PREY

GAME DETAILS :-

Developer : Human Head Studios , Venom Games And Aspyr Media

Publisher : 2K Games And 3D Realms

Engine : id Tech 4 ( Modified )

Genre : Sci-Fi First-Person Shooter

Release Date : July 11 , 2006

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS :-

Operating System : Windows 2000 / Windows XP

CPU : AMD Athlon XP 2500+ / Intel Pentium 4 Processor

Memory (RAM) : 1 GB

Graphics Hardware : DirectX 9.0c Compatible Video Card with Memory 64 MB

[NVIDIA : GeForce 4 Ti Series
ATI : Radeon X700 Series]

Hard Disk Space : 2.2 GB

GAME FEATURES :-

The story focuses on Domasi Tawodi (also known as "Tommy"), a Cherokee garage mechanic and former U.S. Army soldier living on a Native American reservation in Oklahoma. At the beginning of the game, Tommy is in a bar owned by his girlfriend, Jen. Tommy is tired of living on the reservation, and constantly tries to push his heritage away, while at the same time trying to convince Jen to leave home, if only for a short while, to which she refuses steadfastly. After an unfortunate bar fight, the entire building is lifted up by a gravitational force into a green light above. Tommy, Jen, and Tommy's grandfather, Enisi, are transported back to the massive alien starship called the Sphere. After docking, all three, along with countless other captives, are dragged through the upper levels of the Sphere. Tommy is freed in an explosion set off by a stranger who, despite being cybernetic like most of the Sphere's denizens, appears to be working against it rather than for it. Tommy witnesses Enisi's death in a brutal alien device. While trying to find Jen, he falls from a walkway and has a near-death experience where he meets with his grandfather's spirit who bestows him with spiritual powers. After returning to the world of the living, Tommy gains the ability to spirit-walk, allowing him to separate from his body to pass through forcefields and operate consoles normally out of reach, as well as the aid of his spirit guide, the ghost of his childhood pet hawk, named Talon. Despite being entrusted by his ancestor's spirits with the mission to protect all of mankind from the sphere's invasion, Tommy can't stop worrying about Jen, and he only cares about how to find and rescue her. As the game's tagline says, "Earth's savior doesn't want the job." Playing around with gravity is a much more interesting part of Prey. You'll encounter powered walkways that let you walk up walls and onto ceilings. Also, some portals will drop you into a room you've already been in, but you'll be walking on what you previously thought was a wall. And in a few other cases, you'll be able to shoot objects to change gravity, which forces your view to rotate as you fall to another surface. The straightforward level design means that you'll spend the bulk of your time in combat. The game throws enemies at you pretty consistently, though their numbers are never overwhelming. And since the crazy aliens invented this portal business in the first place, they can teleport in rather than run around trying to find you. The hunters, armed with the same machine gun/sniper rifle combo that serves as your first real weapon, will occasionally take cover or toss a grenade in your direction if you're not in their line of sight, and they'll pick you off at a distance if you stand still in the open. But the rest of the enemies, a somewhat small menagerie of alien beasts and the occasional flying robot, stay out in the open and either rush right at you for a melee attack or attempt to circle around you and fire weapons, if they're armed. None of the enemies are difficult to deal with.

You are, of course, always armed. While you've got a pipe wrench at your disposal for melee attacks, it's useful only for the first couple of minutes. Then you take out your first hunter and get a rifle that fires like a machine gun but also has a scope that can be used for a more powerful sniper shot. All of the weapons are of alien origin, so many of them look kind of goofy and keep up the organic-merged-with-metal motif that the rest of the game is going for. There are multiple energy types, so you might get hot-plasma shots, a freeze ray, a powerful burst of electricity, or, near the end of the game, a constant stream of energy that works roughly like Quake's lightning gun. While there are multiple weapons of varying power in the game, their alien look doesn't fit with their mostly conventional usage. On top of that, most of the game's enemies aren't tough enough to warrant that type of firepower. You could very easily cruise through the majority of the game using only the default rifle, since it has a recharging ammo supply. Gaining the spirit walk power has one other benefit: When you die, you'll be sent directly to the spirit realm instead of to a game-over screen. This is essentially a basic minigame where you must fire the spirit bow at red and blue wraiths to recharge your health and spirit energy, respectively. After doing that for 15 to 20 seconds, you're sent back into the world of the living, right where you left off. This makes death trivial and removes any remaining difficulty you might encounter. In some ways, this method seems designed to remove the desire to constantly use quick saves and quick loads to inch through the game's 8- to 12-hour single-player campaign. The multiplayer achievements include getting 25 kills with each of the game's weapons, scoring first place in a ranked match, playing in 10 ranked matches, and totaling up a number of kills in the game's two multiplayer modes. On top of that, there are three secret achievements, all of which are tied in to doing well at three video gambling machines that you run into at the very beginning of the game. The weapons sound appropriate but lack punch. The game's soundtrack is also fine, though it rarely stands out. Strangely enough, the game's designers went out and licensed a whole bunch of real-world music for the jukebox in the bar that opens the game. The game has plenty of voice work in it, and most of it's just fine. After you gain the ability to spirit walk, you can also understand the alien hunters, as they essentially start to speak English. While this gives you some tactical advantage--namely, you know when they're going to throw a grenade because they call it out--they sound dumb, and it lessens their impact as fearsome, unreasonable alien invaders. Prey is an easy ride through an alien world that doesn't cash in on all its potential but still offers enough thrills to make it a worthwhile trip.

GAME REVIEW :-

7.5/10

Prey Trailer :-