Space is a goldmine for any aspiring horror writer, with countless elements, which immediately work in the genre's favour. You have characters that can be immediately trapped with the monster, very limited supplies and no end of entertaining ways to die. Prey seems to realise this, as it provides one of the most hostile and chilling settings seen since Alien: Isolation. You have guns, you have powers, but in the face of what you're fighting that means very little.
This game to me was an awesome surprise, since I expected little besides another generic shooter and even stuff I'd normally be disappointed in I found myself liking instead.
ReplyDeleteFor example, the revelation about your choices would normally piss me off, however what they did with that was cool enough that I liked it so much I couldn't care about what I previously thought would happen.
At the very least it's shown me that you can't judge a book by its cover, and so far 2017 has been pretty good for getting good games like this one.
There was definitely a breath of fresh air about it, and for all the times it is obviously emulating System Shock or past successes, it seems to focus upon taking the best elements. It's more than a little surprising to see a few big name critics are slating this one off as a result of this though, especially when it comes to the horror aspects and building paranoia. Admittedly, much like yourself, this could be a result of initially writing it off as a fairly generic Doom clone from the first few reports and trailers.
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