Prey will not even start! Please help!

[Mikstaslaya]

I bought Prey a long time ago via Gamestop's download service for the game and I was able to play the game fine for a while. I even beat it and, well, this game is absolutely amazing. I stopped playing it for a while and recently decided to try playing the game again and now, the game doesn't even launch. I double click on the desktop shortcut and nothing ever happens. I have gone to the actual Prey.exe and clicked on that and again, nothing happens. I have reinstalled the game many times and no matter what I do, the game refuses to work. My mouse just shows that it is loading something but even if I leave the computer on for an hour, nothing ever comes up. I check the task manager processes and it says that Prey.exe is running but again, nothing happens.

I have searched numerous forums for answers to this problem but I can't seem to find one that works. I have also tried patching up the game right after I install it, I downloaded patch 1.4. If I wait until the patch is finished installing and then checked "launch Prey now" at the end of the installation before hitting "finish", then I get a different error: Couldn't Load Default.cfg. So I said "ok well, obviously it's not working if I start the game up that way, so I'll try the .exe again directly and see if that works now that the game is patched."

Again, nothing happens. Not even a "couldn't find default.cfg" error. The funny thing is, I tried installing/downloaded the Prey Demo and the demo launched and ran with no problems whatsoever. The full game, however, is just not working for me any more. I have tried these five solutions so far and none have worked:

-Turning off Firewall
-Temporarily disabling McAfee, my virus protection software
-Patching up the game completely, all the way up to 1.4.
-Reinstalling the game (I tried this many times).
-Redownloading the setup directly from Gamestop's site.
-Putting this at the end of the "Target" line in the Prey shortcut:+set s_forceNoOpenAL 1 (I heard somewhere on a forum that this would work, but it didn't change anything).
-Installing the latest video drivers
-Emailed Take2 support, I hope to get a response some time soon.

I definitely meet the minimum/recommended requirements for Prey as well. I ran the game at full graphical capability with 60FPS nearly all the time and no lag. Here are my specs (I would have added the Dx Diag file but it was too large):

OS: Windows XP
CPU: Intel Premium D 2.66GHz
RAM: 4GB
Video Card: GeForce 8600 GT (256MB VRAM)


Any help with this problem would be MUCH appreciated because I would LOVE to play this game again.

[Ironside]

prey just sux balls.

[The Dukenator]

Originally Posted by Mikstaslaya

I definitely meet the minimum/recommended requirements for Prey as well. I ran the game at full graphical capability with 60FPS nearly all the time and no lag. Here are my specs (I would have added the Dx Diag file but it was too large):

OS: Windows XP
CPU: Intel Premium D 2.66GHz
RAM: 4GB
Video Card: GeForce 8600 GT (256MB VRAM)


Any help with this problem would be MUCH appreciated because I would LOVE to play this game again.

You can attach the Dx Diag file to your post unless that's disabled.

---------- Post added at 11:58 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:58 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Ironside

prey just sux balls.

Does it? Only the MP sucks as no one is playing it.

[Mikstaslaya]

No Prey does not suck at all. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, since it is very single player based. But the campaign is amazing. The story is great and VERY well told (the whole thing feels like a movie), the guns were all interesting and unique, the gravity/portal system destroyed any chance of the game being generic or too similar to Doom 3/Quake 4, the level design was genius, the puzzles were fun and not too hard that they hurt the gameplay, etc. I never played Multiplayer because by the time I bought this game the community had already died out, but I heard it wasn't so great or bad, just decent and not living up to the hype it had.

Regardless, you might not prefer Prey, but that certainly does not mean that the game "sux" by some universal fact as if your opinion rules all.

In the end, it really just depends on how much you care about multiplayer when compared to how much you care about single player. In my opinion, single player is much more important because the community multiplayer will die out eventually in games (just like it did in Prey); single player will always stay strong if the developers pull it off right (again, just like they did in Prey).



Anyway, I cannot attach the DX Diag file to my post because the file is too large. Regardless, my computer used to run Prey fine so I'm not sure that is a huge deal (its not like the game is just incompatible with my system).

[The Dukenator]

Originally Posted by Mikstaslaya

Anyway, I cannot attach the DX Diag file to my post because the file is too large. Regardless, my computer used to run Prey fine so I'm not sure that is a huge deal (its not like the game is just incompatible with my system).

Try uploading DxDiag.txt online somewhere, then post the link to it.

[Altered Reality]

Anyway, I cannot attach the DX Diag file to my post because the file is too large.

Solution: http://www.megaupload.com/

[Mikstaslaya]

Here is my DxDiag

So, does anyone have any idea what the problem is?

[BugsBunny]

What type of copy protection does Gamestop's download service use ? Online activation or something like that ? If so see if Gamestop have turned off the activation for Prey or not may be because they might think Prey is an old game. I may or may not be right, but it is worth a check.

[Hudson]

Can you add your CD Key to Steam and download/run it from there? It's supported.