An NPC lectured me about how what’s important is how you treat the people who are still alive, so I shotgunned her in the face. 10/10.

But seriously...

Prey is an attempt by Arkane Studios to bring the System Shock series into the modern era. The last time that Arkane did something similar was with the Thief series, which they made into Dishonored (a game that I’m a big fan of). While this is something that I would very much welcome ordinarily, Prey falls short for me in that it’s so very... bland.

I would describe Prey as an amalgamation of ideas: In addition to containing elements of the System Shock games, it also draws inspiration from Dead Space and leans especially heavily on Bioshock (which were both themselves influenced by System Shock) as well as Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and even, to some degree, Half-Life and Portal.

Make no mistake that it is (generally) good at meshing these ideas together, but in focusing on the balancing act of containing so many different elements, it forgets to have a voice or style of its own. It’s easy to see the mimics as headcrabs, the nature of augments as being reminiscent of Deus Ex, and the entire environment as being “Rapture but this time it’s in space”, and forget that this is supposed to be a different game from any of those.

It feels so very familiar that even 3-4 hours in, I was walking through hallways saying “I’ve done all of this before” like I was stuck in some kind of time loop. And while it’s reasonably well-constructed (read: coherent, with very few bugs), it’s a concoction that I don’t believe really needs to exist, because there are things it loses in this combination. It doesn’t have the isolationism feel of System Shock, or the sense of being in a tin can under constant pressure like Bioshock. It doesn’t have the scares of Dead Space, or action-movie feeling of Half-Life. And while it tries, it also doesn’t have the heart of any of these other titles.

What the game does have that is its own is generally weak. The hacking puzzles are boring, the level layouts are absurdly nonsensical, and the interesting gimmick of the mimics (mimic gimmick) disappears rapidly as you fight them over and over and over as one of the 4 different types of enemies present in the game.

The mid-game becomes a terrible slog between side quests that you don’t care about, an atmosphere that varies between generic and terribly juxtaposed, and incredibly forgettable combat mechanics. A successful game needs one of these elements to really work. It must have a) An intriguing story that keeps you glued, wondering what will happen next, b) An atmosphere that you feel you can get sucked into and become one with the world, or c) Really visceral and fun combat (or an alternative mechanic that is particularly engaging). Great games have all 3, or severely downplay the ones that aren’t the focus. This game tries hard to have its cake and eat it, too. But it’s a cake made by mashing together other, leftover cakes, and the gaps are filled in with whatever ingredients happen to be lying around, like some kind of Cake Frankenstein. Cakenstein.

With all that said, I think my least favourite part were the constant, in-your-face references to Looking Glass Studios, as if nearly everything enjoyable about the game doesn't already scream "All of our good ideas came from somewhere else". There are a couple of things that work, which I should mention. I really like the crafting / decrafting system, though the materials acquired swing particularly hard in a specific direction. The neuromods give some good options for potential replayability, and the ending (while drawn out and not worth the dozens of hours spent in the rest of the game) is at least somewhat interesting / satisfying, giving it a leg up on something like System Shock 2 or Bioshock Infinite which both have terrible endings.

Still, it’s overall disappointing that with so much excellent source material, and having made good games in the past, that Prey would come out being decently crafted, but at the same time, incredibly boring and generic. While I think that most people would probably still enjoy Prey - especially those that haven’t played one of the games that inspired it - I would much rather recommend those (especially since you could get probably all of them for the price of Prey). While each of them have their own flaws, they also have their own visions, voices, and are in various ways, vastly superior games.