Prey Demo?

[SneaksieDave]

Whoa. Who else has tried this? I had it laying around for more than a month now, waiting for a system reimage before trying it out, and I just did. And it's pretty damn good! It's the shooter formula of course, don't get me wrong, but it's pretty involving and well crafted.

 

Is the full game out yet? I know, I should know, but I haven't followed it because of a bias against Duke. If it is, does anyone have it, and does the experience hold up? I just froze up in the demo (figured out that my videocard appears to overheat lately - damn heat wave), so I took the opportunity to write this, but I'm going back in.

[Darkness_Falls]

You're a little behind the times there, SneaksieDave! The game has been out for about a month I think. I got it when it came out and played quite a bit for a few days, and then haven't really gone back to it since. Haven't beat it yet.

 

It was an interesting game, for sure. I just wish there wasn't a delay between playing the demo and actually getting the game. It lost some of the pzazz in my mind for some reason because of that delay. So when I played the actual real game, it wasn't as exciting and new for me.

 

Hard to explain. I'll go back to beat it some day, and I still think it's a pretty cool game... but I've just had other things taking my time and haven't felt a strong pull to play it again recently.

 

I think there was a Prey thread here a month ago...

[Komag]

Prey is one of my few "buy it in 6 months or a year or so, when it's $30 or hopefully even $20!". VERY rarely is a game "buy it now for $50!". Oblivion was, and Gothic 3 is going to be.

[Hylix Ulyx]

I heard that!!

 

I bought Oblivion BEFORE I built my new PC...

 

Well, not sure if that makes TES IV a great game, or me an idiot...

 

Probably Both!!!

[Spitter]

Prey is an ok old school shooter, but after the adrenaline rush of the first third of the game, the middle drags quite a bit. The final stages pick up again though.

[OrbWeaver]

I thought the demo was OK, but the performance didn't seem to be too good. I might need to upgrade my graphics drivers though, I haven't done that for a while and the manufacturers do add game-specific optimisations after a major release.

 

I don't think I will be buying the game though, at least not until it is on special offer.

[Ishtvan]

Did that usable space exploration vehicle they trumpeted make it into the actual game? That looked like a pretty cool use of sky portals, if that's how they did it.

[squill]

I ran thru the whole game in about two days. I like the atmosphere and voice-acting, really gets you into the game. But it's still too easy to beat like most shooters today even on hard. Also the mini-game you get when you die makes it rather easy to finish the game.

 

The graphics are again amazing with sharper textures both normal maps and specular. It still runs smooth on high settings on my 6600 GT even the outdoor environments, and it does have the space exploration vehicle.

 

The portals are a nice addition to the game and provide some fun puzzle elements. Some of the later lvels are freaky, you'll just have to see it for yourself.

[Darkness_Falls]

Prey is an ok old school shooter, but after the adrenaline rush of the first third of the game, the middle drags quite a bit. The final stages pick up again though.

I guess I'm in the middle right now and need to get to the final stages...

 

Oblivion wasn't a 'but at full price' game. I got suckered into doing so, but the game is not any better than Prey, imo.

[Komag]

I thoughly enjoyed my 250 Oblivion hours, then I sold it and got back 80% of my money so I'm happy! I'll probably buy it again, used, in like a year or two, to play with all the new mods and try the other quest lines.

[sparhawk]

Did that usable space exploration vehicle they trumpeted make it into the actual game? That looked like a pretty cool use of sky portals, if that's how they did it.

 

The vehicle is in the game, but it's definitely not a portalsky thingy IMO. (yeah I know an old thread resurrected ).

 

There are some pretty cool ideas in that game though. These portalgates are bloody awesome and I wonder how they did it. You can seemlessly go through these holes and you can even shoot through them, so they are not just faked textures, but some kind of real doors.

 

They were also quite creative to solve some of the usuall problems of shooters. First time I ever played a shooter where I really never needed to reload. That idea with the spirits was pretty good, but of course something like that works only in the context of the environment.

What I also consider pretty good about it is, that you can survive the environment by observing it. Of course you have the occassional AI teleported in, but always in such a way that you can manage them. Not this "Spawn behind the player" routine from Doom 3.

 

At first, when I saw the first maps (after the reservation) I thought "OH my god! It's Doom 3 again." but after playing it a short time I realised that it is MUCH better. I defintely will buy that game, as it is the first game since the last two years that I really like to play. Oblivion was a letdown imo. Suffered from the same problem the previous installment did.

[OrbWeaver]

Will there be a Linux version of Prey? I liked the game almost enough to purchase it, so I probably would do so if there was a Linux version available like with D3 and Q4.

[sparhawk]

It's running the Doom engine, but probably a heavily modified one. Would be worth a try to just drop it into the Doom directory and see wether it runs. I think that gateways required some support from the renderengine, but maybe they did it in the SDK and if that is the case, then it might work.

[Dram]

These portalgates are bloody awesome and I wonder how they did it. You can seemlessly go through these holes and you can even shoot through them, so they are not just faked textures, but some kind of real doors.

 

Yeah they're pretty cool, but were around since Unreal 1 - I think the map DM-Radikus has them, don't remember exactly which map, but yeah. I was surprised nobody else used the idea and it's taken around 10 years to "re-invent" it.

[sparhawk]

Never seent his kind of doors. I didn't play Unreal, because everytime I started to play it it got boring after a short time, even though it looks interesting at first. And Unreal 2 was not much better IMO, though I played it a bit farther then 1.

[Gildoran]

Heh, I remember having fun making a little portal testmap for Unreal... it was a single corner of a cube with portals that lead into itself, so you could look around a large cube, and see 7 other copies of yourself (3 on the floor and 4 on the ceiling), and even shoot yourself in the back. (well, side)

 

I think Unreal's reflective surfaces were based off of its portal technology.

[OrbWeaver]

It's running the Doom engine, but probably a heavily modified one. Would be worth a try to just drop it into the Doom directory and see wether it runs. I think that gateways required some support from the renderengine, but maybe they did it in the SDK and if that is the case, then it might work.

 

They made changes to the renderer as well; there is almost no chance it will work just by copying the content into Doom 3.

 

The prevailing wisdom on the net suggests that there won't be a Linux port for this game, unfortunately (usual cost/benefit small-market thing).

[sparhawk]

That seems pretty strange. The Doom engine is already ported to Linux, so when they did changes to the renderer, I wonder why these changes would be so OS specific that you have a hard time porting it to linux as well. I mean, the majority of the work is already done.