Prey is a narrative driven sci-fi story that uses environment, atmosphere and gameplay to tell its story. You are trapped on-board an alien infested space station and have no idea what is going on. The atmosphere and tension you feel as you move about the space station is excellent. If you want to feel trapped on an space station with hostile aliens Prey is the game for you. The game has a horror atmosphere and has a tense atmosphere throughout the game.
The gameplay elements of Prey changes quite a bit throughout the game. Survival elements and the RPG ability tree is the most important aspects of the gameplay. The game also features stealth, action and shooting elements. The survival elements got tedious quickly for me, and the RPG ability tree depends too heavily on the player knowing what is good and what is bad. You want to specialise for a specific playstyle, and not be a generalist. That means that the game can be hard to learn because you can’t be a generalist very effectively. On the flip side it means that Prey is re-playable if you want a challenge as you can do new builds that play quite different to each other.
The enemies are quite dangerous early on which forces the player to use a lot of resource when fighting them. You may try to avoid them, but it is not always easy to do so. What this leads to is a gameplay loop where using resources effectively is the key gameplay element. This means using ammo effectively, this means scavenging resources with a limited inventory, this means being patient while enemies pass to avoid spending resources on them and so forth. Eventually the enemies stop feeling like a threat, and more like a chore designed to drain your resources. Prey quickly becomes a grind for resources, how many shells you have for your shotgun determines how dangerous a lot of enemies are. This is a valid way to create combat encounters, but it means that most of the challenge lies in utilising ability points and resources effectively rather than being clever or knowledgeable in the combat encounters themselves. Using your build effectively is very important in Prey.
Prey has a lot of rough edges. The game forces you to reload once you are out of ammunition and you can’t switch to a different weapon before a weapon has been reloaded, which is a ridiculous thing when you have multiple weapons and an enemy is trying to kill you. The movement often feels clunky and frustrating. I have had to reload the game several times due to bugs such as being stuck in objects or glitched out of the playing area. I dislike that I don’t have enough power over the sounds and am forced to have very loud monster sounds or very low human conversation sounds. I think a lot of the balance in the game could have been better when it comes to its ability usage, survival elements and generally speaking weapons.
If I had to summarise Prey as a game I would say that it is a unique narrative driven sci-fi game that combines RPG and survival elements to create an unique experience. Having said that the game is definitively not for everyone, and it has a lot of frustrating elements that can be off-putting.
I did not enjoy Prey, and as such I am not going to write the anything about the design of the game. It is very much like dishonored in terms of level design, and deus ex in terms of abilities. Then the game has essentially added a horror atmosphere with a lot of survival elements to create something unique.
| Playtime | 14 Hours (On story mode, and playing very quickly. I expect twice this to be the normal playthrough speed) |
| Game release date | 27 April 2017 |
| Review release date | 04 January 2025 |
| Light sensitivity | Fair bit of bright and brinking lights that can be triggering. |
| Sound sensitivity | The sounds in Prey is frustrating to deal with. The game lacks a proper audio balance, such that monster sounds will always be very loud or the conversations will be impossible to hear. I played on a very low sound, which severly reduced my enjoyment of the game. If you are sensitive to sound I think Prey is likely a game you are not going to enjoy. |
| Motion sickness | No issues |
| Steam | Metacritic – Metascore (79) |