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Prey Review. |
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Written by Ben Mcfadden
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Thursday, 27 July 2006 |
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Ever since the Prey demo went onto Xbox marketplace it was met with mixed opinions. Most people thought it was going to be the 360 game of the year and others thought it was just another FPS but with slightly better graphics. Now call me old school but I consider the best FPS ever was Rare's one and only Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64, but I thought i would play Prey with an open mind and i was actually rather impressed.
To start with, the game looks like it could be rather impressive. You play the role of Tommy, an Indian garage mechanic, and we join him in the toilet of his local diner. This is where the game starts, after a few choice words aimed at your girlfriend barmaid from some local scum bags you get to make use of your monkey wrench by beating them over the head with it. This all seems rather fun then the game goes all Half Life on you. An alien craft appears and takes you away, inside all your friends and family are screaming and shouting. Eventually you break free and decide to go on a one-man save the day mission. When you first start the game Tommy does not believe in his families Indian heritage but before long he has to accept the birthright of his long-dormant Cherokee spiritual powers. You gain the power to leave your body as a spirit and go walk about. This gives you the chance to wander straight through force fields and sneakily turn them off, not to mention disarm security systems, unlock doors ect ect. The game also has a strange death system. When you die you have approx 15 seconds where you do a Death Walk. When this is activated you have to shoot red or blue Death Wraiths and steal the energy trapped within them. This is harder than it sounds and you mostly end up dying. Its best to save your game every ten minutes or so. I ended up re-playing large sections of the game because i kept forgetting to save it. You will spend most of the game in classic FPS style running around shooting everything that moves. Think Doom, Duke Nukem and Halo to name but a few. This is where the game is let down. Its nothing different. Its taken the best bits from most games and just piled them all together. The environments are impressive but are just like Halo or Half Life. It consists of massive 3D alien areas covered with weird plants and swamps of slime ect. It doesn?t feel like a new game. It has a similar feel to it. The only impressive thing about the levels is the use of blue gravity switches that flip levels through 90 or 180 degrees this gives you the ability to negotiate otherwise impassable obstacles and reach previously off-limits area., This then allows you access to other areas so you can then progress through the level.. When playing the game after a while it becomes a slight bore. You arsenal of weapons gets larger and you have the ability to blow most things away easily. The enemies just lunge towards you in a predictable way making little challenge for you to get past. The game overall is good but just doesn?t fell complete. There is little challenge whilst playing and it just feels like its stuck in the early 90?s with Half Life style game play. I would expect more from a Next Gen game for a brilliant console. Lets hope this manages to keep FPS fans hooked on the 360 until Halo 3 comes out. Graphics ? 8 / 10 Gameplay ? 7 / 10 Sound ? 7 / 10 Overall ? 7 /10 |
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