DH Review: PREY (PC & Xbox 360)

Zardon

Read the review here
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For those of you that have been living under a rock for the last year, Prey follows the story of a Cherokee named Tommy who refuses to accept his heritage. After his people are abducted by alien forces, it’s up to him to save the planet from sure destruction. Unlike other shooters, Prey lets the gamer manipulate gravity, pass through portal systems, walk on walls, and even travel around in a spirit form. By combining old Cherokee mythology with an alien invasion, it’s obvious that Prey is different from every other title out there.

dj_stick

Nice review, this game definately looksi nteresting

Tipstaff

Nice review.

It's a pretty good game overall. Well worth playing.

A couple things about the graphics. For one, I was very surprised at how high I could set the graphics options within the game. To be honest, I practically have everything turned up, except no AA, 8x AF, and Medium shadows. I could not run Doom 3, or even Quake 4 with those settings without first doing some major ini tweaks. Even then those games would stutter occasionally. Very well tuned game engine.

Secondly, design. About 1/2 the game looks like Doom 3/Quake 4 with it's tight corridors, but they look better due to the same effects mentioned in the review, but play better due to their layout and use of gravity devices, portals, and puzzles. However, the other 1/2 of the game has some damn beautifully created areas in it. Put it this way: it was like they had one guy that had engineering talent working on half (the maps that have intricate and complicated designs), and a guy with visually creative talent working on the other half. Case in point: not to blow the entire thing, but in one scene you come through a passageway to be greeted by a walkway with a school bus sitting on the other side of the room. While the room looked like any other, it was the attention to it detail that made it stand out, such as lighting and color (not to mention the detail of the school bus itself). Very striking contrast, beautifully done, and simply amazing.

BTW, I love the format for the whole review, except the video at the beginning. It's a great video (and showcases some of the levels that the other half of the game is like design wise), but it tries to play right away rather than load first, so it kinda starts/stops constantly the first time through. Not a big thing, though, but for slow bandwidth guys it might become one.

Robert McClelland

question enough if worth 50 bucks to buy it? which I can't afford for that much game maybe 30-40 bucks it's ok for me to buy at 50 kinda pricie for me to take. lol
question how long does it review take to load on flash? heh dailup remeber is there nonflash review link?

Mazuko

I thought the game was great, takes awhile to get used to it. I also hate not being able to change my mouse sensitivity, nothing I hate more than having to pick up the darn mouse 3 times to look behind me.

Some of the initial "voice acting" is lame as hell especially at the beginning of the game, but if you can suffer through it becomes great later in the game. Graphically I have to agree with everyone it's running without a hitch maxed out, although I am running x1600 Pro 512MB PCI-E cards in crossfire now, not the best but hey, better than my old 9800xt

The loading screens are very reminiscent of doom 3 for obvious reasons, I think I still prefer the "partial loads" that HL introduced back in the 90's as compared to sitting for a few minutes while it loads.

I have run into the issue of the game automatically making itself run in a small "windowed frame" on the desktop if you hit the windows key or alt+tab and then click back into the game.

Hmm, not a single bit of organization there, sorry.

Zardon

yes just remove the 2 from index2.htm on the URL. About time you got broadband mate

MIG-31

You can alter the sensativity.

go through options > profiles > Game Options > Feel

Great review & Great Game also.. Kind of a weird game but its' a welcome addition to the normal fps genre.

BWX

I would definitely buy it eventually, but maybe wait a few months to see if the price comes down a little.. or maybe you will find a good deal out there on the net somewhere for 29.99 or something like that.

It's a must play though I think.. very original game, great GFX, and overall a fun single player FPS experience.

I like the atmosphere of the game the most.. it really does a good job of putting you right tin the middle of this crazy experience the main character is going through. Some of the stuff the guy says is pretty funny too.. highly polished quality game.

LeanWolf

Good review. I like the format (love the little animated characters!) except the startup video. I prefer to choose if I want to download and watch a video.

Zardon

which is why if you go into the review like normal prey/ it wont load it. I put the link to index2 for a full video intro in these threads to show people some of the cool ingame graphics as I dont think people have actually seen some of the 360 style environmental effects.....

niceguyrichy

nice review

like Tipstaff I'm amazed at the default gf settings I got.
Everything max but AA off.
Not a stutter so far either, and it looks pretty damn good too

Zardon

how did quake4 run for you guys?

ferret2004

I got Prey for the 360 a few days ago and it looks awesome on my 42" Plasma TV
Nice review btw, DH has the coolest reviews!

brutusmaximus

yeah I agree, the presentation of the reviews on this site is without a doubt second to none. my mates on MSN always comment about them too. Keep it up !

MIG-31

I for one love the presentation,The animated 3d models in this review is one good feature.But i too have a very slow opening page.

As you are having problems with the opening screen of this review on dialup,Having a 10mb connection this end and it still takes a decade to open.

Only removing the #2 (or skipping the first page) as Zardaon has said it speeds up for me also.

Zardon

the intro flash file is 23 meg which is pretty heavy and depending on the bandwidth of DH it might not keep up with play. if you have issues, just go to the bottom right of the screen and hit "continue into review", it will leave that page. once it loads though it wont need to do it again unless you clear your cache. this wont be a common occurance, putting flash in a review before the review, i just wanted it there so people could see how the awesome graphics worked and the original ideas they incorporated into the game. Funny thing is, most regulars here think everyone knows all this stuff ingame already but you would be surprised how many people might not have even downloaded the demo of Prey yet.

As I said if you dont want the flash movie intro coming up, just go to index.htm and it will bypass it totally.

Thanks for the comments on design, appreciate it guys, andy and peter did a nice job on this one too.

niceguyrichy

actually, haven't played Q4 on this machine yet. it's a reasonably new build (for me), only really played CS:S and Prey on it so far.
oh, and CMR3
not much comparisson value there I guess.

Dark Lord

yup, everything ran at max just fine for me. 1024x768 16xAF 2xAA everything else maxed. had the occasional dip down below 30fps but it was quite liveable.


as for quake 4, i think i ran that on all max and no AA.

*just searched a previous post of mine. apparently i ran it on High with 2xAA

Zardon

So not only have they improved the graphics but it runs better than the earlier quake4 and doom3 then? I beat the game but I only played it on one high end rig, so im curious to hear your performance insights on lower end systems.

Tipstaff

It surprised me too. Here I'm running at 1280x1024, all max, except AA (off), and 8x AF. And it doesn't matter if I run with or without VSync either for 2 reasons: 1) at that rez my monitor tops out at 72hz, and 2) the being based on a Doom 3 engine the game tops out at 60fps anyways. As I mentioned before, with Doom 3, or Quake 4 it took a good deal of tweaking to get either of those 2 to play steadily, and certainly not with that level of graphics set up so high.

Speaking of fps, does anyone playing the 360 version notice frame issues? I ask cuz that version is capped at 30fps, and am wondering if having that cap makes a difference game wise.