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View Full Version : I disagree with George (big spoilers)


Bellias
07-16-2006, 03:32 PM
Hi Everyone,

This is my first post here so...yeah.

Before i get to my point, little bit of back story.

The very first FPS i ever played was the original Wolfenstein. Then Doom. Following in no particular order Rise of the Triad, Duke Nukem 3D, Doom 2, Half Life, Breed, F.E.A.R, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Dues Ex, Area 51, Red Faction and Alien vs Predator and a load of non enjoyable others.

Not the most comprehensive of lists, but a list non the less.

Apart from Duke and F.E.A.R non of the others really entertained me. Then about 3 months ago i remember seeing the name Prey again, on these boards whilst looking for some info on Duke Nukem Forever (how odd;) ) This was a name i hadn't seen in a long ass time. But, just as it did back when i first saw its name, i glanced over it thinking it would be another FPS that was going to be, in my opinon, a waste of time and more worse, my money. So i happily went on my way, continued to spend countless hours and pounds on World Of Warcraft just like i had done for the last 10 months.

Then last Saturday while browsing Gamespot i saw Prey again and decided to give a quick read to information they had on Gamespot. Consumed with intrigue i decided to download the demo before i committed my wallet to the game. It downloaded, i installed it...

Then the menu screen popped up and when the menu music hit, the first thing that happened was a chill went down my spine. Never has a menu screen for a game managed to do that to me....ever. I sat and listened for a few moments while i listened to it thinking how epic the music was. I knew from here that this was going to be different from every other FPS i had every played. I hit new game, screen goes black then "The World is full of Stories, and from time to time, they allow themselves to be told". This was followed by another chilling feeling (voice actor for Enisi was first class imo, as was all the voice actors imo)

The next 10 minutes of the demo upto the "Don't fear the Reaper" playing and the end of the first "scene" had me smiling with glee and anxious to get stuck in with the trusty wrench.

After the demo had finished, i couldn't wait to play the full version, knowing just from the demo this was a game which was going to have me glued to my screen. A week and many demo replays pass and i find my full copy of Prey on my doormat after getting in from work. I threw that disc in, instsalled that bad boy, and jumped straight back in for the next 4 hours till i had to go to bed.

Got in the next evening, ate and fired my copy of Prey up.

Then i get to the boss fight which changed my view of this game from great to superb. Big Spoiler incoming (website n00b and i don't know how to put the spoiler tag around it so until i do, i'll leave a big space :P)...ok i took a guess and it worked :)

The fight with Jen was simply amazing, in my opinion a defining moment in gaming. Never has a boss fight made me not want to kill it. Even after it was done and she told me to kill her, i ran around looking for something to help her and i even hesitated to shoot her once i realised nothing was going to stop the inevitable. I hoped all the way up until the end of game that this was just a ploy by the "Mother" which never transpired and up until the end in the Land of the Ancients, i felt quite down in having to shoot her.

If there had been more Jen in the game up until the point of fighting her, no doubt that would have been a pretty damn emotional moment in gaming. But it was pretty close as it was.


So in ending, Prey had some awesome features, wallwalking, gravity flipping, death walking but far more important than all of those was a story worthy of awards in my opinion. My only gripe, like a few others, was that it was too short. However, with what was done with the story, was so good i can forgive its length. My disagreement with our dearest George is that the story was so much more to the game than i think you think it was.

Of course i could have saved a hell of a load of space and just had that one sentence, but then i wouldn't have given everyone who made this awesome game the chance to read through my experience of playing it.

I just hope that if you do an expansion or sequel (or both), you will use the same voice actors as they managed to capture the emotion in the game perfectly.

Signed

A big fan of Prey

ps Sorry for the length of this post.

Jigsaw
07-16-2006, 05:38 PM
ps Sorry for the length of this post.

Don't be. I enjoyed reading it and agree wholeheartedly with you. :)

There is only one other game that got me as emotional as Prey did: "Unreal 2". Dunno why so many people didn't like that one.

Straw Dog
07-16-2006, 05:41 PM
There is only one other game that got me as emotional as Prey did: "Unreal 2". Dunno why so many people didn't like that one.

ah yes. Drifting silently off into space listening to your comrades last radio transmission pledging their allegiance to you. Quite agree, Unreal 2 was a fantastic game.

Luke
07-16-2006, 05:41 PM
I shed a tear after your ship gets destroyed in Unreal 2.

8IronBob
07-16-2006, 05:43 PM
What would be even worse is if Alyx in the HL series, maybe the final game of the HL2 series, whenever that'll be, would be killed as a boss-possessed mutant, which would be weirdsville, maybe Prey set the bar for Valve to follow, if I'm thinking about it correctly.

Straw Dog
07-16-2006, 05:55 PM
What would be even worse is if Alyx in the HL series, maybe the final game of the HL2 series, whenever that'll be, would be killed as a boss-possessed mutant, which would be weirdsville, maybe Prey set the bar for Valve to follow, if I'm thinking about it correctly.

Well, Valve are pretty good at coming up with their own stories and surprising the player. I doubt they'll carbon copy a major plot point from someone else's game like that.

Jigsaw
07-16-2006, 05:57 PM
ah yes. Drifting silently off into space listening to your comrades last radio transmission pledging their allegiance to you. Quite agree, Unreal 2 was a fantastic game.

Yeah! In fact I'm gonna play it again once I'm through with Prey's second run. ;)

bummerman
07-16-2006, 09:18 PM
You guys are the 1st ppl I ever heaRD SAY Unreal 2 was a good game

Parkar
07-16-2006, 10:08 PM
You guys are the 1st ppl I ever heaRD SAY Unreal 2 was a good game

Well here is another one. Unreal 2 is seriously underrated.

9Nails
07-16-2006, 10:11 PM
Unreal 2... The Sniper level was the best. Where you had to provide sniper cover for some guy... I can't recall the rest of the game! Beyond the facts that someone on my space ship had a bit of an english problem. Bummer.

bummerman
07-16-2006, 10:23 PM
I lump U 2 and Q4 together. They were follow ups to games with huge reputations and came up way short thus diminishing the Quake series in the case of Q4 and the Unreal series ,in the case of U2. Both games depended solely on high AI difficulty level to impede game completion. No puzzles to speak of, so everything depended AI interaction which baasically was either too hard or too easy in my view. Take a game like Fear or Far Cry, those games could be enjoyed on the easist settings, not so for Q4 orU2. I made the mistake of playing U2 on normal and totally lost all respect for the game. Then I play it on hard and it's way too difficult IMO

Jigsaw
07-16-2006, 10:32 PM
Oh, come on: it's called first person SHOOTER and not first person ADVENTURE or first person PUZZLEBOX. All I really expect from a shooter is nice atmospheric enviroments, things to SHOOT and some sort of story as a reason to make things dead. A puzzle once in a while is a nice touch that adds variety, but isn't a requirement for a good shooter.

Maniac536
07-16-2006, 11:23 PM
Your post was a pleasure to read.

-Maniac

Sayantan
07-16-2006, 11:39 PM
Well here is another one. Unreal 2 is seriously underrated.

Ditto. :)

Also I really liked when the story took a twist after the middle part of the story.

hell-angel
07-17-2006, 02:10 AM
You guys are the 1st ppl I ever heaRD SAY Unreal 2 was a good game
The same for me. I have to say that Unreal 2 is one of the few games that I did not enjoy playing. :(

bummerman
07-17-2006, 11:49 AM
Just making it a little tricky, figuring how to get to the end of the level once in awhile would be nice. It seems that cause console gaming is the development of choice now and the developers are trying to make the games 10 year old friendly,taking any difficult thinking out of the game is a priority. Cudos to HH for reviving the need to think in a game. Raven, are you listening?

NiukNiuk
07-17-2006, 12:08 PM
The same for me. I have to say that Unreal 2 is one of the few games that I did not enjoy playing. :(

For me, Unreal 2 was really boring. Except the last level (in the ship that begin to explode) and the ending, wich was really sad and great imo.
Too bad these great moments only came in the end of the game :doh:

SyntaxN
07-17-2006, 12:27 PM
The same for me. I have to say that Unreal 2 is one of the few games that I did not enjoy playing. :(
It was fun...otherwise I knew a shit about FPS games back then so that might be the reason for it :D