Weapons, Aliens

Once again, I’m going to avoid spilling all of the cool tricks and surprises that you will encounter in the Prey demo but I will give you some idea of what kinds of weapons, aliens and locations you will get to see in this brief portion of the game. First the weapons. The single player game gives you access to four weapons in the game. In addition to the pipe wrench (perhaps the game’s way on one-upping the crowbar in Half-Life), the other three weapons include a plasma rifle that fires automatic bursts and switches to sniper mode in its alt-fire position. This weapon, like others in Prey, has a bio-mechanoid aspect to it with tendrils of alien flesh that move and even seem to stare at you at times. Another weapon is an energy gun that collects different kinds of energy from stations located at various points in the ship. One type of energy is a simple heat ray while another fires energy that shuts down enemies cold - literally. The other “weapon” is in fact not really a weapon at all but a three legged bug creature that you can collect and then use its legs as a kind of bio-grenade.

One other aspect to the game is the “spirit mode” which is hinted at in the beginning of the demo and is finally revealed later on. Again, while not giving everything away, the spirit mode will allow you to not only go through certain obstacles as well as another kind of attack but will actually be a sort of replacement for dying in the game. Human Head and 3D Realms have come up with a rather unique way on dealing with your character dying that doesn’t have anything to do with just saving a game and loading up the last save point. In fact it’s so unique that we won’t spoil it for you.


As far as the aliens you have to face, Prey does keep you on your toes. Yes, there are the expected aliens with big guns, but there are also some creatures, like the ones you face at the beginning of the demo, that just want to eat you. You will also have to deal with some humanoid zombie-like creatures that sometimes won’t stay down. One of the cooler things about Prey is that you have to deal with some biological environmental threats as well, from tendrils that come of the walls to openings that spew toxic waste that can seriously hurt you. There’s even a kind of biological version of the toxic barrel that can explode that is seen in tons of other first person shooters. However, there’s more to this feature than at first glance.


And what about the ship itself? The Prey demo doesn’t disappoint here either. In addition to the portals that can transport you from one portion of a level to another instantly, you also have to deal with pathways that make you walk sideways and upside down, and you can even move certain portions of levels around by firing at specially placed locations. Enemies even use portals to make surprise entrances. The level designers at Human Head clearly had a field day coming up with some unique puzzle like situations in the game and moving around through the portals definitely messes with your head. People who get dizzy easily might want to approach playing the demo with some caution, but for everyone else the portals and other perspective tricks in Prey will offer up some interesting challenges. By the way, the game has just one level of difficulty at first which is supposed to adjust to your game style. While this was not available in the demo version, once you complete the entire game in normal mode it will unlock the supposedly miuch tougher “Cherokee” difficultly level.