Prey: don't fear the reaper

But make no mistake, Prey is a long way off. "Sometime in '98" were the exact words of the developers. - from Gamespot's 1997 preview

Prey is late, but the gaming press has been oddly forgiving. Originally announced in 1995 and intended to be 3D Realms' follow-up to Duke Nukem 3D, it has seen a very troubled development cycle. It may not have promised to make us its bitch, but I would have expected a lot more than an overly-simplistic shooter that lets you turn into a ghost to walk through forcefields and takes less than eight hours to complete. The reviews may not be outright favorable, but the game receives a passing grade because it may just be the only big-ticket title released at a time when new games are a rare occurence. It also manages to make the most of the Doom 3 engine, even though the end result bears more than a passing resemblance to the other two games to use the engine. I expected a lot more analysis of a game that's taken over 10 years to materialize.

Note: this review tells you what happens in the game. If that doesn't bother you, go ahead and keep reading.

Prey features a Native American hero, and desperately wanted to use this to convey the overarching theme of sci-fi-meets-lost-spirituality through an alien invasion. Even the opening scene features a lamentation on behalf of the hero that resembled Luke Skywalker wanting to escape the drudgery of Tatooine, not knowing the life-changing events that lay ahead. It all could have worked, too. But Human Head made a number of embarassing errors in its assumptions about Cherokee culture, which came across as tacky in the same way that Daikatana handled the Japanese. In classic 3D Realms fashion, the main character's name is Tommy Hawk, which is almost as original and inoffensive as Shadow Warrior's Lo Wang. The "Spirit World" is nothing more than a place you go to open up forcefields and recharge your life meter. It's misuse of this lore that makes it more of a contrivance than an actual dimension of the game's story.

Prey begins in a dingy looking bar on a reservation. Tommy is looking to make a life for himself away from it, and asks Jen, the owner, to come with him. Apparently she's his love interest, but you'd never know it. Tommy's grandfather assures him that he has a part to play, and he should stay put. Soon after, the ceiling of the bar is ripped from its supports, exposing a blinding white light coming from a floating craft above. Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper" is playing in the background on the bar's interactive jukebox as the contents of the bar are lifted into the sky. The three companions are then processed by this alien ship in a scene reminiscent of the inner citadel of Half Life 2.

I don't like to hear my avatar talking in shooters. Especially during the cutscenes that allow me to move around while someone off in the distance is addressing me. The only way it works is if the avatar is stationary and in the 3rd person - because at that point you are watching a cutscene, not optionally participating in one. If I can move to wherever I want, while the animations show otherwise, it communicates to me that what I do has no effect on what is happening, and my avatar may as well be standing still. Seeing Tommy's grandfather ruthlessly penetrated by an alien skewer and then watch his love interest be taken away by these alien overlords is enough for Tommy's motivations, but what about the player's? These disagreements break the connection with the avatar, and the motivation to keep playing the game.

Luckily, Tommy's restraint malfunctions during this sequence and he is dropped into the belly of the alien ship. Now it's time for vengeance, Cherokee-style. The adventure begins by travelling through an asshole with a pipe wrench. I had no idea this was a precursor of things to come.

I assure you that the other side of this doorway is not a colon.

There's something to be said about linearity in first person shooters, becuase it allows a story to be presented, not just action. Because Prey is so simple as a FPS, I expected the story to carry more weight. But it doesn't. Instead, it puts forth the idea of an alien craft (The Sphere) that is large enough to abduct an entire town, and squanders it on some kind of love story/rescue mission. The history of the Sphere and its inhabitants is pushed to the sidebar; Tommy's goal is to rescue the girl, and nothing more.

I wonder, are all the games that use the Doom 3 engine destined to look the same, in all their biomechanical, throbbing corridors and vaginal doorways? The monsters, while unique looking at first, may as well be the demons from Doom 3 or cybernetic Strogg fleshbots of Quake IV. Does the engine come with texture packs, too? If it weren't for the alien technology introduced through mind bending gameplay, I'm sure Prey would have ended up exactly the same.

Don't I know you from somewhere?

Not since Descent have I actually felt nauseous or frequently lost my sense of up and down. The Sphere has a number of gravity-defying footpaths around the ship, which can be used to walk on walls and reach previously innaccessible ledges. While nothing spectacular after the first few times, it adds an amount of depth to each room. No longer are you limited to wandering through a room, guns blazing; you can wander up the walls to the ceiling and shoot downwards to your enemies below. Though the "ceiling" is a relative term.

Strewn throughout some of the corridors and rooms are gravity "triggers", which will cause gravity to shift depending on which one is shot at. You could walk along every side of a corridor as long as there were triggers on each wall. A room that at first may seem like it has no exit probably has a gravity trigger that has to be hit somewhere. This is probably the best part of the game, as it allows the creation of some truly satisfying puzzles that force the player to really think in three dimensions, instead of just hunting for a switch to open a door on the opposite side of the room. But that happens too.

The resident aliens of the Sphere frequently use portals to move around quickly - like the monster closets of Doom 3, they will often open up in rooms and dispatch a group of enemies for you to kill. Like any door, they sometimes need to be opened to travel to the next area. However, the truly unique portals are the ones that almost look like mirrors - and sometimes they are. Occasionally you will stumble upon a mirrored portal that will simply lead you to the room you're in. Some are cleverly disguised as crates or door frames that don't do anything from one side, but transport you to another room using the other. It's a great visual concept, but the player isn't given any control over where these portals occur, something that I'm sure will be addressed in Valve's Portal.

While I can appreciate the game's attempts at originality with the weapons - they are amazing to look at for all their organic movements and details - they aren't terribly useful. In fact, the first gun you get is the best in the game, and will frequently be wielded against most enemies because of its sniper scope. The weapon progression is almost backwards; the acid-spewing shotgun is one of the last weapons you get.

The Spirit World is introduced when you die for the first time. It seems Grandfather has been holding out, and this place allows you to recharge your health by shooting the spirits of the dishonored dead that conveniently fly through your sights. The Spirit World can also be used to project yourself onto another plane within the living world, to access certain areas, like forcefield control rooms. The Spirit Bow can be used to inflict damage, but you can also take damage from alien machine guns. I found it strange that as a spirit I am still bound by the laws of physics (except forcefields). I can turn off a forcefield, but I can't walk through regular walls, or even float. In the platform jumping areas of the game there will be a path made out of an ectoplasm or cobweb-like material to reach other platforms.

There are hints of the otherworldly throughout the game - ghostly forms will fly through walls, and there's an area populated by a bunch of creepy ghost children with scary messages painted in blood on the walls. But it doesn't mesh with the rest of the experience. Was I fighting ghosts or aliens? What was the connection of The Sphere with the Spirit World? Later on in the game, the Spirit World is invaded by the alien residents of The Sphere. But it is only limited to the area that was shown at the beginning of the game, and still nothing was revealed about its significance to the aliens. The whole scene was a seemingly pointless exercise in the context of the rest of the story.

Overall Prey amounts to a very passive experience. It leads you through a biomechanical nightmare to find a girl that has been turned into a cybernetic horror herself. Play remains smooth because you don't have to save; the automatic checkpoints are well planned. There is a hawk companion that pretty much tells you what has to be done next. You don't ever have to reload weapons, just keep picking up ammo. Enemies are constantly fed to you through portals. Health points are made available constantly - both in the "real" world and the Spirit World (you hardly have to aim at the spirits to score hits). There is no impending threat of death. The Spirit walk puzzles don't get any more challenging than slipping through forcefields and hitting switches, and the enemy AI, while supposedly adaptive, is as dumb as most other shooters. Take away the fact that Tommy is a Native American and you lose spirit walk and his hawk companion. The fact that these aspects are removed so easily illustrates how similar Prey is to every other shooter. It's beginning to look like advancements in the genre are limited to those with military themes.

The story of Prey drifts from an occasionally engaging science-fiction affair to brainless action amongst lines like "I hate these fucking things!" and "DIE DIE DIE!". Ultimately, Tommy is put in touch with his heritage in one of the final confrontations, spewing out "I am a warrior of the Cherokee nation! Nobody owns me!" with such righteous anger I was sure that was the end of the fight. The ending is a lazy homage to System Shock 2, except the motivations of "Mother" aren't nearly as nefarious. Instead, we get a power tripping human that has given herself over to The Sphere for absolute power, and in a Half Life-like ending after defeating her, Tommy is given the same choice. It's obvious what really happens, and we are met by his Grandfather and Jen in the spirit world, where they congratulate Tommy on a job well done and he returns to Earth. Prey cannot be written off as a "fun dumb shooter", attributing its shortcomings to lighter fare as one would a summer blockbuster. It has been in development for eleven years. In return, 3D Realms and Human Head are content to give us eight hours of gameplay and a half-hearted attempt at bringing something new to the genre.