Reflecting on 2017’s Prey
In the modern internet-driven age, can anything really be considered “underrated”? You can take any niche movie, book, comic, or video game and find a digital space filled with hundreds or thousands of fans for said media. It’s not like it was back in the 80’s and 90’s where you really only had word of mouth.
For lack of a better term, 2017’s Prey is one of the most underrated games of its decade. But why? Well, the game wasn’t market enough. Not only that, but they made the clumsy decision to name it after a pretty niche 2006 FPS. And lastly, well, uh…2017 was pretty stacked with games to say the least (Breath of the Wild, Mario Odyssey, Nier Automata, Horizon Zero Dawn, Persona 5’s Western release).
Another reason Prey might’ve been hard to market is its genre. Prey belongs to the “Immersive Sim” genre; one of the more frustrating to define. I often hear games being labeled as an immersive sim because it lays out two simple and clear options to the player. From my understanding, an immersive sim is a game that rewards players “out of box” thinking by allowing them to progress in a multitude of ways.
For example, in Prey you will encounter many locked doors. You often have many options with these doors. You can either:
Find the keycard
Hack into the system
Find an alternate route (if there is one)
If there’s a small hole nearby, turn into an inanimate object and slide into it
I’m sure there’s one or two more I haven’t even thought of. During my last play session, I was floating through an anti-gravity chamber and noticed a red light behind a gargantuan spinning fan. By using one of my tools, I was able to stop the fan from spinning and investigate the red light, only to be rewarded with a hidden hallway. These little moments happen often with Prey. And while describing them to somebody else might not make them sound super exciting; its when you’re actually playing the game and feeling rewarded for your creativity that Prey’s genius shines.
I’m about five hours into the game and I’m already understanding why many gamers label Prey a masterpiece. So far, my only genuine critique was how brutal combat is at the beginning of the game. Enemies can teleport across entire rooms and oftentimes startle you with their sudden appearance. And they hit like tanks against your pitiful health bar.
I haven’t even mentioned the intriguing story or Neuromod system. I think Prey is best played by going in as blind as possible. If anybody out there is actually reading this, I highly encourage you to check out Prey on Steam right now- it’s on sale for about six dollars! And on the PlayStation Store, the digital deluxe edition is oftentimes on sale for a similar price.
It’s a shame what happened to Arkane, being relegated to Marvel-slop and some of the most disliked Wolfenstein content. Needless to say, I will be going back to Dishonored and Dishonored 2.
