I played the heck out of the original Prey (released in 2006) on Xbox 360 so I was all in when the new game was announced. Prey may have come out in 2017, but with the downloadable Typhoon Hunter expansion being released in 2018, what better time than now than to take another look at the game?
How to Download Prey
You can download Prey from Steam, together with the DLC Mooncrash (released in June 2018) and with Typhon Hunter, the multiplayer expansion (released in December the same year). To start, click on the Download link below the review.
The Game Review
If you love sci-fi then you will love this game. The opening section is one of the best opening sections of any first person shooter I have ever played. It sets things up perfectly and the large space station that you are on truly feels like it is alive.
Prey: the Story
Without giving too much away, on this space station some scientists are screwing around with things that they should not be and guess what? It all goes bad and you are in a fight for survival! I enjoyed the main story of Prey, but as you explore you pick up little things here and there that let you see this space station was truly alive and it all helps to make the world the game is set in feel more real.
The Choices
Many games will tell you that your actions have consequences, but that is extra true for this title. You see rather than have your moral standing be based on what you say to people it is based on what you actually do.
I found this to be really cool and one of the more interesting aspects of the game. For example, will you save the humans that have been brainwashed and try to help them? Or will you take the easy option and just blow them away? There are many moments like this where you have a choice and more often than not the hardest choice is the moral choice.
The Gameplay in Prey
The gameplay here is a lot of fun and far more robust than what the original Prey offered. As this is from Bethesda you will not be surprised to know there is a lot going on here. Calling it just another first-person shooter is very harsh.
While you will be doing a great deal of exploration, the game also has a robust level and upgrade system, a large open world and you can generally tackle missions in any way that you see fit. It made me feel like I was a star in my own sci-fi movie and that was something I thought was really cool.
The tension that Prey offers is really cool. The aliens (called Typhons) that you will be killing are really gross looking and they remind me of a hybrid of the aliens from Apollo 18, Dead Space and a little bit of the sci-fi horror masterpiece, The Thing threw in there too. These aliens can hide as regular objects and this may sound silly, but it can make walking into what you think is an empty room very scary.
Typhon Hunter
Just recently a new update was released for Prey called, the Typhon Hunter expansion and it is free. It offers up two game modes. One is a single player mode that is based in VR where you need to escape from different rooms.
The other is a really cool multiplayer mode that is very reminiscent of Call of Duty’s prop hunt. The idea being that one player controls Morgan from the main game and the others are aliens who can disguise themselves as random objects. It is up to Morgan to find and kill them all. This mode is an absolute blast and well worth checking out.
The Bottom Line
I really do not think that this title got the love it deserved. It was critically well received, but it never exactly lit up the sales charts. You can now get the game for dirt cheap and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
If you love sci-fi and games that feature some scares as well as some great action. Prey is something that you are going to have a lot of fun with. Prey did not have the smoothest launch (like many Bethesda games!) but now most of the glitches and issues have long been fixed.
The Typhon Hunter expansion is a lot of fun so if you have already played Prey, it is well worth installing again to check this out.
