Damage Over Time: Prey ( Complete)

[TsunamiWombat]

Damage Over Time​

Prey​

DAMN YOU, INTERNET DEVIL TAKIN MAH DOLLARS! Okay, so you've probably noticed, Steam has some amazing deals going on right now. I PROMISED myself, I wouldn't buy in. I was going to save my money for January. Save my money for January. Save my money for... for... FIVE GAMES FOR 50 DOLLARS MUST HAVE WARGGHHH-

So you can probably guess what happened. I picked up Project Snowblind (console shooter I remember being fun), Deus Ex: Invisible War (ditto), Rogue Trooper (ditto deux), The Witcher (Titty Edition Directors Cut) and Prey.

Prey is an FPS that came out...some time in the past it was like a few years ago, didn't make that big of a splash. But it had a unique setup (it had portals before PORTALS) and stared a Cherokee protagonist living in ennui hell on a reservation. If nothing else, thats pretty damn original. So despite the game coming and going without much fame I heard good things, so I said to myself, HARK! (I say hark to myself don't judge) I SHALL PLAY THIS GAME, FOR IT IS EL CHEAPO!

And so it was.

Let's Start
I want you all to appreciate right off the bat how hard it was to screencap for this game, for some reason fullscreens just gave me a grey window, forcing me to run the game in windowed mode then edit out the frames and then do the resizing I usually do.

That being said, lets meet our protagonist.

Rico....Suavveee​

The game drops you right into your characters (whose name I forget, I think it's John, I was too busy working on the screenshot problem to remember) shoes in what I like to call the Half-Life intro for obvious reasons, your girlfreind calling for you to hurry the hell up and get out of the bathroom. After a quick monologue to yourself to give us backround exposition (you love your girlfreind, hate the reservation, and your a snarky bastard) the game lets you take control. The main character makes alot of contextual observations, like how the bathroom smells like ass, or that the bar is running low on beer. I don't know if these verbal oneshots run throughout the game, but if they do it would be awesome, as the voice acting seems to be pretty top notch.

Making my way to the front of the bar I meet plot device one your grandfather, who has a cherokee name I can't be assed to remember.

All the characters have a kinda icky claymation look despite how well they're animated, I just attribute it to the games age​

Grandpa makes with some foreshadowing, telling you that you shall have need of him in a coming hour of darkness. Being a snarky modern child and totally "not into that bullshit", you laugh him off and go to see your wench. The bar is pretty well realized, with some working game consoles (including a pacman ripoff with a viking theme and some roulette), a jukebox you can work, a black and white TV you can watch, and posters and grafitti festooning the walls. Alot of effort has gone into the little things in this game, alot of things have been carefully articulated to put you into the scene.

Remember when I said this game had a Half-Life opener? Guess what your first weapon is.

WRENCH WENCH!​

Meet plot device 2 your girlfreind whose name I also cannot remember. Don't mind her chunky arms, they only look like that when she's folding them. Despite the age of the graphics engine, the animation is VERY good, with alot of personality and humanity put into it.

Anyway, blah blah blah some contextual conversations, TUTORIAL FIGHT TIME and you kick the shit out of some rowdy rednecks with your wrench.

It's hard to make out, but there's some nice blood cake on the wrench​

Hitting those guys with the wrench was unsatisfying. I've probably been spoiled by Halflife (Opposing Force if you want to get technical) but it felt like swinging a plastic baton, no weight or nice meaty thunk when I clocked those guys. Girlfreind screams at me, horrified as I have almost beaten two men to death in her bar, but shit quickly hits the fan and we have more important things to worry about.

Shit like this.​

Finally I can get to the game! No more plot spoilers from me, btw.

2 Hours In

Uhm...uh, shit, where to begin...

This game reminds me of another atmospheric, freaky ass shooter - Area 51, which I loved (original, not shitty sequel), but gone to 11 with some nightmare lighterfluid poured over it and set off with the flames coming out of that floppy demon wang in Dante's Inferno (there IS a penis that spews flames in that game, right?). Your dumped aboard a half-ship half organic nightmare and right away you realize- your fucked. People are screaming and sobbing, horrifying monstrocities scuttle around, and while it never gets System Shock 2 or Bioshock disturbing, it does hammer away pretty fast that your nothing but -MEAT- to these things. Observe.

One for the money!​

Two for the - OH GOD HOLY SHIT​

And thats how they make spam!​

This is made even more disturbing by the fact an ally shuts this particular machine down, and when you get around to the controls, you can accidentally press the button to restart it - causing your character to go "Oh shit, what did I do?" and the chili con carne machine resumes liquifying people. And no, you can't turn it back off afterwards. Have fun living with that for the rest of your life!

The game tries somewhat unsuccessfuly to be Bioshock (before Bioshock existed), complete with melee wrench and magical powers you get as you process. Unlike Bioshock, it never actually gets scary, because when you die your transported to the spirit realm where you can shoot mynocks with a bow to regenerate the health and mana spirit power you'll respawn with. Beyond that however your suprisingly delicate - try to Rambo or, 'Halo' it as the kids are saying these days and you'll be chopped up quick, you have to use cover and kill enemies as quickly as possible. Fortunatly health pickups are plentiful, in the form of refreshing blue smoke disk thingys things OR horrifying wall anusus.

The musky scent of refreshment!​

Your weapons are all culled from the aliens, so they're a horrifying techno-organic mishmash. Your main rifle is a semi automatic with zoom in to become sniper rifle capability. It shoots spikes I think. You get grenades in the form of crawlies- you tear off their legs, throw them and they expload with a suprising radius - and enemies will use these so when you hear them say grenade, move your ass or you'll die in one hit. Then you get what I think is called the leech gun, a weapon with a rather unique ammo system- instead of picking up ammo, you leech power for the gun out of terminals you come acrossed in the walls. Power comes in different flavors - red is an energyball machine gun, ice is an...ice thrower, and lighting shoots a bolt of lightning. Hopefully there isn't a 'heart' power terminal that lets me communicate with animals (because lets face it, what kind of bullshit power is heart?)

Later on, you get dropped into a boss fight with a giant monster with machine gun/grenade launchers for hands right out of Doom (this game sure is aping alot of other FPS's isn't it?) and during the process of the fight you manage to cut one of it's hand's off with a forcefield and steal it's gun, prompting your character to say "LETS SEE HOW YOU SHITHEADS LIKE A TASTE OF IT" and then he screams "Fucking die you piece of shit!" when you finally kill it. I really like Tommy - he's the counter arguement to every silent FPS protagonist. He activly comments on situations, often in the same incredulous, horrified, or angry way the PLAYER is or would be at the game - cheering when a boss is defeated, going "Yes! A Vehicle!" when you finally get to steal a shuttle, and commenting about how bad shits about to get when you start to hear giggling and ghost children start crawling out of the ducts.

Oh yes, children are in this game. And they die. Right infront of you. SUCK ON THAT ESRB!

Anyway, the only real wallbanger about Tommy is how he REFUSES to listen to his Grandfather's advise and just keeps blindly charging ahead to try and save Jenny. Never mind he's trying to teach him to fight the aliens, never mind he's a fucking FORCE ghost, clearly Gramps is just crazy, right!?

Jazz Hands!​

5 hours in and done

WELL THAT WAS FAST.

Still, while it lasted it was fun. This game LOVES to fuck with your head, and while the story gets formulaic at some points it enjoys kicking you in the balls at others. Still over way too fast. Lets go to the scoreboard.

Graphics

It was released in 2006, so it gets a bit of a pass from me. The art design works very well for the aliens, their ship, and their technoligy - creating a horrifying melange of icky organic nastyness and clean sci-fi technoligy. Human characters fare slightly less better, being chunky and looking like plastic action figures despite the beauty of their animation.

7/10

Sound

Voice acting is top notch, I can't compliment the small cast enough for their performance, especially Mr. Greyeyes who voices the main character Tommy. Music is minimalist, swelling orchestral for combat situations and filling out sound space admirably but ultimatly nothing memorable. General sound and foley is average - weapons and technoligy make satisfying sci-fi and pew pew noises, enemies are vocal, and ambient noise is adequate. Scored slightly higher for the voice work.

8/10

Story

A creative sci-fi yarn that plays off of both real native american folk beliefs and common sci-fi conspiracy theories but done at an unusual angle. The story progresses as more or less standard fare (most of the game your only impetus is 'Save Jenny') but has one or two good twists you wouldn't expect in the formula. The after-credits scene is a standard sci-fi sequel set up with the promise that the story would countinue - sadly it has not.

Also the story leaves some up loose ends, the spirit enemies you occasionally encounter (most notably ghost children) are never explained or mentioned again after their segment, except the occasional attack by a ghost mynock.

8/10

Gameplay

Combat is standard shooter fare- run around not getting shot, shoot enemies. Sometimes you can aim for vulnerable spots for slightly more damage (headshots seem to do a bit more) but not really necessary - shooting an enemy in the chest is about the same as shooting them anywhere else and quantity over quality is the order of the day for bullets. You have a limited selection of weapons, including a wrench you will never ever use again once you get a gun, a sub-machinegun/sniper rifle, the Leech Gun which drains ammo from terminals which determin the weapons effect (rapid blaster, Freeze Thrower, Lighting Bolt, or BFGBeam), a Machine Gun/Grenade Launcher you cut off of a bosses arm, an acid throwing shotgun, and a rocket launcher that can also project a shield. You'll generally switch between weapons based on what does the most damage, how close enemies are, and what you have the most ammo for, though some enemies are best dispatched with certain weapons.

Where the game really shines is in it's headfuckery and physics manipulation. This game did portal puzzles before Portal existed, and completly distorts your concept of space. At one point you walk by a tiny rock in a glass case, go through a portal down the hall, and pop out ONTOP of that rock in the glass case stuck to it like Mario while a now GIANT hunter roars at the glass case. You will often run acrossed walls and ceilings, cling to moving platforms at odd angles, flip around gravity and use spirit walk to hit multiple switches at once.

Spirit walk is another gameplay gimmick that gets used frequently - after story events you gain the ability to take spirit form and leave your body, allowing you to pass through certain barriers and interact with the world in a limited way such as flipping switches or gathering items. You get a bow in this form but I never used spirit walk for combat, but you'll spend alot of your time in it to complete puzzles.

Also worth mentioning is Prey's difficulty system. Prey does not have easy or normal settings (though there is a harder difficulty unlockable once you complete the game), but rather automatically scales itself to the player's skill. The system seemed to work well, challenging me at certain points although death never really has a consequence, since you just enter a minigame sequence where you shoot the spirits of the dishonored dead to regenerate.

The game's physics headfuckery and puzzle content are entertaining, but combat is generally mundane and FIVE HOURS IS WAY TOO FUCKING SHORT!.

7/10

Overall

It's 10 USD right now for the christmas sale, I could advise getting it at that price. The normal full price of $15 is probably too much though. If nothing else you'll want to experiance the story. Also there's a mostly naked native american priestess in it.

Final Arbitrary Score: 7/10

Spoiler: My other DoT reviews!

Batman: Arkham Asylum
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.133129
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.155074
Dead Space
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.158240
Prey
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.163892

 

[Dragon_of_red]

Yeah, i remeber this, i got it for like 10 dollars at my local video store, i got about half way through before going meh and giving up, its not taht it wasnt fun, just the Cherokee thing with the magical bow got annoying.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Update.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Update.

Finished.

 

[scotth266]

My problem was the same that I had with Bioshock: there essentially IS no difficulty, because you have infinite lives. It had a great atmosphere, original concepts, and a bitchin' plot, but the somewhat average shooty bits and the shortness of the game made it a bargain bin title in my eyes.

Still, the ending hints at awesome sequel potential, so if the developer ever decides to come back and expound/fix the game via sequel, I'd be game for that.

EDIT: Also, the shotgun had a TERRIBLE sound effect when you fired it that sounded like someone was sneezing. This led me to refer to it as the "Snotgun."

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Ironically this was probably the last real game produced by 3d realms too.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

You were right. Did Portal puzzles before Portal.

Did it get any credit? No.


I've beaten Prey 3 times in my life. All of those playthroughs were immensely enjoyable.

Also, playing on Hard "Cherokee" difficulty gets rid of the health "spores" and the big mouth things that blow health onto you. Meaning there is no way to restore health other than the red ghosts when you die.

 

[WolfThomas]

I was annoyed that there was a bunch of other powers your grandfather offered to teach you and you only end up with two (spirit walk and a health bonus). Can't remember but I think it was 7.

This game really deserves a sequel, perhaps one of space adventuring and exploration with mindfuck planets.

 

[DeadpanLunatic]

I have removed my words from this site.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Spoiler: snip

Damage Over Time​

Prey​

DAMN YOU, INTERNET DEVIL TAKIN MAH DOLLARS! Okay, so you've probably noticed, Steam has some amazing deals going on right now. I PROMISED myself, I wouldn't buy in. I was going to save my money for January. Save my money for January. Save my money for... for... FIVE GAMES FOR 50 DOLLARS MUST HAVE WARGGHHH- Enough with the capslock already, and bolding the text doesn't make it better. So far all it does is scream "immature eyestrain" at me. If you want to accentuate things use italic (the kind of text I use right now)

So you can probably guess what happened. I picked up Project Snowblind (console shooter I remember being fun), Deus Ex: Invisible War (ditto), Rogue Trooper (ditto deux), The Witcher (Titty Edition Directors Cut) and Prey.

Prey is an FPS that came out...some time in the past it was like a few years ago, didn't make that big of a splash (If you can't be bothered to look up facts, don't bother starting a sentence where you're gonna need them). But it had a unique setup (it had portals before PORTALS) and starred a Cherokee protagonist living in ennui(?) hell on a reservation. If nothing else, thats pretty damn original. So despite the game coming and going without much fame I heard good things, so I said to myself, HARK! (I say hark to myself don't judge) I SHALL PLAY THIS GAME, FOR IT IS EL CHEAPO! I believe I already said something about capitalization

And so it was.

Let's Start
I want you all to appreciate right off the bat how hard it was to screencap for this game, for some reason fullscreens just gave me a grey window, forcing me to run the game in windowed mode then edit out the frames and then do the resizing I usually do.

That being said, lets meet our protagonist.

image snip

Rico....Suavveee​

The game drops you right into your characters (whose name I forget, I think it's John, I was too busy working on the screenshot problem to remember Again, don't go halfway into a sentence knowing you lack some piece of information to complete it. Not remembering a name from a game can mean one of two things. a) The game did a bad job associating a certain character with its respective name or b) You have a bad memory or were otherwise bothered. I've played Prey and know that it's not the former. Knowing the name of the protagonist is needed for a review. Look that kind of stuff up beforehand. (It's Tommy, by the way)) shoes in what I like to call the Half-Life intro for obvious reasons, your girlfreind calling for you to hurry the hell up and get out of the bathroom. After a quick monologue to yourself to give us background exposition (you love your girlfreind, hate the reservation, and your a snarky bastard) the game lets you take control. The main character makes alot of contextual observations, like how the bathroom smells like ass, or that the bar is running low on beer. I don't know if these verbal oneshots run throughout the game, but if they do it would be awesome, as the voice acting seems to be pretty top notch.

Making my way to the front of the bar I meet plot device one your grandfather, who has a cherokee name I can't be arsed to remember.

image snip

All the characters have a kinda icky claymation look despite how well they're animated, I just attribute it to the games age​

Grandpa makes with some foreshadowing, telling you that you shall have need of him in a coming hour of darkness. Being a snarky modern child and totally "not into that bullshit", you laugh him off and go to see your wench(I'm getting a immature fecal vocabulary vibe here. You may wanna cut down on that). The bar is pretty well realized, with some working game consoles (including a pacman ripoff with a viking theme and some roulette (Actually, no. There's Poker, Black Jack and a One-armed Bandit, but no roulette. Does the screenshot process occupy you that much? Because it isn't nearly as important as you think)), a jukebox you can work, a black and white TV you can watch, and posters and grafitti festooning the walls. Alot of effort has gone into the little things in this game, alot of things have been carefully articulated to put you into the scene.

Remember when I said this game had a Half-Life opener? Guess what your first weapon is.

image snip

WRENCH WENCH!​

We're still only five minutes into the game and this is your third large size picture. Cut down on the image use. Don't feel obliged to use images at all. Never put them in because you "need to have some". Use pictures to get something across, to illustrate a point. Don't just illustrate random objects from the game. In this case, what have we gained? We all know what a wrench looks like.

Meet plot device 2 your girlfreind whose name I also cannot remember (It's Jen). Don't mind her chunky arms, they only look like that when she's folding them. Despite the age of the graphics engine, the animation is VERY good, with alot of personality and humanity put into it.

Anyway, blah blah blah some contextual conversations, TUTORIAL FIGHT TIME and you kick the shit out of some rowdy rednecks with your wrench. Of all the largely unnecessary and detailed talk about the game's intro sequence this is the most useless and unprofessional of them all. It illustrate's in a nutshell what's wrong with your review. Too much beating about the bush, too much show, too much capslock, too much cussing, too little reviewing.

image snip again

It's hard to make out, but there's some nice blood cake on the wrench​

Hitting those guys with the wrench was unsatisfying. I've probably been spoiled by Halflife (Opposing Force if you want to get technical) but it felt like swinging a plastic baton, no weight or nice meaty thunk when I clocked those guys. Girlfreind screams at me, horrified as I have almost beaten two men to death in her bar, but shit quickly hits the fan and we have more important things to worry about.

image snip yet again

Shit like this.​

Finally I can get to the game! No more plot spoilers from me, btw.

2 Hours In

Uhm...uh, shit, where to begin... (Those kind of statements come natural in conversations, stalling for time. Written work gives you the chance to skip them and get right to business. Do so.)

This game reminds me of another atmospheric, freaky ass shooter - Area 51, which I loved (original, not shitty sequel), but gone to 11 with some nightmare lighterfluid poured over it and set off with the flames coming out of that floppy demon wang in Dante's Inferno (there IS a penis that spews flames in that game, right?)(For once you're actually judging the game and then this. What exactly do you mean?). Your dumped aboard a half-ship half organic nightmare and right away you realize- your fucked. People are screaming and sobbing, horrifying monstrocities scuttle around, and while it never gets System Shock 2 or Bioshock disturbing, it does hammer away pretty fast that your nothing but -MEAT- to these things. Observe.

snippedy

One for the money!​

snippedy

Two for the - OH GOD HOLY SHIT​

snip

And thats how they make spam!​

We needn't know how exactly the game builds an atmosphere. You're here to tell us if it does so effectively

This is made even more disturbing by the fact an ally shuts this particular machine down, and when you get around to the controls, you can accidentally press the button to restart it - causing your character to go "Oh shit, what did I do?" and the chili con carne machine resumes liquifying people. And no, you can't turn it back off afterwards. Have fun living with that for the rest of your life!

The game tries somewhat unsuccessfuly to be Bioshock (before Bioshock existed), complete with melee wrench and magical powers you get as you process (It's a bit strange you still tell the game off for similarities after admitting it was made before Bioshock). Unlike Bioshock, it never actually gets scary, because when you die your transported to the spirit realm where you can shoot mynocks with a bow to regenerate the health and mana spirit power you'll respawn with (And Bioshock had free Vita-Chambers. That's a weak argument). Beyond that however your suprisingly delicate - try to Rambo or, 'Halo' it as the kids are saying these days and you'll be chopped up quick, you have to use cover and kill enemies as quickly as possible. Fortunatly health pickups are plentiful, in the form of refreshing bluepurple smoke disk thingys things OR horrifying wall anuses.

image snip once more

The musky scent of refreshment!​

Your weapons are all culled from the aliens, so they're a horrifying techno-organic mishmash. Your main rifle is a semi automatic with zoom in to become sniper rifle capability. It shoots spikes I think. You get grenades in the form of crawlies- you tear off their legs, throw them and they exploade with a suprising radius - and enemies will use them so when you hear them say grenade, move your ass or you'll die in one hit. Then you get what I think (Less thinking more knowing) is called the leech gun, a weapon with a rather unique ammo system- instead of picking up ammo, you leech power for the gun out of terminals you come acrossed in the walls. Power comes in different flavors - red is an energyball machine gun, ice is an...ice thrower, and lighting shoots a bolt of lightning. Hopefully there isn't a 'heart' power terminal that lets me communicate with animals (because lets face it, what kind of bullshit power is heart?)

Later on, you get dropped into a boss fight with a giant monster with machine gun/grenade launchers for hands right out of Doom (this game sure is aping alot of other FPS's isn't it?) and during the process of the fight you manage to cut one of it's hand's off with a forcefield and steal it's gun, prompting your character to say "LETS SEE HOW YOU SHITHEADS LIKE A TASTE OF IT" and then he screams "Fucking die you piece of shit!" when you finally kill it. I really like Tommy - he's the counter arguement to every silent FPS protagonist. He actively comments on situations, often in the same incredulous, horrified, or angry way the PLAYER is or would be at the game - cheering when a boss is defeated, going "Yes! A Vehicle!" when you finally get to steal a shuttle, and commenting about how bad shits about to get when you start to hear giggling and ghost children start crawling out of the ducts.

Oh yes, children are in this game. And they die. Right infront of you. SUCK ON THAT ESRB!

Anyway, the only real wallbanger about Tommy is how he REFUSES to listen to his Grandfather's advise and just keeps blindly charging ahead to try and save Jenny. Never mind he's trying to teach him to fight the aliens, never mind he's a fucking FORCE ghost, clearly Gramps is just crazy, right!?

one last image snip. Seriously, ten large size images for a review this length? That would be enough to get through reviewing an entire series in detail.

Jazz Hands!​

5 hours in and done

WELL THAT WAS FAST.

Still, while it lasted it was fun. This game LOVES to fuck with your head, and while the story gets formulaic at some points it enjoys kicking you in the balls at others. Still over way too fast. Lets go to the scoreboard.

Graphics

It was released in 2006, so it gets a bit of a pass from me. The art design works very well for the aliens, their ship, and their technology - creating a horrifying melange of icky organic nastyness and clean sci-fi technology. Human characters fare slightly less better (Less better? I believe you're looking for the word "worse"), being chunky and looking like plastic action figures despite the beauty of their animation.

7/10

Sound

Voice acting is top notch, I can't compliment the small cast enough for their performance, especially Mr. Greyeyes who voices the main character Tommy. Music is minimalist, swelling orchestral for combat situations and filling out sound space admirably but ultimatly nothing memorable. General sound and foley is average - weapons and technology (Three times in a row is no typo no more. The word is technology not technoligy) make satisfying sci-fi and pew pew noises, enemies are vocal, and ambient noise is adequate. Scored slightly higher for the voice work.

8/10

Story

A creative sci-fi yarn that plays off of both real native american folk beliefs and common sci-fi conspiracy theories but done at an unusual angle. The story progresses as more or less standard fare (most of the game your only impetus is 'Save Jenny') but has one or two good twists you wouldn't expect in the formula. The after-credits scene is a standard sci-fi sequel set up with the promise that the story would countinue - sadly it has not.

Also the story leaves some up loose ends, the spirit enemies you occasionally encounter (most notably ghost children) are never explained or mentioned again after their segment, except the occasional attack by a ghost mynock.

8/10

Gameplay

Combat is standard shooter fare (Stop saying fare) - run around not getting shot, shoot enemies. Sometimes you can aim for vulnerable spots for slightly more damage (headshots seem to do a bit more) but not really necessary - shooting an enemy in the chest is about the same as shooting them anywhere else and quantity over quality is the order of the day for bullets. You have a limited selection of weapons, including a wrench you will never ever use again once you get a gun, a sub-machinegun/sniper rifle, the Leech Gun which drains ammo from terminals which determin the weapons effect (rapid blaster, Freeze Thrower, Lighting Bolt, or BFGBeam), a Machine Gun/Grenade Launcher you cut off of a bosses arm, an acid throwing shotgun, and a rocket launcher that can also project a shield. You'll generally switch between weapons based on what does the most damage, how close enemies are, and what you have the most ammo for, though some enemies are best dispatched with certain weapons.

Where the game really shines is in it's headfuckery and physics manipulation. This game did portal puzzles before Portal existed, and completly distorts your concept of space. At one point you walk by a tiny rock in a glass case, go through a portal down the hall, and pop out ONTOP of that rock in the glass case stuck to it like Mario while a now GIANT hunter roars at the glass case. You will often run acrossed walls and ceilings, cling to moving platforms at odd angles, flip around gravity and use spirit walk to hit multiple switches at once.

Spirit walk is another gameplay gimmick that gets used frequently - after story events you gain the ability to take spirit form and leave your body, allowing you to pass through certain barriers and interact with the world in a limited way such as flipping switches or gathering items. You get a bow in this form but I never used spirit walk for combat, but you'll spend alot of your time in it to complete puzzles.

Also worth mentioning is Prey's difficulty system. Prey does not have easy or normal settings (though there is a harder difficulty unlockable once you complete the game), but rather automatically scales itself to the player's skill. The system seemed to work well, challenging me at certain points although death never really has a consequence, since you just enter a minigame sequence where you shoot the spirits of the dishonored dead to regenerate.

The game's physics headfuckery and puzzle content are entertaining, but combat is generally mundane and FIVE HOURS IS WAY TOO FUCKING SHORT!.

7/10

Overall

It's 10 USD right now for the christmas sale, I could advise getting it at that price. The normal full price of $15 is probably too much though. If nothing else you'll want to experiance the story. Also there's a mostly naked native american priestess in it.

Final Arbitrary Score: 7/10

Format inspired by NewClassic. Shine on, you crazy diamond.

I have to give you credit for the amount of effort you put into the image work (because you said so, not because I feel obliged). Unfortunately that's about where my accolade ends. If you want to get better at reviewing, there's a long road ahead of you. Some things you'll need to change and improve, others need to come to an end right now. Let's start with those.

No more all-capslocked words.

No more obscenities. If you want to be a decent reviewer, redtape the words anus, wench, wang and penis from your vocabulary right now. You can keep the words ass, hell, shit, bullshit and damn but the usage has to be seriously trimmed. Less then a tenth of your current dosage.

No more backstory. Let's face it. We don't care why you bought the game. We don't care what you've been saving your money for. We don't want to hear what games you bought recently. And we definetely don't need your ahms and uhms and where-to-begins. The sooner you put an end to that the better. We want a polished review. Nothing more nothing less.

Now then, let's come to the areas that need change or improvement.

Image use. Do you know the old saying that an image is worth a thousand words? In your case, that means your review just got ten-thousand words longer. Overly use of images is no different from getting overly verbose. Just like you should aim to be concise and succinct in your writing you should aim for the same goal in your use of images. Never include them blindly. Put yourself in our shoes and judge the images you included here in terms of their relevance. Do we really need to know exactly how Tommy looks like? And his Grandfather? And his girlfriend? And his wrench?

Style. Right now, your style is best described as immature. Less swearing, Less capslock and were off to flying start on this one. After that, the exact direction you want to take is up to you.

Grammar. You didn't make a lot of mistakes per se, but throughout large parts of your review you more or less abandoned grammar and started cutting sentences in halves. It breaks flow. Which neatly links to the next topic.

Flow. Do me a favor. Read that review out loud to yourself. Or rather, try to read it out loud to yourself. With all the capslock-screaming and half-sentences, I doubt you're even able to do so. That's what reading the review feels like to anyone who hasn't written it. Not a nice thought, is it? Apart from stopping the capslock use and starting the grammar use, the most important thing to remember here is this: Shorter sentences are better than longer sentences. The longer a sentence gets, and above all, the more commatas it uses, the more confusing it gets. After a while it's hard to tell whether you end an addendum and start a new one, start an addendum on an addendum or move on to the actual sentence. The next time you write a review, read it out aloud to yourself. If you stagger or stumble, the sentence needs reviewing.

Actual reviewing. It's easy to believe that anything with a score at it's end is a review, but that's not the case. Actually, some of the best reviews I ever read left out the scores. What sets the review apart from other written work is the fact that you should be judging. Judging on a numeric base is one way, but optimally you should be judging throughout the entirety of your review so that you don't even need numeric scores. This is the area your "review" falls flat on its nose in. You spend a lot of time and words telling us what exactly the game does, but far too little telling us how it does it. The occasions you do judge are as seldom as they are haphazard. Let me say this once: We don't want to know what weapons there are in the game so much as we want to know whether the weapons in the game are well-designed, balanced and creative. We don't care about the details of the story so much as we care about the quality of the plot, dialogue and atmosphere. Keep this in your mind and you'll be good to go.

Apart from all that, I definitely saw some potential here, keep em coming. And if you need help, feel free to contact me (Though if you want actual help, you're probably better of asking NewClassic).

Damage Over Time isn't intended as a 'review', the 'review' is just tacked onto the end as closing thoughts. The point of Damage Over Time is that I realized my opinions on a videogame would often FLUCTUATE while I was playing them - for instance my initial elation when playing X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and my later dissapointment when the game decided to jump back onto the movie plot and just dragged out into shit during the closing levels.

The point is to capture my thoughts about the game as i'm thinking them, thus the Tweet Format - which means throwing my idea's up as quickly and sometimes haphazardly as possible. This one isn't a terribly good example because it's so short, but my Arkham Asylum piece took SEVERAL updates, somewhere between six and eight, over a period of two or three days. I do not, as would be expected in a traditional review, play the whole game then compose my thoughts because I feel the the moments have been lost at that point. I usually try to update every 2 or 3 hours to post my thoughts on the game, whats currently happening, or what I feel is important about it in order to give people a better impression of what playing the game is like. Proof reading is almost non existant, and the immature humor is almost as much for my own amusement as anyone elses. It works well with my ADD.

In short, all of the things you told me to do would be -GREAT- advice for a real reviewer, but for me, is completly missing the point.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Prey is on sale foe 2.45 today, a pretty good price despite it's length.

 

[oliveira8]

Prey is on sale foe 2.45 today, a pretty good price despite it's length.

Actually...believe it or not...Prey...SOLD OUT ON STEAM!
(I'm deeply confused too...)

Anyway nice review, I remember hearing about Prey before it came out...years ago. I remember the words "Awesome and game changing" being thrown a lot those days before it's release....

Ahhhh previews....

 

[TsunamiWombat]

LOL it DID sell out.

Our sale on Prey was so popular we ran out of keys!! If we can get more, we'll try to bring this deal back. In the meantime, 2K Games has added BioShock to the set of daily deals on Steam, at 75% OFF today only. Happy holidays!

They ran out of randomly generated CD keys XD

 

[DeadpanLunatic]

I have removed my words from this site.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

I absolutely despised this game, and for some reason finished it out of a masochistic stubborn nerd- determination.

The shuttle sections were godawful, the weapons felt weak, gimmicky and unsatisfying, the protagonist was a total dick, the voice acting was dire...

Honestly, the only redeeming features it had for me were the nice graphic textures, some pretty vistas and the rather harrowing on rails section you mentioned above.

One of my worst hated titles in 22 years as a gamer. I hated it even more than Red Ninja.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

I have fans? YAY I have fans!

I absolutely despised this game, and for some reason finished it out of a masochistic stubborn nerd- determination.

The shuttle sections were godawful, the weapons felt weak, gimmicky and unsatisfying, the protagonist was a total dick, the voice acting was dire...

Honestly, the only redeeming features it had for me were the nice graphic textures, some pretty vistas and the rather harrowing on rails section you mentioned above.

One of my worst hated titles in 22 years as a gamer. I hated it even more than Red Ninja.

I almost completly disagree, except the parts about the action segments. They were exceedingly average. I liked the protagonist (except when he was talking to Gramps) and the voice acting was awesome.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

I have fans? YAY I have fans!

I absolutely despised this game, and for some reason finished it out of a masochistic stubborn nerd- determination.

The shuttle sections were godawful, the weapons felt weak, gimmicky and unsatisfying, the protagonist was a total dick, the voice acting was dire...

Honestly, the only redeeming features it had for me were the nice graphic textures, some pretty vistas and the rather harrowing on rails section you mentioned above.

One of my worst hated titles in 22 years as a gamer. I hated it even more than Red Ninja.

I almost completly disagree, except the parts about the action segments. They were exceedingly average. I liked the protagonist (except when he was talking to Gramps) and the voice acting was awesome.

Oh well... I think it's a game like Far Cry 2 in that it divides people a lot!