European Release : Out Now
Price : £49.99 / €73.00

Conclusions Taken From eurogamer.net
Review Written By kristan reed



In technical terms, Prey rarely rises above 'satisfactory', and looks every inch the medium range PC port that it is. The interior environments of the sprawling spaceship certainly appear detailed and impressive at first glance, but quickly get samey and - rather like Doom 3 - aren't especially interactive. There's almost nothing in the way of destructible scenery, physics barely even figures in the entire game and the majority of it takes place in small, enclosed, darkened environments that make it feel just like any other corridor-based shooter you care to mention. Fair enough, the occasional flying sortie around the more cavernous parts of the ship adds a fleeting sliver of welcome variety, but it's frankly not enough to make you want to tell all your friends that you've seen the future of the genre.

And apart from the amusing licensed jukebox inclusions at the very beginning of the game, the soundtrack is entirely forgettable watery string-based sci-fi fodder that noodles just outside your consciousness whenever the action amps up. Depressingly, the voice acting is shockingly run-of-the-mill amateur dramatics fare which adds little to any attempt to build the atmosphere. We wish we could be kinder to a game we've been really looking forward to for ages, but the closer you examine Prey, the more disappointing it gets.



At the end of Prey you'll probably just feel a little blank. Its tendency to lapse into generic blandness might be acceptable on boring days in July with no other games to focus on, but it'd have to a fairly rainy one at that. Even with our feel-good glasses on it feels like we're damning Prey with faint praise to write a sentence that ends with "reasonably entertaining few hours of gunplay that never really stretches you". More likely, you'll mutter to your mates in the beer garden that you're glad that you got through all those slightly irritating, rarely satisfying puzzling sections without having to resort to a guide, and feign surprise as the subject gets changed in an instant. Back home, you'll wonder why anyone made a fuss about the storyline in the first place, wonder what 3D Realms really think about it, and sit the summer months out, waiting patiently for the next developer to do something truly surprising in the FPS genre.

Perhaps inevitably - although maybe not intentionally - Prey struggles to break free of its late '90s genesis, and essentially what we're left with is a game whose good intentions simply don't translate into wide-eyed entertainment. With uninspiring and basic deathmatch multiplayer options failing to rescue the package, it looks like it's going to be another long hot summer for FPS devotees.

Overall Scores

eurogamer.net : 7/10

gamespot.com : 7.5/10

ign.com : 9/10

gamesradar.com : -/-

__________________