Prey (2006)

[JaySevenZero]

Here's where you can contribute your memories and opinions of Prey (2006) for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.

Friendly reminder to all that where feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but self-editing (brevity) is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mainly reading. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.

[Simonsloth]

Prey was the first game I ever played on the Xbox 360 when I double dipped at about halfway through the last generation having been a PlayStation 3 owner first and foremost. At the time it seemed different and inventive without setting my world alight.

Playing it in this day and age makes me glad that first person shooters and games in general have moved on a lot. Aside from the occasional spirit walking, gravity and portal elements the game is the definition of a generic Xbox game. Enemies, weapons and levels are ultimately forgettable and I found myself looking up level names on a walkthrough to see how much I had left to wade through. The weapons themselves lack any oomph with poor feedback and sound design. The grenades are one of the worst I can remember in any game rarely landing where I hoped.

There a few nice moments which reminded me of Starbreeze’s Darkness which I now realise came after but these were the only bits I really enjoyed. Maybe if the developers had spent less time putting a working jukebox and gambling machines in the game and more time on weapons and enemy design the game would have been better. I feel I’m perhaps being overaly harsh judging it by today’s standards but when compared to the previously mentioned Darkness and Portal released a year later it has aged very badly.

[Magical_Isopod]

Prey is really dated for a few reasons... It's kind of like the two headed step child of first person shooters, being designed over the span of a decade or more and also releasing in the same period of time as Half-Life 2 and Call of Duty 4. A lot of its ideas and aesthetics were very obviously 90s, with some clear Quake and Unreal inspiration in there... But it was never really up to snuff compared to its contemporaries. It felt outdated in 2006, and age has not helped it, with games like Dusk using the retro aesthetic while actually being great.

What really stood out to me was the use of a Cherokee man as the protagonist, and actually having him start the game living on rez, which is still incredibly rare 13 years later. They even had a Plains Cree actor do his voicework. Having grown up near the Aamjiwnaang (pronounced om-jih-nong) reserve in Ontario, I thought the representation was great. Whether or not indigenous groups were consulted on this game or not, I have no idea - but what seemed less great to me was the use of spiritualism as a game mechanic... It seemed less like the creators were interested in indigenous culture, and more like a bunch of white guys thought it was a great idea for a video game during a brainstorming session. I really do appreciate the representation, but I felt the delivery was tacky. It's WAY more respectful than the treatment indigenous characters have gotten in other games. But if you're using culture and folklore as a game mechanic, you really have to tread carefully and do it right.

What disappoints me more, however, is that the remake completely ignores the one element of Prey that made it unique - instead of taking the "native dude fighting aliens" idea and doing it with more tact and respect, they just kind of erased Tommy from existence, pretended none of it ever happened. I haven't finished the 2017 one, I found it a chore to play, so maybe he's hiding in there somewhere. But I remember being really hyped that the original pitch for Prey 2 may have featured an older Tommy in a cameo or supporting role as a seasoned alien bounty hunter. I thought that would have been an awesome tribute, if nothing else. Pretending the past didn't happen, erasing an indigenous protagonist from history, and doing nothing to acknowledge the previous work... That almost seems like the worst possible way to go about switching gears; eerily similar to how Canadian and American governments like to minimalize indigenous culture and pretend North America is British land.

Overall, Prey is kind of just "okay" as a shooter. It deserves a place in history for actually making an effort to have an indigenous lead who isn't just a facsimile on some polygons. But as a game, it's really nothing exceptional.

[The_reviewist]

I blasted my way through Prey many moons ago on the 360, and at the time I remember it being moderately impressive, although never wholly groundbreaking. But it did at least feel like a mish-mash of some of the better aspects of the then-current linear story fps shooters. As well as featuring the use of portals a good year before Valve's masterwork blew us all away.

At the end of the day, it's a curio rather than a must-play. With the understandable feel of being a mod of Quake 4 rather than a wholly original design. But it did feature some solid mechanics, a few novel twists, not least of all the inclusion of a Native American protagonist in Tommy, the bitter mechanic, with serious issues about his life and no time for his heritage or people. It's a bold choice, and one that felt much more interesting than a swathe of the other "white guy soldier" heroes doing the rounds.

The plot itself was a little paint by numbers in game terms, although I do recall the moment when you finally have to gun down your own girlfriend after she's been surgically grafted onto an alien monster did at least feel like a sly and subversive turn. It's not a game I've ever really felt much wish to revisit, but I'm glad that I played it back then.