I finished the game in 40 hours, having explored every possible corner of Talos.
This game is seriously underrated. Probably best game in genre. Better then SS2, without a doubt.
System Shock 2 was a much better game overall, the only thing really improved on Prey were technical stuff, yes, the game doesn't feel as clunky as System Shock 2 but everything else was lame:
1 - Shodan is truly great, people underestimate the role of a good villain on those sorts of games but Shodan gave personality to the station, if you pay attention, the writers of System Shock 1 and 2 turned the station on a playground for the villain, this is a really smart trick, you felt like a rat fighting a much more powerful entity, a rat crawling on its lair, what is great to create tension and horror. Even Biocock 1 writers were smart enough to keep that, but instead of some alien or Ai monster horror, you fight a man that saw his dreams end on ruins. Prey space cuthulu thing shows up late like an Deus Ex Machina and you kill it right away, this is serious boner deflating stuff.
2 - The design of the aliens fucking sucks, there is psychological horror and body horror, when they chosen to make black floating meatballs as enemies, that was a bad choice, what is great about body horror is the perversion of the human body to scare people by showing the organic machine that we truly are and how that could easily be perverted and with you still alive watching it as you lose the control of your body. The black floating meatballs of prey are lame, they are too far away from an human body to evoke body horror. You know that satisfaction when you kill something that by God shouldn't exist and destroy an abomination? You know... KILL IT WITH FIRE! You don't get that at prey. This is one of the reasons of why they are so lame.
They could do psychological horror, the Typhoon are much more suited for that and I think this was the aim of the designers with the neuromods stuff but it is obvious that got in conflict hard with the way the game is played and this conflict they failed to solve, the Nightmare was a great idea, for example, but in the end, it is just another bullet sponge to kill not much different from the other bullet sponges. This is terrible for a game that is trying psychological horror.
Prey would play much better if you weren't certain that what you are seeing is real or not since from the start instead of trying to reserve that for the ending with the lame "It was all a dream.". That introduction where they keep you on the loop should be the whole game, instead of the lame killing endless black goo meatballs in that space. Thos would fit much better with the neuromod stuff.
3 - The level design is cool but not enough, Prey climax on level design are three levels: The Talos 1 lobby, the crew quarters and that level where Alex confront you with the big glass dome, those three are really great but Prey doesn't have the consistency of level design as Dishonored 1 and 2, the rest of the levels are by the number affairs in terms of level design or infuriating like all zero G sections.
4 - The resource abundance on this game is the mercy blow to this game, you are playing a system shock clone with no villain, the enemy design suck, the game isn't scary, the level design is inconsistent, the shooting is meh and the final nail is that you will have all the resources you will ever need on this game. I remember on System Shock 2 when I only had two clips and there were three hybrids outside the place I was waiting for me, I wasn't that scared of them because I knew I had enough ammo to kill them but I knew that after that, all there will be left for me was to fucking run. This game scream for a survival mode or somehting, even the last difficulty isn't hard.
It is ironic that something like the glue cannon and the jet pack that improve the mobility can both easily get you to safe spots even if for some reason you ran out of ammo, what wasn't the case at all with System Shock 2 on the last difficulty.
I don't like Prey that much because I expected an RPG/Action game with a survival horror game vibe, a true system shock sequel, and I got a Biocock 1 deja vu. Yeah, sure, people hype this game as a great achievement or something here on the Codex and the Codex hates Biocock 1 betrayal to this day but this isn't all that superior to something like Biocock 1 to be honest.
How you dare to compare this to Biocock 1?! I hear Arkane fanboys screaming... The reality is that System Shock 2 is so old and the betrayal of Ken Levine so long ago that many people here are cutting Arkane a BIG slack, a fucking BIG slack for Arkane, this game is playable and you can have some fun with it like Biocock 1 but it is fucking mediocre.
You shoot bullet sponge enemies like you did on Biocock, the shooting sucks like Biocock, the game throw resources like candy to you like Biocock, the progression system is RPG light as it was on Biocock, sure (they use the word "Neuromod" instead of "Adam" so all of sudden this simplistic stuff is incline) and you will get everything you will ever need by the end of the game. Rapture is a more interesting place than Telos 1 by far, Biocock wins here, the main villain of Prey and the story in general sucks a big time and is boring, Biocock wins here, sure Biocock 1 isn't Oscar material but I don't buy this shit that the ending of Prey is "clever", "It was all a
dream simulation!" isn't anything that isn't base cliche that shitty writers copy paste all the time, I was rolling my eyes at that crap at the end and how some people fallen for that shit.
Only on level design, Arkane is truly superior to something like Biocock 1 but even at that, if you are a Dishonored series fan , this game is a letdown, I expected much more from it and half the time I spent on the game was walking on generic factory/labs/offices, floating on infuriating and pointless zero G sections and backtracking all the way so Arkane could reuse the few really well designed levels and pretend they had a much bigger game than they did.
