Prey Is a Great Game That I Will Never Be Able to Play

By Trion Jenkins on May 29, 2017

via New Game Network

Prey was one of those games I nearly bought from the hype alone. Could you blame me? Bethesda knows what they are doing when it comes to hyping a game. It looks great, the premise interested me, and most importantly, it comes from developer Arkane Studios, who did the excellent Dishonored and Dishonored 2 games, which I loved.

I was sold on this game from its announcement. The hype train chugged on when Arkane released a demo of Prey roughly a week in advance of release, titled the “Opening Hour Demo.” This early look at the game had me excited at first until I realized how frightening the game can be.

Prey doesn’t set out to be a horror game. In reality, it is what’s become known as an immersive simulation, and it looks like a really great game, at least from the videos I’ve seen. I say that because I haven’t actually played much of the game myself. Despite the game having been released nearly three weeks ago, I couldn’t get past that first Opening Hour. The Opening Hour Demo does a god job of introducing the story, then letting players loose to discover Talos I, the space station that serves as the setting. Everything was going swell; I had escaped my false apartment, picked up a wrench from a nearby corpse (sorry, Patricia), and I was making my way to the lobby. Then came the Mimics.

Mimics in Prey are like rats, slimes, or other weakling monsters in a Role-Playing Game; you encounter them early and often, but they’re only strong enough to do any real damage early on in the game. After that, they’re the small-fry; not really much of a threat to you anymore. At least they shouldn’t be. They likely won’t be, so long as you’re not a scaredy-cat like me.

The first few times I’d encountered a Mimic, I had a relatively easy time dispatching them with my trusty wrench since they only appeared one at a time. Even spotting them hadn’t been too difficult, as long as I knew what to look for: two chairs at one office desk, a box set apart from a stack that suddenly shifts slightly, three shoes (not three pairs of shoes, three shoes sitting next to each other). Silly Mimic, shoes don’t come in threes! Most famously, the coffee mugs. As made famous in the early trailers, coffee mugs are not to be trusted. I’m sure by now there’s a coffee mug shortage on Talos I right now. Pots too, can’t trust them. In fact, I can’t trust those plants either. Or those binders on the desk. Or any of these office chairs. Or the lounge seats or tables. Or those banana peels on the floor. Or … uh-oh.

The Trash Attacks

At one point, I walked into a conference room with tons of chairs, desks, and paperwork everywhere and thought “So many binders, coffee mugs, and chairs, some of those have to be duplicates!” So, I set about throwing boxes all over the room. Nothing. Either I was too far to hit my target or I missed the Mimic and hit a normal chair or something. This continued for a while until I ran out of things to throw (the previous hallway had plenty of non-mimic items for me).

Finally, satisfied that nothing could hurt me, I explored the scenery. Then, the scenery attacked. Three Mimics sprang to life with inky, black legs. I smashed them all with my wrench, but there was still damage. No, not on my player character, on me. When that silence was broken by the sudden blast of music, and that awful sound played signifying something had spotted me and was ready to attack; when I turned to see no less than three Mimics coming at me, I screamed.

This made Prey feel very tense to me. The idea that anything in the environment – anything – could be a Mimic, could jump out and attack my face, as these little spider monsters do, struck a nerve with me. I couldn’t keep going. In this way, Prey made me distrustful. In a game world, players have learned to trust the environment to sit there and look pretty, not to come to life and attack you. Prey takes away my trust in the world; it made me fear everything around me. Like a child first learning about “germs” I wanted nothing more than to huddle up in a corner of my safe false apartment, with the supply of food and a bottle of brandy (hey, even on the spaceport of Talos 1, the workers need to kick back now and again), and stay there forever, hidden from the ink monsters outside.

At one point, I had to put the controller down. That was when I asked myself, if I can’t get through this early stuff, how can I expect to get through the rest of the game? What would I do when the bigger enemies come along?

Actually, I’d probably be fine. Once bigger enemies, who can’t hide in the environment show up, I’ll be able to spot them. I can prepare for those fights, or maybe avoid them entirely. But the constant threat of Mimics stops me from getting there. Maybe I can push on to get the Mimic detector, if my heart can handle it …

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