Chairs Made of Monsters--Prey

My experience with XBox Game Pass came to an end recently, but not before I was able to play a couple of excellent games.  By far, my favorite game from the experience is Prey.  Prey had been loosely on my radar prior to Game Pass, but I just hadn't heard enough about it to motivate me to look into it more.  It sat on my Steam wishlist for awhile and then I finally took it off.  Well, it's firmly back on the list and I'm planning on snapping it up the next time it goes on sale--one playthrough is not enough for this absolutely awesome game.  I am very surprised that I hadn't heard more about it--in my opinion it's very underrated.

The story in Prey starts off with you choosing your character (there's no agonizing character design decisions to be made--you choose a male or female character.  Since the game is first-person you don't see your character other than in the initial character selection screen.).  Your character is about to embark on an exciting experience as part of scientific research taking place on a space station.  Before you go into space though, you have to complete a few simple tests (which are very confusing at the beginning of the game--they are stupidly easy and simplistic...it makes no sense).  Things quickly get more complicated as your character progresses through the tests and witnesses an attack on the scientists conducting the test--a small, agile black headcrab-like creature disguised as a coffee cup kills a scientist!  Your character is utterly confused as alarms start blaring and the testing environment disappears.  What now?  The only option is to try to escape the testing rooms to figure out what is actually happening...but that weird, black blob thing is out there!  As your character navigates their way out of the test rooms, they discover that the testing environment which appeared to be on Earth, is actually an elaborate ruse!  You were actually on the space station the entire time!  What the heck?  The rest of the story involves exploring the alien infested space station and working to figure out 1.) how you're going to get off the station/a solution for the station and 2.) the story behind the events on the station.  Things get much, much more complicated, but I don't want to spoil it.

Some gameplay stats for reference--I am a completionist and tried to do as much exploring and complete as many sidequests and tasks as I could.  My total playthrough clocked in at somewhere around 30-40 hours (I did quite a bit of exploring and the game could definitely be completed much more quickly).  I felt like the game was the perfect length--not too short and not obscenely, pointlessly long.

Pros:
+Amazing setting--it's sort of like BioShock meets space.  The station is broken up into different zones based on the type of activity that took place there; since it was a research station there are various labs scattered throughout the station.  There are also areas where the mundane daily tasks took place on the station--crew quarters, the medical offices, the cargo bays, and the shuttle bay.  Even though the station is in space, the interior has been designed with a sort of future meets retro feeling.  It's an Arkane game, so you can expect tons of detail (think Dishonored).

The graphics are gorgeous and it looks amazing.

+Talents lend themselves to multiple playstyles.  You can try to be stealthy and sneak around enemies (as much as is possible); you can take skills that bulk up your combat-based skills with better weapon damage and a larger pool of health; or you can put points in skills that help you manipulate the environment through hacking.  Eventually you unlock a complete new pool of talents that also give you....a more diverse set of talents (it's kind of spoiler-y, so I'm not going to go into detail about it).

+Exploring all the nooks and crannies of the space station is fun.  There are many sidequests and side tasks.  One of the side tasks that I (sort of weirdly) enjoyed was trying to track down all the crew members on the ship.  Throughout the various areas of the ship are security stations that track the location of every person on the station.  Many crew members have been killed, but tracking down their remains paints a picture of the chaos taking place throughout the station.  Many of them also were carrying personal communication devices called transcribes which will unlock short audio recordings.  These recordings help reveal the story about the station and the events leading up to the apparent alien invasion.  Finding remains isn't a simple, linear affair and can require some creative problem solving to figure out how to navigate to sometimes hard to reach locations.  There are generally multiple paths and options to reach certain areas.  Not every area in the station is a part of the main story but every area is worth exploring.

One of the more interesting parts of the station is the fact that you can find and unlock various airlocks.  The airlocks allow you to traverse the outside of the station--you are basically floating through space!  It's a very cool feeling at first, but it's also painfully slow.  Exploring the exterior of the station is important because there are certain areas that have been damaged and are only accessible by finding where the breaches have occurred and then accessing them from the outside.  There's also the reality that there are fewer enemies on the outside of the station--by travelling from airlock to airlock you can avoid enemies who have respawned in the interior.

+ Combat can be tough, but is enjoyable.  I found the beginning of the game to be especially tough.  The aliens, even the small ones, hit hard.  You're going to need to put serious thought into what is the best way to either avoid them or quickly take them out.  As you progress through the station you will find many different types of enemies and each requires figuring out the best way to take them out.  Enemies also respawn each time you leave an area and then return so you always have to be on your toes.  The first aliens you are introduced to have the unique ability to mimic objects--they can pop-up from basically anywhere.  Be prepared to get beat up in the first few hours of the game.

+Plenty of optional side missions to keep you busy and take you to areas of the ship which you might skip over otherwise.  Completing them is worthwhile for story based reasons and also just to find more resources or upgrades.  One of my favorite (and most difficult) side missions involved a group of workers who played a D&D type of RPG together.  The leader of this group created a treasure hunt for the members and as you find their remains (yeah, they died) you find their maps.  Unlocking the "treasure" requires interpreting the locations on the maps (which are vaguely labelled with the level designation) and then figuring out a set of numbers.  I found two of the numbers on my own and had to look up two of them--they're well-hidden and easy to miss.

+ There's the main story and then there's the story within the story.  There are tons of workstations to hack, transcribe recordings to find, and files and e-mails to read which help you learn even more about the characters and events on the station.

+ Handy crafting system.  There are tons of objects scattered around the station and everything is useful in some way.  Items that are flagged as trash can be broken down by special machines into crafting materials which can be turned into other items.  You can craft a ton of consumables (it does require finding the blueprints first--this is yet another good reason to explore as much as possible).  There were moments when I was genuinely worried about having enough consumables/ammo, but with some careful hoarding you will eventually find yourself flush with crafting materials.  This doesn't mean you can go crazy, but you should have enough to be able to craft what you need.

+Choices.  There are many choices sprinkled throughout the game, but the major one comes at the end and influences the type of ending you get.  There's also another ending (think BioShock) that really throws you for a loop (super, super spoiler-y, so not gonna talk about it) and takes into account the many choices you made throughout the game--but even then, you can still choose.  It's great!

+Weapons.  Most of the weapons you find in the game are pretty standard shooter fare--your pistol and shotgun.  But this is a game in space so you really need a cool, space-y gun.  Behold the Gloo gun!  This is one of the first weapons you find in the game and in the beginning it seems marginally useful--it shoots blobs of a constrictive, foam-like substance that hardens on contact.  In the beginning of the game it is particularly useful for stopping enemies in their tracks so you can clobber them with your one damaging weapon...a big wrench (BioShock, eh?).  However, you also have to think outside the box with the Gloo gun--the blobs of hardened foam can be used as a handy traversal tool--just plop down an ascending trail of blobs and you can reach virtually any seemingly out of reach area (and, if you want to track down all the crew members you're going to need to get creative about how you reach them).  Traversal with the Gloo gun isn't as easy as it seems though--Gloo blobs don't stick to themselves so you have to figure out the best positioning to help you climb from blob to blob.

Cons:
- No fast travel system.  There were several points where I found myself running between different areas to do side missions or tasks and I realized that I was kind of tired of it.  Enemies respawn and there's always the possibility of the Nightmare (a lethal, giant alien that periodically appears and will hunt you for 2 minutes at a time--your best option is to run and find a good hiding spot until that time runs out) popping up to derail your plans.  Eventually you do figure out how to repair the lobby elevator which does help cut down your travel time, but there's a part of me that wished for some faster travel.  There's another part of me that thinks fast travel would sort of ruin the element of surprise and the general shocking aspect of enemies popping up from anywhere.  Its a toughy.

-Travelling on the exterior of the station is really amazing at first, but the major downside is that it is cripplingly slow.  Your character uses a sort of thruster pack to help them navigate through the zero-G atmosphere.  Figuring out how to navigate in zero-G takes some getting used to.  If you're going for completion there are several crew member bodies that are floating around the exterior of the station.  A couple of them require painfully long space walks.  There are a few upgrades that you can find throughout the station which help to speed up your thruster speed, but it's still very, very slow.

-I didn't run into any major bugs or performance issues, but I did encounter one buggy mission.  I was supposed to find someone, I had already found them prior to picking up the mission, so the mission wouldn't complete in my log.  This is something minor, but still irritating.

Recommendation:
I absolutely loved Prey!  I cannot believe that it didn't get more buzz or accolades because it is absolutely worth playing and is totally underrated.  If you are the type of person who loved BioShock and are looking for a similar experience...Prey is a perfect fit.  I plan on adding it to my permanent collection the minute it goes on sale.

As a note, I played it on Game Pass but got a notification shortly before I finished it that it was on the list to be removed.  By now, it has probably already been removed from the service.  Just buy it; it's definitely worth it.