Always Check the Corner of Your Eyes
By James Andrawes
As I take a break from the game I walk from my bedroom to the kitchen because I’ve been playing for awhile and hunger has struck me. Everyone is out and the lights are off. From my room to the kitchen are 2 hallways, 3 light switches and a large view of the back of my house which is currently consumed by the dark of night. I’m freaking out and checking the corner of my eyes with every step I take. I make it to the kitchen only to look at everything to see if anything is out of place as I don’t want to be attacked when I’ve turned around to open the fridge. This is what Prey has done to me, or maybe I’m just a little wimp.
In Prey you play as Morgan Yu, either male of female, and you have tasked yourself with destroying an alien race called mimics that have taken over the largest space station built by man. I won’t get into more story detail because you would be better off finding out for yourself.
What I can say though is that 7 hours in the story is entertaining and keeps me questioning what I’m doing. There is a twist at the start and with all the freaking out I’m doing I can feel another twist being set up and it is making me question my every action. Apart from the enemies,you’re facing, you feel that there is something up with what you are doing. Across the whole game so far it feels like something is just standing over your shoulder and that is because of the great enemy design and the chilling, and amazing score.
The mimics are an interesting enemy for the game as so far there hasn’t really been many different types of them. Usually, in a game, the enemies will be different as you progress through each objective. In Prey, however, the enemy doesn’t change it’s looks necessarily but instead, just it’s strength which makes you jolt as you destroy all of them in a room and as you leave confidently you find yourself grasping for medkits because you’re not ready for the next room yet. The mimics are interesting because they can be any object you see and you can pick up everything, once you’ve upgraded enough, in the game. This results in a many number of jump scares that work well. You know you’re going to get them but you’re still shocked anyway as you defeat one only to search the whole room again for the next one.
The use of the mimics’ ability to disguise themselves as anything is scary but it’s the addition of the brilliant score that really adds to the vibe of the game. The score, by Mick Gordon who did the latest Doom game as well, is the core element that makes the game freaky and cool at the same time. The score is like a mixture of the score for the Ryan Gosling film Drive mixed with the Alien franchise. At times it’ll just be playing silently in the background trying to get stuck in your head as you play along. Then every now and again it’ll amp up and you’ll know that something bad is going to happen to you or something bad is happening to you suddenly.
My time with Prey so far has been excellent and the lack of early review copies would definitely have an affect on the sales of Prey but I don’t think it’ll have an affect on the game itself. Prey, so far, is the type of game you won’t want to be spoiled for yourself as it’s scary vibe makes you think anything could happen next. My only advice so far would be to play it for yourself because so far the experience I’ve had has benefited from not knowing much about it. Also update the game before you play it because the patch makes it run a lot smoother, one out of six of the hours haven’t been as fun as the rest because of it but that’s easily solved.
If you want to know what the game is similar too then I would say it’s like a mixture of Alien Isolation and Bioshock. Although after playing lots of Zelda: Breath of the Wild the aspect of running away from a battle to survive only to come back with a lot more equipment and a determination to beat the challenge ahead of you is in Prey as well.