Prey

[markgreyam]

It kinda doesn't feel like you are shooting anything, no damage until they drop...maybe it's just me.

I agree with this as well. The engine just sucks for a 'solid' feeling shooter. I feel like I'm shooting marble statues or something. And then they just die and disappear. I really don't like the engine at all and I don't think that Prey has done enough to make me want to overlook that.

[NekoFever]

There's certainly enough going on to keep things interesting (the portals, gravity tricks, skewed perspectives etc) and it left me wanting to see what else happens.

That's pretty much what convinced me to buy it. There were so many creative uses of the portals and gravity that I can't imagine how complex it gets later on, and the whole mechanic of using your soul to go and trip switches could be really cool. While I didn't think much of the multiplayer, it certainly showed how complex (and motion sickness-inducing) the gravity-based environments can be.

I agree with the comments about the Doom 3 engine, though. It seems that it can only make identikit technopunk environments and I'd be surprised if it's ever used to such differing extents as the Quake III (Quake III, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Call of Duty, American McGee's Alice, etc) or especially Unreal 2.0 (UT2004, Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six, XIII, Harry Potter) engines.

[Soi]

I'm suprised by some people's negativity towards this game - I thougth the demo was excellent. Inventive, atmospheric and it reminds me of Quake 2 gone bonkers.

The only bad thing I can tihng of is that the human character models are very ropey. The "fish eye" POV in widescreen was a pain for the first 10 minutes, but then I got used to it.

The graphics are great (360 in 720p), and the framerate is perfectly acceptable. I also have no problems with the guns, they felt meaty enough to me. The machine gun/sniper is an excellent gun, and headshots are very satisfying.

The best thing about the game is that the aiming feels right. Too many games recently (especially PDZ) have just felt wrong, and shots that I feel should have hit end up missing. With this game, if I aim and miss I know it is my fault.

The multiplayer is also better than I thought it would be. The spirit walk stuff adds a nice twist to deathmatch. It will be interesting to see what other game modes the full game has. Defending in CTF against spirit-walking attackers could be very interesting.

EDIT: Just read that the full game only has Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch as multiplayer modes. A shame.

[PeteJ]

I wasn't that impressed with multiplayer - its too fast paced and the weaponary isn't powerful enough, which creates a game where you end up circling around each other until someone dies. I love the gravity shifting though.

Hope there are loads of modifiers ala UT, GRAW or Halo. Shame no CTF

[TheForce]

I quite enjoyed it, I liked the level design, with all that gravity stuff. And the guns feel much better then they did in Doom3, they still could be a bit better/heavier, but it didn't ennoyed me at all, this will be worth checking out when it's released.

[xXIShadowIXx]

For those of you trying to decide wether to buy this on the 360 or PC, if your PC can handle it at decent settings, go for that. The graphics of Prey on my PC (Athlon 4000 overclocked to 2.65GHz ATI X1800GTO 2GB Ram) are excellent and thats only a mid range gfx card. Definatly better than the 360 version anyway.

But is suppose its down to personal preferance.

[Dezm0nd]

A cliffhanger eh? I walked out of a portal and the demo ended. Not exactly the most gripping of conclusions I have to say, but the opinions of others will of course differ...

heh yeah, i see what you mean, I did word it like the end was like an episode of lost or something but i was refering to the whole demo being a great cliff hanger for the rest of the game. I definitely want to know what's going on and the demo did its job perfectly for me.

[PeteJ]

For those of you trying to decide wether to buy this on the 360 or PC, if your PC can handle it at decent settings, go for that. The graphics of Prey on my PC (Athlon 4000 overclocked to 2.65GHz ATI X1800GTO 2GB Ram) are excellent and thats only a mid range gfx card. Definatly better than the 360 version anyway.

But is suppose its down to personal preferance.

You think? Looked the same to me, though the loading times were slightly better on PC.

[hudson]

I'm running a PC with Athlon 64 4000, 2GB RAM and a Geforce 6800GS (all in-game video settings on highest), and to be honest there is hardly much difference in the way the two versions look. What I will say is that it is noticable how much more smoother the framerate is on PC. Still the 360 version is very playable.

It's just gonna come down to whether you would rather play this at a desk with a Mouse or lying on your bed/couch with a controller and some Pringles For me anyway.

[Matt]

Am I the only person who finds it a bit depressing that a PC running a 6800GS (which no offense Hoolak isn't the best model around, the 7800's rip it apart) is smoother than the fixed hardware in the 360? At this stage in the 360's life you'd expect PC's to still be struggling to keep up.

[PeteJ]

Not really, the game wasn't designed for the 360 in mind...or something The engine certainly wasn't!

[Matt]

Should that matter that much? Isn't the 360 based on the ATI equivalent of the nVidia 7800? Therefore I'd expect performance at least close to that, not below a PC card a whole graphics generation behind.

You'd have expected the 360 would simply have the raw power to shift the polygons. Will be interesting to see some ATI benchmarks on Prey to get a more direct comparison to the fixed 30fps on the 360.

I'm sure the 360 can do better

[hudson]

My 6800GS card was released Feb this year and cost 200 quid-ish. I should hope it runs better or as good as a 360 for that price

[Matt]

Yeah but it's basically an overclocked 6800GT with 12 pipes instead of 16. And the 6800's came out in 2004 and are significantly slower than the current ATI cards I thought the 360 was based on.

In other words, the 360 should be more powerful than your card. Sorry mate.

[hudson]

Hey, no worries mate. Just was a bit confused to why my PC Prey runs and looks a bit better than 360 version.