, for example, into that of a potential avenue for additional exploration. The artificial gravity systems aboard the ship can be manipulated of defied in a number of ways, the simplest of which is to seek out illuminated pathways that create and maintain a force of gravity with a specific subject, independent of the gravity acting on the rest of the room, allowing that subject to walk up walls and across ceilings. While attached to these paths, the player can engage in fire-fights with enemies affected by different forces of gravity within the same room, resulting in some spectacularly chaotic action. At any time, the player can hit the jump button and break the connection with the walk-way, at which point the room’s gravity with take hold and twist the player in mid air before they fall, feet first, toward the ‘new’ floor. Another means of altering gravity comes by way of pads that, when shot, shift the direction of gravity to a specific wall, essentially turning the entire room on its ear and causing ever object that isn’t tied down to fall in that direction.
The aforementioned portals that wowed the gaming community back in 1997 have remained in the game as well, often used by enemies to get the drop on the player (sometimes literally) and frequently used as a means of navigating the ship. Initially the portals feel like a thinly veiled excuse to spawn waves of enemies out of nowhere, but that feeling is likely to fade once players find how well the portals are integrated into the level design and learn how they can be manipulated toward their own purposes. Once open, the teleports are functional doorways between two areas that can be seen through (with everything on the other side happening in real time), traveled through, and even shot through by both the player and their enemies. As such, as the player is making their way through the ship, they might find themselves ambushed by enemies, only to fend them off and then use the portal they appeared out of to jump to another area.
Prey
As 2-dimensional doorways operating within a 3-Dimensional space with relative gravity, it’s not uncommon for the transition from one area to another to be somewhat jarring. In one case, you might jump through a portal located on the ground only to find yourself walking upside-down along the roof of a large corridor that you had previously only explored via walking along the floor. The mind-bending nature of these transitions is exploited throughout the game in the form of small puzzles that the developers implemented in order to provide some reprieve for the player’s trigger finger. For the most part these puzzles are quick and simple, tasking the player with finding the correct portal or sequence of portals to pass through in order to continue to the next area, twisting players in every which direction with each transition. As the game progresses, the level design tasks players with combining the use of the portals with the manipulation of gravity. For example, there are several instances in which a portal will be in a seemingly in-accessible position, and only by hitting gravity switches in the correct order will the player find themselves in a position to use it.
Certainly the most anticipated of the Xbox 360 releases slated for the summer months, Prey is a first-person-shooter that began its development back on the PC in 1997, when the idea of moving between distinctly different areas through translucent portals seemed amazing from a technological point of view. Shortly after being unveiled, the game was seemingly dropped as the talent pool behind it was reassigned to other projects, before recently being brought back from the dead by way of Human Head Studios and Venom Games, infused with a litany of interesting new gameplay mechanics, and made over with a heavily modified Doom 3 engine. Proving that sometimes it does pay to patient, Prey is an engaging throw-back to the more frenetic days of online PC frag-fests, and a fantastic excuse to put off working on that tan.
Gameplay
John Carmack, legendary coder of FPS powerhouse Id Software has infamously stated that “story in a shooter is like a story in a porn movie, it’s expected to be there but its not important,” and games like Prey stand as fairly strong support of that claim. At best, the story in Prey, which follows Native American car mechanic Tommy as he attempts to fight off an alien invasion, can be considered a creative means of providing the carnage and unique art direction players with a coherent context. Elements of the story were supposedly drawn from real Cherokee myth, but those elements are easily lost among the trite sci-fi elements brought into the narrative. Inoffensive but uninspired, the story is there, as expected, but not particularly important to the player’s enjoyment of the proceedings.
The game takes place on the alien ship dubbed ‘The Sphere.’ Not your average spacecraft, the ship is a sentient being that seems to be the leader of the forces that are invading the planet, and players will hear the being’s female voice giving orders its minions constantly, many of them based on the actions and events triggered by the player. Occasionally, the voice will also taunt the player directly depending on what they are doing, a nice touch that brought back memories of Shodan from the System Shock titles. As a living organism, the innards of the ship are characterized by a unique mixture of industrial metals, and organic matter reminiscent of tissue, mucus, pus, and all manners of slime. Furthermore, as a self-aware entity, the ship can react to the player, including moving pieces of itself to create or obstruct pathways, or attacking the player with anything from tendrils to explosions of bodily fluids.
A combination of alien technology and Native American mysticism provides the basis on which the laws of physics are bent and broken in order to create world full of strange and exciting possibilities, particularly in terms of level design and gameplay mechanics.
Prey
The manipulation of gravity plays a large role in the game, as the mechanic effectively transforms the player’s perception of normally unused or purely decorative surface area, such as the walls of a room with a particularly high ceiling and a variety of suspended catwalks, for example, into that of a potential avenue for additional exploration. The artificial gravity systems aboard the ship can be manipulated of defied in a number of ways, the simplest of which is to seek out illuminated pathways that create and maintain a force of gravity with a specific subject, independent of the gravity acting on the rest of the room, allowing that subject to walk up walls and across ceilings. While attached to these paths, the player can engage in fire-fights with enemies affected by different forces of gravity within the same room, resulting in some spectacularly chaotic action. At any time, the player can hit the jump button and break the connection with the walk-way, at which point the room’s gravity with take hold and twist the player in mid air before they fall, feet first, toward the ‘new’ floor. Another means of altering gravity comes by way of pads that, when shot, shift the direction of gravity to a specific wall, essentially turning the entire room on its ear and causing ever object that isn’t tied down to fall in that direction.
The aforementioned portals that wowed the gaming community back in 1997 have remained in the game as well, often used by enemies to get the drop on the player (sometimes literally) and frequently used as a means of navigating the ship. Initially the portals feel like a thinly veiled excuse to spawn waves of enemies out of nowhere, but that feeling is likely to fade once players find how well the portals are integrated into the level design and learn how they can be manipulated toward their own purposes. Once open, the teleports are functional doorways between two areas that can be seen through (with everything on the other side happening in real time), traveled through, and even shot through by both the player and their enemies. As such, as the player is making their way through the ship, they might find themselves ambushed by enemies, only to fend them off and then use the portal they appeared out of to jump to another area.
Prey
As 2-dimensional doorways operating within a 3-Dimensional space with relative gravity, it’s not uncommon for the transition from one area to another to be somewhat jarring. In one case, you might jump through a portal located on the ground only to find yourself walking upside-down along the roof of a large corridor that you had previously only explored via walking along the floor. The mind-bending nature of these transitions is exploited throughout the game in the form of small puzzles that the developers implemented in order to provide some reprieve for the player’s trigger finger. For the most part these puzzles are quick and simple, tasking the player with finding the correct portal or sequence of portals to pass through in order to continue to the next area, twisting players in every which direction with each transition. As the game progresses, the level design tasks players with combining the use of the portals with the manipulation of gravity. For example, there are several instances in which a portal will be in a seemingly in-accessible position, and only by hitting gravity switches in the correct order will the player find themselves in a position to use it.
< previous | page 1 of 3 | next >
February 8, 2010
