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 Post subject: Re: Prey
PostPosted: Wed Dec 06, 2017 19:43 
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Hello Hello Hello

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Pundabaya wrote:
Doc, what did you think about the [spolier]tedious massive enemy that shows up every so often after a certain point, where you have to hide from it (or defeat it, but it takes so many resources to kill it it's not worth it, and it'll show up a bit later anyway)? [/Spoiler] It was the other thing that made me say "I can't be arsed with this game other than the combat.


Worst spoiler ever! It's not really a spoiler anyway so I wouldn't worry about it.

The combat is what put me off this game, faffing about making bullets and then stressing if you were supposed to use the resources for other things or if you were doing the encounters 'wrong' somehow. The combat always seemed fiddly and unsatisfying, and I found myself wishing they'd just put fucking ammo crates in it.

I will return to it at some point, swallow my pride and whack it onto EASY mode as DocG suggests. I loved the setting and the characters, the writing, the graphical style (although the graphics themselves were really quite shonky in places), the audio design and so on. The combat was plain poor though.

In Dishonored 1 and 2 for example, there were all kinds of elegant ways you could approach the baddies, both lethal and non-lethal, but if you brought it down to brass tacks the game entirely accommodated simply picking off your enemies one at a time with a nice clean slit of the throat, and that felt satisfying to execute - there's no such sense in Prey.


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 Post subject: Re: Prey
PostPosted: Wed Dec 06, 2017 20:10 
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Re: the spoiler

ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
One nullwave grenade to make it hold still and stop shitting out fireballs, followed by 2-3 recycler grenades kill it every time. Bish bash bosh. If you kill it it won't come back for at least 30 minutes. I killed it seven times. You also get ~10 of the exotic material for doing this.

There's also a mission to give you a code that can make it fuck off up to four times. I used that at the end of the game, to simply get it to go away so I could do something.

Again, I think it's a better game on Easy.


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 Post subject: Re: Prey
PostPosted: Wed Dec 13, 2017 9:05 
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Nice piece about this game here.

NOTE - Bit spoilery if you haven't played the game, at least the first couple of hours of it.



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 Post subject: Re: Prey
PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2018 11:43 
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I've seen some rumours today that there's an expansion on the way for this. Still haven't got around to playing it yet, as I still haven't finished Horizon ZD — well, the Frozen Wilds expansion.

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 Post subject: Re: Prey
PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2018 11:52 
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This is pretty cheap at the moment (£11.99 on Amazon). Hmmmmm.

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 Post subject: Re: Prey
PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2018 11:58 
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Curiosity wrote:
This is pretty cheap at the moment (£11.99 on Amazon). Hmmmmm.

You could probably borrow it off one of the peeps here for free.

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 Post subject: Re: Prey
PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2018 11:59 
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DBSnappa wrote:
Curiosity wrote:
This is pretty cheap at the moment (£11.99 on Amazon). Hmmmmm.

You could probably borrow it off one of the peeps here for free.


I have Doc's copy I can let you have assuming he doesn't mind

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 Post subject: Re: Prey
PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2018 12:01 
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Cras wrote:
I have Doc's copy I can let you have assuming he doesn't mind

If DLC comes out MrsDoc will want it back sharpish, I suspect. But Curio can have it afterwards. Did you finish it, Cras?


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 Post subject: Re: Prey
PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2018 12:02 
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No, I stalled it and won't pick it back up I expect.

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 Post subject: Re: Prey
PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2018 12:04 
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Cras wrote:
No, I stalled it and won't pick it back up I expect.

You're a bad person. It's great.


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 Post subject: Re: Prey
PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2018 12:17 
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I liked lots of things about it, but just didn't enjoy the combat at all, and everything felt like a drawn-out exercise in conserving and building ammo.

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 Post subject: Re: Prey
PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2018 12:20 
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Were you playing on Easy?


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 Post subject: Re: Prey
PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2018 12:22 
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Yep. I'm bad at stuff, don't forget.

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 Post subject: Re: Prey
PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2018 12:57 
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You can borrow my copy, Curio.

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 Post subject: Re: Prey
PostPosted: Sun Jul 29, 2018 13:44 
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I’m enjoying this but I want to moan about a few things:

I’m playing on Xbox One X, the most powerful console in the known universe, but the 30FPS cap isn’t very good despite it not being that graphically demanding and not a lot happening on screen even during busy times. There’s not much in the way of intensive particle effects or giant baddies or multiple enemies or whatever it takes to tax your console these days. I am disappoint.

The enemy variety is very disappointing. All different shapes of black gloop. There’s nothing visually to identify a bog standard phantom vs a phantom that spit yellow balls vs purple phantoms. The electric phantoms have an electric effect but again they’re the same as all the other phantoms. Telepaths and mind controllers are both just the same floating blobs. I am disappoint.

It’s hard. I’m not too bothered about that cause I love a good survival horror (which this flirts with) but there’s a huge discrepancy between bullet sponge enemies and the scarcity of bullets. It feels like bullets/powers should have more of an effect given how scarce resources are but, say, the floating blobs take an immense amount of bullets. Mind you, it led to a good battle and many restarts in Deep Storage as I had literally nothing left and ran about tossing explosive canisters at a telepath and a phantom and two corrupted robots.

Give me more stuff by the time I get to Crew Quarters. I had a load of stuff earlier and about 200 9mm bullets but now I’ve got nothing. All I’ve got is a spanner and the GLOO gun and 2 health kits. I’ve got no food and no PSI. I haven’t had any ammo for the big laser gun since, I dunno, 5 hours ago, and I’ve been I’ve got 11 hours clocked up on the campaign. It’s not like I’ve been rushing through either. I’ve been taking my time, exploring, trying to rinse each area before moving on, recycling my stuff when I can and even throwing those recycling grenades at stuff in my desperation. It really feels like something has gone wrong with the balancing cause it’s not like I can stealth my way through the game or avoid a fight. I had to pelt it through the lobby earlier because I was overwhelmed.

The loading times. Man alive, the loading times are SOOOOOO slow. Jesus Christ, I’m scared to change areas until I’ve finished exploring just because going back and forth between loading areas would probably make me hurt someone. And it’s not like the areas are that big either. They’re densely packed with some decent level design but I’m really surprised that it takes so painfully long to load an area, and I’m even more surprised that the devs couldn’t have avoided loading times altogether. Just stick in a long corridor to walk between and keep me immersed. It breaks up the flow of the game and, honestly, it makes me lose track of the internal layout of the space station in my head which is a shame because the aesthetics are consistent and nice.

It’s still pretty good, I like it and I’m enjoying myself but the above points really make it difficult to love the game.


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 Post subject: Re: Prey
PostPosted: Sun Jul 29, 2018 13:59 
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Satsuma wrote:
It’s hard. I’m not too bothered about that cause I love a good survival horror (which this flirts with) but there’s a huge discrepancy between bullet sponge enemies and the scarcity of bullets. It feels like bullets/powers should have more of an effect given how scarce resources are but, say, the floating blobs take an immense amount of bullets. Mind you, it led to a good battle and many restarts in Deep Storage as I had literally nothing left and ran about tossing explosive canisters at a telepath and a phantom and two corrupted robots.

Yup:
Doctor Glyndwr wrote:
I did say it was hard! I've dropped the game to Easy and I find the gunplay more enjoyable there. Like you, I want to micro-optimise every encounter, and was finding that annoying. On easy I can improvise knowing the game won't punish me for small missteps.

Doctor Glyndwr wrote:
I almost stopped playing because the combat was quite hard at first. In the end, I dropped it to easy and blasted through, and had fun the whole way. You could always increase the difficulty again later on when you're more powerful. It doesn't change the structure of the game, it's just a debuff to your damage and a buff to enemy damage.


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 Post subject: Re: Prey
PostPosted: Sun Jul 29, 2018 19:47 
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I beat a nightmare to death with a spanner. MTFU, fewlz.

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 Post subject: Re: Prey
PostPosted: Mon Jul 30, 2018 19:40 
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I left it on normal and suffice to say it started giving me more resources, or at least I started playing smarter and accumulated more resources. So the difficulty was more of a spike that a barrier.


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 Post subject: Re: Prey
PostPosted: Tue Jul 31, 2018 15:46 
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Bad Girl

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Urgh, it’s got shit again.

“Military Operators”

Remind me to have a moan about enemy types again, someone.


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 Post subject: Re: Prey
PostPosted: Tue Jul 31, 2018 16:12 
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Have a moan about the enemy types


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 Post subject: Re: Prey
PostPosted: Tue Jul 31, 2018 16:20 
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Satsuma wrote:
Urgh, it’s got shit again.

“Military Operators”

Remind me to have a moan about enemy types again, someone.

Mix your tactics up, there's some easier ways to deal with them.


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 Post subject: Re: Prey
PostPosted: Tue Jul 31, 2018 17:16 
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Bad Girl

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Doctor Glyndwr wrote:
Satsuma wrote:
Urgh, it’s got shit again.

“Military Operators”

Remind me to have a moan about enemy types again, someone.

Mix your tactics up, there's some easier ways to deal with them.


Yeah, that really doesn’t work so well because:

a) Military operators go from zero to zappy death immediately upon spotting you.
b) They are almost always in groups so they buzz around you like flies when they do spot you.
c) They can spot you from half way across the map.
d) They won’t fuck off when you run away.
e) They have ridiculous amounts of armour even though it’s just a bot.
f) They respawn (FFS)!
g) It’s hard enough to find the operators station where they respawn out of amongst the lasers they’re burning into your arsehole.
h) When you do find the operators station you can’t blow it up or damage it to put it out of commission. You have to fill it with stuff lying around which is hard enough because (i) flinging items barely works; you’ve got to physically go right up to it and drop an item inside and (ii) it doesn’t take long for another bastard to respawn inside and start burning you to death while you’re fiddling around finding a item small enough to cram in.

Thankfully when you reach a specific mission end they all die. Thank. Fucking. Christ.

And that enemy design. It’s sounds like a military guy in a suit and guns? No, it’s a flying box with a laser. Actually it’s just a differently coloured flying box since there’s already 3 different types of flying box that power you up. This late game enemy is a brown version of that. Couldn’t they think of anything better? It’s lazy and piss poor design. Just astonishingly rubbish.


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 Post subject: Re: Prey
PostPosted: Tue Jul 31, 2018 17:29 
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ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
1) sprint past and ignore them
1a) (variant) stealth past and don't get spotted
2) use the "command robot" psychic power and recruit two of them to your side, they'll aggro the others and you can go about your business
3) use the stun gun you've probably been ignoring, they are hella vulnerable to it
4) use the electricity psychic powers, they are hella vulnerable to that too


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 Post subject: Re: Prey
PostPosted: Tue Jul 31, 2018 17:41 
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Bad Girl

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Doctor Glyndwr wrote:
ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
1) sprint past and ignore them
1a) (variant) stealth past and don't get spotted
2) use the "command robot" psychic power and recruit two of them to your side, they'll aggro the others and you can go about your business
3) use the stun gun you've probably been ignoring, they are hella vulnerable to it
4) use the electricity psychic powers, they are hella vulnerable to that too


1) It’s impossible to sprint or even stealth past on the section I was getting cheesed off by them (Shuttle Bay). It took me a while to find an overhead opening but even then the little buggers would spot me climbing the wall.
2) I haven’t unlocked that one. I’m missing a fair few abilities but they get pricey in the late game when you start to get more neuromods.
3) I’ve been using it on the robots (I saw you mention it earlier in the thread when I started playing) and it was quite effective when I had ammo but I’ve since ran out and there’s never much ammo for it around and I’ve never found a fabricator plan so I can make more. Tch.
4) They hella aren’t! Well, they aren’t to leccy 1 which is the only one I’ve got, and it doesn’t even make them sodding fall over. And it does about 15 damage or something crap.


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 Post subject: Re: Prey
PostPosted: Tue Jul 31, 2018 19:50 
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Do you remember when I said “play it on easy because it’s annoying on other levels”?


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 Post subject: Re: Prey
PostPosted: Tue Jul 31, 2018 22:26 
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Pfffft, it ain’t my first rodeo.

Turns out, again, it was a rather strange spike in difficulty and imagination on the part of the devs. After that, it’s easy street to the end.

So yeah, I finished it and suffice to say the ending kinda made me think more of the game than I would have done had it not been so interesting. Particularly the post-credits scene which I enjoyed but, thinking about it afterwards, could have gone horribly wrong...

ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
It verges on the “it was all a dream” making the entire story pointless and presumably one angry player who has just wasted 27 hours of his life but it somehow manages to pull it off.


Actually the structure of the game is really well done. It starts off linear for about 10 hours and then balloons outward for about 10 hours as interesting side quests are dished out liberally as the world gets bigger before funnelling you back in towards an end game with multiple forks. I’m impressed with how this turned out.

And the world is well made and set out. I particularly liked the structure of the space ship and the dense rooms and corridors. I liked how you could open up an airlock and use the exterior as a form of fast travel as you zip up and down the length of this massive behemoth, albeit one with its own little nooks to explore.

And the voice actors need some credit too. Particular your brother whose in-game likeness and voice go together like tea and milk. His voice is absolutely spot on and it made certain choices in the game much more difficult because of the particular nuances of his smooth bassy voice. Love that guy.

It’s such a shame that the game has technical problems. The loading times are outrageous in 2018. They make you not want to explore, and they make the end-game quests a massive chore. As you go hurtling towards a conclusion the game routinely pause for minutes on end to take a breather. It should be running at 60FPS too.

And finally the moment to moment gameplay is, dare I say it, boring. The best thing I can say about the combat, stealth and the like is that it’s just about adequate. The monsters are visually boring, they act in a way which makes combat boring, and have no interesting varieties. In a game which clearly has a lot of imagination and creativity poured into every aspect of it - I can’t understand why the one thing you do the most is the least interesting.

I’d give it a solid 7/10.


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 Post subject: Re: Prey
PostPosted: Thu Aug 06, 2020 15:31 
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Another great Noclip video



Quote:
How Prey's Mind-Bending Opening Level Was Designed | Noclip


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