(Updated 8/15/06, at the end)
This weekend I got my first taste of “Prey“, the new game from 3D Realms. (Yes, the same company behind Duke Nukem Never.. I mean Forever). It’s a first-person shooter that tells the story of “Tommy”, a Cherokee Indian, who finds himself as the unwilling savior of humanity when “The Dark Ones” return to cleanse the earth.

The game is very rooted in Cherokee Mythology (so it claims) and borrows from it extensively (so it claims). As an auto mechanic, you’ve essentially shrugged off everything to do with the Cherokee nation except the dark skin, and any attempt to get you to believe in it results in profanity. Of course, when the aliens come and kidnap you and your girlfriend, you start to think maybe it’s not so wacky afterall when you can walk through walls and find yourself invincible.

The gameplay is pretty good and the AI is respectable (easy to make AI for an alien race you know nothing about, I guess). There are no cut-scenes, everything is rendered ingame with their engine. The game is rather dark but they give you a lighter to help you through (Similar to a flashlight, but with a short-range ambient effect, instead of a directed effect). Starting off with nothing but a pipe wrench you beat your way through the alien hordes finding more and more unusual alien weapons. Of course, you can think of them as “the rifle”, “the snipergun”, “the machinegun”, “the grenade”, etc. It’s pretty standard FPS fare.

There are, however, a few things that make this game unique (The fact that there is more than 1 thing in this list is impressive enough):

  1. Portals While not quite as slick as Narbacular Drop or the Portal preview, it’s pretty impressive. The portals are static (you don’t control them) but show all the same features. It’s a bit unnerving to walk past a small box on the floor only to find that there’s a portal inside to another room. Also, portals are only visible from 1 side, and have 0 thickness. This leads to alot of puzzles which are simply “find the portal”. The transitions are perfect, completely seamless, and offer an interesting gameplay mechanic.
  2. Spirit Form You have the ability to separate your spirit from your body. While this sounds cheesy, it’s a requirement for several situations. The spirit form leaves your body unprotected (in a levitating trance-state), but the form itself is invisible to electronics and capable of passing through some forcefields. This creates several scenes of “open the door, see the 10 automated turrets, switch to spirit mode, turn them off”, as well as “see forcefield, spirit form through forcefield, deactivate”. Also, some areas are only reachable through spirit form as certain bridges and things can only be seen then.
  3. Gravity Puzzles In several rooms there are buttons on the walls (and ceiling and floor) that change the direction of gravity. This is used to reach alot of impossible areas, like hallways at the top of very tall rooms.
  4. Electric Walkways Small sidewalks that snake along the walls and ceilings. You hear the sound of metal clanking (Magnetic Boots?) as you walk on them and you can follow them all around. But if you jump or get knocked off prepare for a confusing ride as gravity remains normal and you fall back to the “ground”.
  5. Invincibility You basically can’t die. Any time you die (health hits 0, fall off a cliff, etc) you find yourself in the “spirit realm”. About 15 seconds of target practice later you’re back in the action right where you left off.

All of these together make for one really wierd game. They also make for a very nauseating experience at times as you walk through a door and find gravity in that room reversed, or 90-degrees offset. Same thing for portals. I’ve already had to take several breaks to settle my stomach, so if you’re DIMS prone beware. The story is a bit lightweight, most of the time I don’t really know why I’m running down a hallway killing aliens other than “because it’s there”. All that said, the new gameplay mechanics (gravity, portals, etc) make it worth checking out.

It’s no Half-Life 2, but it’s worth the $50 if you enjoy first-person singleplayer shooters.
[tag:game][tag:pc][tag:fps][tag:prey]

Update 12:13am:
If you have any experience with Flight Simulators, be prepared to be extremely frustrated with the vehicular controls (spaceships). When you transition from FPS to Flight-sim, the same navigational controls apply. Unfortunately, so do the same constraints (90 degrees up and down viewing) leading to some nasty gimbal lock problems.

Update 8/15/06 9:00pm
3 Days… I started on Sunday Afternoon, finished it Tuesday night.  I think we’re talking somewhere in the 6-8 hour range.  Short, but fun.  The story does get much better toward the end, although I don’t really understand the ending.

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