Prey

Part and parcel to a succesful 3rd person shooter isn’t all that often an original story line. In a away, this is unfortunate. Of course, a good story needs good game play to back it up in order to make a title someone would want to keep coming back to. 3D Realms hit only half of the target with Prey.

The premise certainly has its original elements. Our hero Tommy, as says the tagline, doesn’t want to be a hero. Tommy wants nothing to do with his Cherokee background, the reservation he lives on or his grandfather. He just wants out, as long as his hottie girlfriend comes with him of course. Until then, he’s stuck fixin cars, though thats never once brought up unless you read the instructions. Anyhoo, Tommy’s day goes from bad to worse when his girlfriend’s bar and everyone in it is lifted into the mother-sphere (or whatever) in order to harvest the humans as food. Tommy’s got no interest in saving the world or anything, he just wants his hottie back.

In all fairness, the story is rather original and elements of gameplay are somewhat unique. Tommy learns that he can step outside of his body to fight, at least temporarily as a spirit using ancient Cherokee magic. He is also helped along the path by Talon, an indian spirit guide that takes the form of Tommy’s long dead pet hawk. Talon helps translate alien-ese signs, flys in the general direction you should head and points out certain puzzle elements as well as act as a minor distraction to enemies.

Despite all that though, the game still falls into the cookie-cutter category. Weapons are pretty much what you would expect, only alien-ized: Machine guns, rocket launcher, sniper rifle, shotgun and grenades. A decent player should complete the story on normal in about 4-5 hours. Xbox 360 owners looking to get some quick achievement points could pick this up as a rental since simply completing a level will get you an achievement. There just isn’t enough content or challenge to keep anyone really glued to Prey.

I found multiplayer to be pretty disappointing too. Not only was it very difficult to find an active game on Xbox Live, but the gameplay simply lacked any variety. Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch are your only choices in either ranked or unranked games. Even when I wasn’t faced with crippling lag, the animation was choppy and the sound (especially Tommy’s death howls) became increasingly repetetive.

I’ll give Prey kudos for having some new ideas in the story department, but otherwise it’s too short and too boring to merit a purchase.