Prey

Prey opens with our reluctant hero Tommy wanting to turn his back on his heritage and move away from the reservation he has lived his life on. He approaches girlfriend at work in a local bar and she outright refuses to leave, little does she know they will all be leaving the reservation.

Before Tommy can convince her to leave with him, the whole pub starts to shake and green lights start to suck up people into the sky. Moments later Tommy awakens in an unfamiliar place with his grandfather and girlfriend attached to moving platforms. After a brief intermission an unknown benefactor helps you to escape.

You are then left all alone with your captors in an unknown place with just your monkey wrench for company. You first notice how good the graphics are in this game, the organic and metal infusion of the ship is well presented, shiny metal bulkheads and computer terminals to the green and brown, slimy, pulsing walls and doors. The ambient noise of alien beings in other rooms and the squelching, dripping noises of the living ship surround you. The game does have some licensed music but rather then have the tracks play all through the game, the designers decided to keep the ambient feel of the game throughout and have the licensed music appear only at certain points, for example, you can hear a track in the distance but no idea where it is coming from, only later to find it was coming from the bar, which the aliens beamed onboard their ship. I feel that this is a much better use of a license than playing tracks all through the game.

All of the weapons in Prey sound and feel great and are alien in origin, for example the rifle has metallic parts, but use the scope for sniping and an eyestalk pops out and attaches itself to your eye, allowing for precision shooting.

After a while Tommy learns of his special abilities through his grandfather, these are the Spirit Walk and the Death Walk.

The Spirit Walk enables you to separate from your body and sneak around unseen to flip switches and attack enemies. This also comes in handy for puzzles, as you are also able walk through areas that your human form cannot, leaving it hanging in the air, open to all attacks. The Death Walk is summoned when you loose all of your energy in the main game, rather then seeing the game over screen, you are taken to a spiritual realm where you can use your spirit bow to attack red and blue Wraiths to restore the main game energy. The Death Walk is very short and once finished you are returned to where you died to continue.

Each of the 22 levels have numerous rooms with puzzles to solve, some of these require use of the Spirit Walk where others require a change in the gravity and use of the portals.

Prey allows you to change the gravity in certain rooms, so what was the ceiling, becomes the floor and so on. Another play on this is the Wall Walk. You can make Tommy walk on a certain part of a wall and follow the track around to another part of the room. This really shows off the game engine, as there are parts where you are having a firefight with numerous enemies on the floor, ceiling and walls. The portals are literally just doors in the middle of the room, but they take you to other parts of the ship otherwise inaccessible. These have some great uses, one of these is a room with a small globe in a glass case, you walk through a portal and you end up on the small globe, miniaturised, with its own separate gravity. Be warned, moments of weightlessness and changes of perspective do cause nausea in Tommy, and at certain points the player.

The enemy models look really gruesome and will give you a tough fight, though not amazing intelligence, they will dive and shoot from cover, allowing for a action orientated fire fight.

The comments made by Tommy help give the character some life and the story is very well presented, you can hear parts of earths conflict from radio broadcasts being intercepted and find out what the enemy is up to by examining the surroundings.

The style of the game transfers very well to Xbox Live, allowing for fast paced gunfights across well-designed levels.

Overall this game is a very enjoyable first person shooter, with enough differences to make it standout from the crowd. Some set pieces are truly amazing, for example the aliens capturing a jumbo jet and heated battles whilst hanging upside-down.