Demo First Impressions

[Yatta]

Played some MultiPrey and Single Player.

- Incredibly speedy loading
- Looks better than any other D3 engine game to date
- Online play is enjoyable
- Runs incredibly smooth, smoother than Quake 4

Possible bugs:

- Tommy's voice got cut off in SP, at the part where he says "That's disgusting" when he says the organic entrance way.
- My server doesn't appear on the online list when I host a game (no firewalls, no problems with hosting other games in MP)

Overall impressions so far:

- Smooth controls
- Good sound
- Nice lipsyncing
- Great visuals for a D3-engine game
- I'll always remember the scene where the green light is pulling everyone up in the bar... especially because Blue Oyster Cult - Don't Fear the Reaper was playing on the jukebox. I thought it was very funny.
- I like it when Tommy comments on his sorrounding.

I love the demo... there are some bugs here and there... but great stuff... only tried sp mode yet... but I will buy this game the moment its out. So please HH/3DR, do not wait long with release... you can earn youre money already, now!!...

And as usual, the OpenAL is a bit buggy, sometimes when the "wallpukers??" puke, i get lag... and some other areas... but otherwise great performance overall... but try to fix the x-fi openAL problem(maybe this is a CL problem??).. But I love this game.... so release, release now!!

Here is a Bug for you guys: When im in the spirit world, if i look down on grandpa the sky looks like this:
Dark Sky.jpg

And if i look up at the sky it looks like this:

Brightsky.jpg

Thx for a great Demo... waiting for release!!

[Joe Siegler]

Suspected bugs really should go in the Tech forum guys. Don't scatter comments about them in random posts.

[avatar_58]

First off: Wow. Thats my impression.

- The interaction in the bar scene was incredible. I was wandering for a good 20 minutes touching everything. The jukebox, the TV, etc. I also loved the arcade games (rune pac-man? haha!)

- The weapons seem pretty odd right now, in a good way. I just tried out multiplayer with some of the other guns and they all seem pretty interesting. Just need to get used to their functions.

- The performance seemed exactly the same as Doom 3, and given that there are more graphic features I'd say its optimized damn well.

- Switching audio modes shouldn't apply changes until you hit apply...I was fooling with them in that menu.

- The wall walking / gravity stuff is really amazing! I thought it was wierd in the videos, but you have to play it to fully understand how odd it can be. I messed around with every portal I saw...hehe

[Joe Siegler]

The wall walking / gravity stuff is really amazing! I thought it was wierd in the videos, but you have to play it to fully understand how odd it can be. I messed around with every portal I saw...hehe

You haven't seen anything yet.

[YicklePigeon]

Ok, I flipped the toilet seat up and down, turned the lights on and off in the mens room, went to the meagre stock area and fiddled with what looked like a power generator, played video draw poker, played a Rune styled Pac-Man game, fiddled around with the jukebox and agreed with Tommy's comments wholeheartedly, flicked channels on the TV, beaten two rednecks (almost) to death \o/ and then I got abducted by aliens before I could at least have a breath of fresh air!

So, after battling some very disappointing enemies (far too weak!), liked the freeze gun, seen some disturbing pieces of level geometry (and I'm not just talking about the gravity walking things), the puzzles were easy...so all in all it took me about 45 minutes to finish the SP section of the demo.

Played a little multiplayer, but it became far too choppy (and a ping of 200ms+ didn't help).

Regards,

Yickle.

[ZuljinRaynor]

Loved it...
The only cons... well... seemed like the MP was lacking good servers... Yatta!

[IceColdDuke]

Single PLayer
+The intro was really nice.
+Graphics def awesome the bathroom scene beautiful
-Can't really tell if Tommys dialouge or just his voice bugs me the most. Just didn't seem to react well to the 3D environment, mabye plays on the same channel as the announcers.
-Some parts of the levels get really redudent fast, allthough a new feature comes up that fixes it kind off.
-Some of the in game cinematics don't seem real enough
+Wall walking seems kool just kinda hard to get used too.

Multiplayer
-The random gravity flips were kind of annoying
-Not alot to keep the user enticed.
+HIghest frag count on the server i was playing before I quit ; ).

[Joe Siegler]

The random gravity flips were kind of annoying

Wait till you play levels where useres can flip the gravity on you. Those are fun.

[Tommyboy]

Best part by far was the tiny planet.

[YicklePigeon]

Those made me feel queasy! But not quite as queasy as Descent 1 back in the day though.

Regards,

Yickle.

[thorndyke]

Done, done and done.

It was pretty sweet experience. Would have been way cooler if I hadnt watched the countdown videos.

I was impressed with the preformance. Considering my gpu (6600gt) is far from the fanciest around, I managed to ran it at 1280x1024 with texture detail on medium, and almost all other detail on high. (although no AA). It did run kinda of gittery in 1 or 2 places, but it was definetly playable. When the real deal comes out I will most likely drop the resolution to 1024x768 and put texture on high , AA on, ect. ect.

The beginning level is great and I really liked the interactivity with the environment (e.g. toilets, poker machines, juke box thingie, tv) which seems to be missing from a lot of FPS games latley. Probably took me about 50 - 60 min to complete the demo. One thing that i was suprised at was the amount of fun i had with the...uh...strip that meant you could walk upside and so on. Looking at the videos i was not that impressed by them however after this demo it was great fun. I particularly liked the 'ksh ksh' sound effects your steps make. Very Happy

Not yet decided on how much I like the talkings of tommy. He talks a lot. Not all bad though somewhat cheesy at times.

Now to try some multiprey.

Wow what a great demo.

The first thing that really moved me was the 'merry go round' ride. I don't know if it was the anticipation I had for the demo or if it was just that damn good; that part had my adrenaline going more than any game has ever done before.

Hearing the screams of the abductees really rattled me. I consider myself a horror afficiando, watching every horror flick and reading a lot of horror novels. It's been a long time since something's knocked me off my rocker like the feeding tube levels. God damn, what an awesome ****ing game.

The machines that poke and then stamp people, my ****ing god. I am still shaking. That part was brilliant

[IceColdDuke]

Originally Posted by Joe Siegler

Wait till you play levels where useres can flip the gravity on you. Those are fun.

Looking foward to that in the final version...allthough in the demo multiprey isn't really that great. Doesn't sound professional just because I'm backing it up with hard facts but just doesn't feel right =/ I dunno.

[Steve]

Oh. My. God.

[Ras]

I have a bad habit of not liking at first games I end up loving, so maybe that's why I had a couple of problems with the beginning. I thought the bar scene was a little boring. I was just kind of wandering around, hoping to trigger something to move the plot along. It all lasted just a couple of minutes, so it wasn't a big deal. Another thing is the mirror when you first get to the ship. I was looking all around, trying to take in everything, but mirror Tommy was looking at Jenny. His head movements should have been locked to the controls.

That's all the bad. I loved the game other than that. The enviros are a little repetitive, but that probably changes as you move on. The portals are great. It all runs pretty well, and it looked like most of the options were on. The sky in the land of the ancients scene was gorgeous. I haven't totally gotten everything down as far as when to spirit walk, but that'll come in time. I'm already wanting to play again from the top, so that's a good sign. Oh, and I loved it when the bar made its second appearance. Did I interpret it right, that the aliens were changing the music? That was funny. It's pretty weird being in a portal-filled bar, killing aliens, and listening to Edgar Winter.

[The Dukenator]

Originally Posted by Steve

Oh. My. God.

No shit. Why do you think I'm playing it in the dark?

I must say one thing... the music and sound were top notch quality... felt like in a movie... gfx looking great... performance really good... i love it... some probs with the OpenAL as i mentioned before... but that i think is a Creative driver issue... lets hope CL fix it before actual retail full release... You guys(3dr) should lean on them somewhat... Dont know if you know this, but CL are kind of slow and bad in making good quality drivers... 2 & 1/2 driver releases in almost a year... thats bad... so please talk to them..

[broodling57]

I loved the demo, the spirit mode in multiplayer was my favorite part. Getting chased by a spirit while you dash around dodging arrows in search of his body is very fun

[IceColdDuke]

The performance was great, the modifications HH did on the D3 engine were great. I have a Geforce 6600 256mb with a gig of ram, ran perfect stuttered only a little bit and I was playing on High Quality. The graphics were excelent the portal transition and AI awareness through non conventially connected areas was smooth. Definetlly engine side it was perfect, just atleast for the demo the gameplay definetlly seemed kind of rush especially on the sound side, and cinematic side, anyone else get that feeling?

[brandon_k_w]

This demo was certainly a breath of fresh air. I didn't find any bugs, I didn't have to update my gfx drivers beforehand, etc. It felt very solid and polished for a demo, and was definately a weird game to play.

I have just one statement to say. "Whoever picked "don't fear the reaper" to be the song to play when you're being beamed up is a genius!"

-Maniac

[Boo Boo Juice]

At first, I didn't really care about this game. I just played a bit of the demo, and wow! I am going to most likely pick this up when it hits.

[SuicideRUN]

Amazing demo. As great as the action was, I wanna get into the story more. I loved how they had humans being dragged away in the background or killed. Just made me wanna play more so I could find out what was going on. The part when you were being pulled thru the ship was awesome, the whole feel was so creepy and real. Far better than the similar scenes in both HL2 and Q4.

[Ras]

Also have to mention the great load times. I barely even felt them. When compared to the horribly long HL2 load times, this was a Godsend.

[IceColdDuke]

Wonder if the load times had something to do with there wasn't a variety of textures espeically on the ship

Originally Posted by IceColdDuke

Wonder if the load times had something to do with there wasn't a variety of textures espeically on the ship

Nag Nag Nag... maybe because its a big sphere in space that wasnt meant to be colorful and beatiful... its a flesheating sphere... LOL Some people are never happy... if you have had more variety of textures, i wonder what you have complained about then!!?

[Shadow The Reaper]

Complete and utter awesomeness. Definite buy.

[IceColdDuke]

Originally Posted by HaZe303

Nag Nag Nag... maybe because its a big sphere in space that wasnt meant to be colorful and beatiful... its a flesheating sphere... LOL Some people are never happy... if you have had more variety of textures, i wonder what you have complained about then!!?

The dialouge...jk ; ). Honestlly though with definetlly buy when it comes out.

[dvsone]

awesome game

the only negative for me is nothint to do with the gameplayt more the engine it has that doom3 quake 4 look to it with the shiny plasticy ness. It does look good for a sci fi game, but it also gives me a sense of deja vu when playing i'm sure people will pick up on this game. Again something that doesnt spoil the gameplay but is a minor distraction

good work guys u have a customer here. Thanks for showing companies how to make a real demo. Hell it was almost as long as valves hl2 ep 1 and i paid $20 for that privalage

[Adabiviak]

Ran very smoothly with everything maxed - I wasn't sure, given that Quake IV and even Doom 3 will choke occasionally in intense fights.

The "instruction" levels are perfect - good way to get the player used to the features.

The enemies are fun - very important. It's awesome already that they are aliens or hideous mutants, but even better, these are just the beginning and they are way fun to battle! I watched a hunter stalk me (through a chain-link fence), and it was a little unnerving.

My girlfriend was riveted and even did some back-seat driving. "Go around that corner! Something just scurried away!" lol

3D walking is different from the alien in AVP2, in that you can't just walk around at will and there are others who do the same. (In AVP2, everyone else stays on the ground, and you get to go anywhere.) Much different! I had to actually use directional cues to figure out where the enemies were.

Question: Talon helps you read panels, I assume he helps you understand the local lingo? All of a sudden I heard the hunters say, "grenade!".

...when you hit the switch that turns the masher back on, "Oh no! What have I done?!" LOL

[BoorishId]

Well after working way to long tonight i came home and dowloaded the demo in huge anticepation! Man i was seriously afraid i was over-hyping this game in my head, but i wasn't; it is awesome!! Seriously this is the best FPS in forever. I dont think i had this much fun since i played the dn3d demo way back when i was in the 6th grade. Seriously it has been a long 10 years of medicore gameplay for the FPS genre, this is definately going to change the quality people should start excpecting from games. I really thought FEAR was the best game i had played in a long time until tonight.

[torso boy]

Man, that was fun, and they got the playtime down perfectly(Took me about an hour). Only thing I didn't like was the the first gun, it feels to weak. The leech gun was pretty cool though, especially the second form of ammo, I wish I would have known there would be pretty frequent ammo stations for it, because I stuck to the first gun mainly. But really, this is a good example of what a great game can be; It looks great, plays with your mind, gives a pretty decent challenge but keeps it fun, scares you, and it even made me laugh a couple of times(Don't Fear the Reaper came on when the abduction started, and I burst out laughing).

I was already sure before, and I'm even more sure now: I'm buying this and its going to be great.

[revenantnox]

Yay finally an FPS that wasn't a let down. It's going to be a couple long weeks till this comes out.

I love what's been done with the gameplay dynamics and overall experience. The FPS genre definitely needed a fresh breeze and it's looking like Prey just might be one of the titles that'll give it the boost it needs.

Frankly I didn't have any complaints (seeing how this was the demo) but just wanted to mention a few pros I liked.

1. The environments are well thought out. Creating a completely alien feel without duplicating work from someone else is a big plus. I thoroughly enjoyed being surprised by all the little biological noises the walls make and the quirky movements the guns made. As well it was a big bonus to step into a new arena and have to take a second to get my barings on what was happening. Fear was a let down in this area as almost all the new arenas you entered were boring like an endless repitition of the same sequences.

2. When I first saw this I said "Turok goes to outerspace". Playing through the demo showed that this was not so. It's interesting to hear Tommy talk and remark about things that are happening around him. Most other titles rely on the silent treatment and a mutual understanding between characters you come in contact with. As well great setting so far with this extraterrestrial-biological-multispecied-sphere.

3. Can't beat the pulpy bubbly blood that gets spattered all over the wrench when you beat something senseless.

4. As someone mentioned above the loadtimes were very clean and quick as was the game save.

The one thing I hope there's more of is interesting weapons. A large part of the gameplay is reliant on its arsenal which can be boring or interesting. If there's more good weapons in store in Prey then I doubt I'll be disappointed.

[stealthredneck]

Man this is definatly one of a kind!

unique things i like
-the methods of healing
-weapons (alive? lmao)
-crawlers are fun
-deathmatch...oh man mayhem! and spiritwalk too

couple a times i forgot portals closed so i blew myself up with a rocketlauncher

can't wait for the actual game! well worth the buy

[Parkar]

This game runs great, looks good and most improtantly is great fun. Several parts of the demo put a big grin on my face.

Like someone else mentioned before, it sounds like you can make out waht they are saying. I am pretty darn shure they say turn that stuff off or somthing like that when reach the bar again.

Tommys voice works a whole lot better then it seemed from the videos.

Wallwalking was a bit odd the first 30 minutes of playing or so. It was the fact that camera turned with the surface which made it strange to aim while walking up the bend in the corners.

And when I say it runs good I mean it runs extremly smooth. I got a pretty powerfull system but it nothing comes close to runing this smooth. 1280x1024 with everything maxed out(no aa or af), vsync on and windows showing on the second monitor and I get constant 60 fps. If I max out aa and af it drops down to around 30 but is still very much playable as it never realy drops below 20.

[Marty]

aargggh!
i was gonna hold off until the whole game, but i cant resist. downloading now

[Ras]

Second time through was completely awesome. I think I'm going to really like Tommy. Like others, the videos didn't sell me on him, but he's pretty cool. The talon translation is a great idea. I wish this game was available to buy tomorrow.

[ADM]

The game runs AMAZINGLY well on my computer, even better then Quake IV and Doom 3 did and I'm running it at 1280x1024 with everything maxed and 2x AA and 2X AF. Looks great.. I haven't tried upping the AA and AF as it looks good either way

Now as for the game, I haven't found any problems at all.. well except for a minor one. At the start when you're in the mirror in the bathroom and using the tap you don't see the hand movements in the mirror. Don't really care about it though heh.

The actual game was pretty cool, I got a bit confused about how to recover spirit back as I didn't seem to be able to do that to enemies I have killed in spirit mode.

Also the gravity flipping confused me a bit (the bit near the bar scene) but after awhile (and nearly getting nauseous heh) I got through it.

LOVED the fact that the music was pumping while all the portals and everything were opening around you right at the end. The story seems intriguing as well, I love the fact that the spirits followed you back and that is what caused the little boy to die (and the little girl to get possessed).

Really made you feel kinda bad for having a part in it, ahh well.

Anyway GREAT stuff and the demo is well worth the download. Multiplayer is pretty good but I don't know if I'll play much of it, I'm not a fan of deathmatch combat in multiplayer games (or even much multiplayer games to be honest) but Single Player has sold me.

Great job guys!

[jet jaguar 2.0]

Just want to say bravo to Human Head and 3DR. Great demo.

- The first time I played with the multiple portal boxes was trippy.

- The gravity walk ways were just as nauseating as I expected.

- Artistic design of the alien levels is excellent. The tight focus on the particular style HH settled on really shows.

- The world in a box was a great WTF?! moment.

- Love the fact you guys aren't whussing out in the graphic violence department. It's by no means gratuitous and overdone but rather used as a way to convey the sheer terror and hopelessness of the situation.

I know you want to give Prey it's well due praise and attention but I can't help but imagine what DNF is going to be like if this game is getting this much love from the devs. Again congrats, this game is going to sell like mad.