Prey (2006)

I don't know how to rate this. Many players give it an 8 or 9 calling this fun, genius and the reviews praise this game most of the time. I gave it a low score because I used this game as an example of bad level design and game design in my site. I mean, if you compare it to Half Life 2, it clearly lacks many of the modern design principles that other games have adopted. But if you compare it to Quake 2 and other FPS, it brings in some innovations.

One the things I've criticized was how the design in this game is all about gluing together things in a non-cohesive way. Aliens and native Americans with the power of astral projection. That's pretty much the plot of this game. The aliens have come to devour the whole planet, which is extensively used in some movies such as "Independence Day" and super hero comics. You begin on Earth inside a bar. Right in the beginning the aliens abduct you and other characters. The whole game takes place in the alien spaceship, with some segments taking place in a spiritual land. Tommy's girlfriend is abducted and what the game tells is a race to rescue her. They never explain the origins of the aliens or the character himself.

id tech 4, the same tech that powered doom 3 and quake iv. The fact that it could render real time lights and shadows was much superior do quake 2, unreal and other games which had pre computed lightmaps at a very low resolution. Real time specular and normal maps really made the game be more detailed than unreal or half-life for instance. Unreal had portals years before, but Prey showcased portals that could move around and be turned on in real time. In Unreal they were static and could not be turned on and off.

I disliked the weapons because they all felt bizarre. I couldn't identify their purpose or function. Many other players like them thought because they felt organic, alien and something fun to use.

The combination of astral projection or spirit walk felt so odd with aliens. Even more odd because killing aliens replenished your spirit health bar. While at the same time, firing arrows spend the same spirit health bar. It didn't make any sense for the spirit to be immune to hazards and at the same time be vulnerable to fall damage.

The anti-gravity walkways were not seen in other games. I think that this is another reason for people liking it. I criticized this because I often felt that they were underused or they just didn't made sense from an architectural point of view. For example: there is a chasm and there is a regular bridge, why place an anti-gravity track there to allow the player to cross it? Or why replace a regular staircase with it?

They also had some devices that could flip the whole level upside down. Throughout the game I couldn't help it but notice how they made levels without much thinking on making levels that felt feasible. They didn't invest much into making places that felt realistic and presented a good degree of challenge at the same time.

The environment art was really terrible. The whole game looks washed out with low contrast. They made a lot of art with some graphic sexual content for some reason. It seems to be borrowing the same themes from Duke Nukem 3D. I wrote in my site how the lighting and textures in this game made it very hard to navigate, because you are often lost with no clear directions. They made levels that often misguide the player because they made places that look reachable when they aren't or lights so strong that blind the player.

For me the worst part of this game is that they left all puzzles and challenges without any explanations. There are no dialogues, NPCs telling you what to do or goals. It's pure guesswork. There are some creative puzzles such as the cube that the player is trapped in and he or she has to use the anti-gravity devices to rotate it. The rest just confuses the player. For ex: there is a part with a ship that you have to go through a tunnel blocked by wind blowing out of it. To shut down the air flow you have to turn off the power. There is no indication of what to do or how to do it. Some puzzles are just too trivial such as using the astral projection to pass through a force field to turn off or turn on something. Why would aliens build a room with a force field and place the control panel inside? It's like placing the key to unlock a cell inside of it.

The soundtrack has the usual "grandiose orchestra" theme but it sounds so generic. Like those generic catastrophe or disaster hollywood movies that are full of cliches and lack substance. The sound effects don't help to identify objects or things. I could even state that the sound effects of duke nukem 3D were superior.