- Tested on Xbox Series X.
- Game purchased in physical version.
- About 18 hours of metering.
- Screenshots home.
- Minimum disclosure guaranteed.
Having started his career with the excellent (but forgotten) Arx Fatalis, before touching the celebrity thanks to its very friendly series Dishonored, counting two main opus and a spin-off, then for the cacophonic debandade that constitutes the output of Redfall, the Arkane studio can boast, despite a half-tone news, of a great amount of success. The whole while never really touching the real commercial achievement, with sales figures oscillating between the right and the catastrophic. This does not prevent this French developer from typing in the eye of several video game mastodons, until he joins the ranks of Microsoft, for whom he is currently developing enigmatic Marvel. Long before that, in 2017, the studio gave birth to one of its best projects, Prey, title at the crossroads between the total reboot of a license that no one remembers, and the new dead IP born. A whole program.
Diamond Dogs
There are two categories of players: enthusiasts and others. The first, it goes without saying, makes video game art, and gives it a major importance in its life or even its daily life. The second, generally marked by less regular video-based activity, considers this media with a pragmatic eye, for what it is objectively, i.e. entertainment among others, in the same way as a TV programme or magazine. However, I may have rolled my bump on the internet, scratching for more than fifteen years a lot of papers never really read by the world, on a lot of various and varied games, I cannot, and will never, be able to put myself in the first of these two categories. Yes, I am what one might call a big player, because of regular activity. Nevertheless, I believe that there is an immeasurable gap between art, making the soul and the intellect grow, and entertainment, making time pass, emptying the head and mind.
Don't misinterpret my words, I don't feel bad about playing video game, which I regularly use as a relief valve when returning from work, for example. But it seems to me that, of all the entertainment that populates my free time, it is not the most interesting. I often feel guilty about immerse myself in a video-ludic world, when a sporting activity or a deep reading would have, at least, a bit of a positive impact on my health or psyche, which I both like to maintain for obvious reasons. The video game, if it does not grieve powerful evils and does not tire me very much, however, appears as a vector of procrastination, a counter-noble not profitable to intellectual pupilment, even though some projects seek, it is true, to question players on sometimes important subjects (read our article on Indika).
And I'm aware that, just by evoking this vision that might seem narrowed from a media today so powerful that it represents the most profitable entertainment that exists at the moment, I can attract the lightnings of many players, who will not hesitate to call me a reactionary for infantilizing words. Or pointing at the fact that video games are too easily associated with art, perhaps for the sole purpose of irrefutablely justifying passive activity that does not require any effort, to the detriment of active practices, whether they are sports or intellectual, or even simply social, more profitable in all circumstances. I do not want to get into the debate, simply because I am already exhausted just at the thought of having to answer for this cleavage, based on a deliberately binary vision, but only to explain to you in a few words the reasons that led to many, and sometimes very long, hollow periods in my life as a player.
Since abundant were the wiser or smarter things to do than to light up a console, always in my opinion, and that I most often played for the sole and sole purpose of having matter to write, the verb being my only true passion, then I easily justified breaks turning into pure and simple abandonments of a medium that I still love a lot. It is precisely in the heart of a long pause, not being far away from pushing me to permanently turn away from the video game, that I came across Prey, who had been sleeping for three years in a backlog whose background I would probably never see.
Prey, this is at first glance all that I love in the entertainment milieu. From Science-Fiction full of references as diverse as speaking, which refer me as much to my passionate readings of Asimov, Clarke or Pohl as to K. Dick's love for crazy uchronies. A rich and built universe, based on historical facts, twisting others and inventing new ones, all aimed at coherence that Orson Scott Card would not deny. But also a set of varied, complex systems, a general freedom offered to the player to give free rein to his desires, his experiments, and logically bringing a certain replayability. Accuracy however: if it happens of course to repeat games that I like very much (read my test of VanquishHowever, I never really wanted to change my approach. When I relaunched, recently, The Elder Scrolls V : Skyrim, I took on the same race as usual, and engaged in a mainly stealthy adventure, as in 100% of my previous run.
Not that I'm not able to salute the wealth of a RPG proposal as vast and tufted as Bethesda's, but I'm just not the kind of player to experiment at length. I find something that makes me vibrate, and I stand there worthless. So, even if he quickly typed in the eye, I was not meant to search, through a second part, in the various systems of Prey, which I had initially crossed by placing all my hopes on repairing the systems of defense of its playing space, piracy and stealth. Big mistake! Five years later, I took everything from scratch, and I don't regret anything.
Before going into the heart of the subject, a bit of context is necessary. Not just the story of Prey It is particularly surprising, nor extraordinarily interesting, but it must be recognized, as mentioned earlier, remarkable inspirations. Inspirations that the title gives us to the drop account, via various text documents to discover in its vast game space, audiologs to the Bioshockor intrusion into the private mails of the various inhabitants of Thalos I. A gigantic space station, in orbit of our moon and now an artificial gravity within it, all with a very aesthetic « 1950s », tinted with wooden and leather furniture, thick cigars and stylized alcohol bottles. At the turn of a corridor, we will discover that humanity has risen to the stars in a much more efficient way than in our reality, Thalos I being the organ of this space race leading moreover to a technological advance that no one would have thought possible a hundred years earlier.
For example, transhumanism is about to take a whole new form, far from the poncifs of the genre mentioned in the excellent Deus Ex : Human Revolution, himself inspired by novels such as Diamond Dogs d-Alastair Reynolds. Here, we forget everything about the profound modification of the human body, to focus on what it could gain by implanting artificial memory. Neuromods, small tools that seem harmless at first sight, but still require a very uncomfortable bite (even for the player) by the eyes, are about to upset the entire knowledge and learning system.
In this context, you embody Morgan Yu, a character (whose sex you choose) who actively participated in the creation of this miraculous technology, using, you learn very early in adventure, the cells of an alien species whose existence is kept secret in the eyes of the world. First hit posing a « small » ethical problem, followed by a second rather substantial one: the removal of a neuromod directly affects the memory of the subject, returning it to the stage where it was before the initial installation. This is how your amnesic protagonist starts the adventure (as it is original), understanding at the same time as the player what the stakes are, and having to deal with both an alien age having taken possession of the places and with a certain variety of characters, to whom to give or not trust.
The classic, in short, which will be followed by a fairly agreed frame, on the whole telephoned, nevertheless knowing some small bursts of interest, especially on the end. Several outcomes are also to be discovered, both bad and good, promising, to those who are receptive to it, a fairly long life, induced by obvious replayability, and therefore not only related to gameplay. A small tour de force for a title that, in appearance, offers an adventure very similar to the first Dishonored, excellent indeed, and rather rich elsewhere, but hardly promising such a vast field of possibilities. Title of which we obviously find reminiscences of Game Design, but not that. The Character Design, for example, is in the continuity of the two previous games of the studio, albeit less marked.
Visually, however, the game is as rich as Dishonored and Dishonored 2, or even more, with a space station with varied environments, and a vision of space that has enough to make the star feruses dream. The bestiary is also very pleasant to the eye, while not forgetting to be extremely threatening, which is also part of an irreproachable work on noise. It should be noted, however, that Prey is not a standard, suffering already at the time of its emergence from uneven textures, and overall from a rather weak technique. To this is added a myriad of bugs, some insignificant and benign, others more consistent and can affect the game more unpleasantly. Prey being an Immersive Sim Ultima and refined on System Shock – read our test) which induces the use of different systems allowing the player to remodel the game space. On this point, it has a fairly advanced physical motor. The latter will be regularly pushed into its entrenchments, if only by lifting some large objects, and it is not uncommon to see debris, including enemies, bounce in a completely surreal way. Nothing very bad, and it can even be funny at times.
However, it also goes with quest goals that simply don't sit up, when you have done everything in accordance with the rules imposed. For example, an auxiliary end-of-game quest requiring to keep a character alive and drop it in a specific room m A problem that I had already encountered five years earlier on PS4. Like the crashes, moreover, forcing to restart the game three times during this game.
Behind the glass
However, experience is rather immersive if the player gives the means. Earlier mentioned, textual documents and other audiologs are for many, and passing aside amounts to depriving themselves of a good piece of the game's interest, which distills SF concepts intelligently. But above all, those allergic to recycling and recovery of resources will find it very difficult to take their mark on Prey which, without going so far as to make Horizon Zero Dawn (mainly because the station is much smaller than Sony's game world), proves impossible to complete without a good dose of collection; what Arkane's title justifies with the help of two tools that will become your best friends: a recycler and a 3D printer.
The first, as its name indicates, compacts everything you place there to recycle it into raw material, which you can use in the second, by means of diagrams to find, allowing virtually to craft all the usable items. Armaments and ammunition, care items and ephemeral bonuses, neuromods... everything goes through. Thus, any player a little smart, and patient, will have the means, in a few hours, to completely break the game, by giving an absurd amount of balls, for example, or what to improve his character to the fullest. At least, after carrying out a quest that blocks anyone starting to print too much neuromods, a really not subtle way to remind us to order when we start rolling too much on the dangers that populate Thalos I. But it took something to hold us together, didn't it?
Personally, the collection has always been a little asleep, if not pushed back, and this is one of the reasons why Bioshock I fell from my hands every time I threw it, or I kept such a visceral hatred of the Survival genre and of each of its representatives. I love when resources are scarce, and create some tension, as in the first Resident Evil, to name but a few. Yet at Prey, I took a demonic pleasure to recycle everything that could be, until I attacked the station furniture, using grenades compacting virtually everything that dresses the scenery. We are far from the boredom felt in contact with an open world signed Ubisoft (read my test of Assassins Creed Origins), where any coloured grass can be picked up and then remain inert in an inventory far too large, not engaging, until the end of the game. Here, what you don't use can help you craft what you use. Simple and effective, and yet too rare, in this form, in contemporary video game.
Many welcomed the possibilities of an approach The Legend of Zelda : Tears of the KingdomRight. But in this open world signed Nintendo, you are dependent on the defined resources offered at an instant T. And if it is possible to browse the vast map to collect everything you want to add to your complex mechanics, however, it takes time. Prey, he, opts for a more immediate recipe, proving strangely rewarding.
Finding that it is also possible to draw from its approach possibilities, and from the freedom it leaves the player in exploring the Thalos I station, although Prey is not an open world, since cut into areas separated by loading times. It thus tends to prevent us from going through certain passages too early, and does not facilitate life to those who wish to go everywhere, immediately. But nothing prevents you from embarking on the neuromod craft and getting the necessary skills to unlock some intriguing paths. Spending your precious recycling grenades to open a door obstructed by furniture too heavy for you. Or simply to use the glue gun, a defensive weapon to paralyze enemies... but above all to build up its own platform elements, which is not necessarily understood at first contact with the game.
For the little anecdote, a demo of Prey had seen the day shortly before his release. Yet, although the latter was only to show the beginning of the game, and to allow a very small exploration of the first areas, some clever little ones had used the glue gun to break their chains, and had been able to reach places very far away. That is to say how the systems put in place in the game, despite the closed circuit of its various areas, function with the fire of God. Moreover, this second part of the story brought through many places that I had not had the opportunity to see in the first, or that I had only crossed without realizing what they contained. Proof that the game has it under the hood, despite its partitioned space.
Too bad that next to this some mechanics are a little less successful. Firearms, for example, lack a little potato, penalizing players betting on brute force to cross Thalos I. What I did. However, I was very satisfied with the efficiency of the method, since it was perfectly possible, by playing with the pump rifle and using the force skill pushed to its maximum, to destroy any age in record time. If I had been violently shaken by some enemies during my first passage on Prey, I had this shot had the impression very strange, yet quite delectable, to cut butter with a knife heated to white. The jubilatory effect is guaranteed!
It must be said that at first glance not all systems are worth it, but also that Prey is not what we do more balanced. One technique, for example, is to prevent enemies from using their powers for a certain period of time, while inflicting more or less heavy damage, which, coupled with other capabilities such as the above-mentioned force, or the maximum improvement of firearms, triggers a certain vibe to the DOOM (read my critical) : I'm not the one who's locked up with you, you're the one who's locked up with me. Thus, in this part where I was able to quickly abuse neuromods and swallow myself up with pumped rifle bullets, I died only twice, for mistakes of deafness or bad luck. This led to serious consideration of launching a New Game + in difficult mode. Maybe for the next time!
Still within the scope of things that work a little less well, I can only note the weapon improvement system, which is not very engaging, and which I personally would have liked more visual. Here, we simply use a kit to inflate some statistic from our fetish petry. It would have earned to be more organic. The limited inventory of the beginnings is also a little annoying, forcing to spend valuable resources in increasing its size, which is nothing fun. To counter this, one can learn to dismantle any object, via a skill again... but it's not very fun either, and it can be quite long elsewhere.
Prey is typically the kind of game where inventory does not need to be restricted. As much as Morgan can already stuff five pumped rifles and a whole gag of various items in the pockets without it slowing him down in any way, then the problem was not the intention of realism. Intention that one finds at work on a very common endurance mechanics, from which one would have gone as well. Running or giving keystrokes quickly bring down the dedicated gauge, giving the impression quite unpleasant to order, at first, an asthmatic in the midst of crisis. Small dosage errors which, put to the end, can upset.
Finally, while the Level Design is generally impeccable, it could be blamed for some shortcomings, particularly with regard to stealth. The title shows us that it is possible to take the enemies back, and that hiding under a table is a good way to escape the sight of the big bebodies. But it is only too rarely possible to put this theory into practice in its corridors, especially on the end of the game. The possibility remains very amusing, and often very useful, to change into an object of the decor, allowing to go unnoticed in the eyes of many denges, as well as to fax through small openings overlooking closed rooms. However, I can understand that some players take pleasure in feeling l Feeling that my first part, five years in the past, had exacerbated, with the use of turrets that I religiously repaired with the aim of protecting myself... which became quite ineffective spent some stage of adventure. All the opposite of that good old pump rifle, decidedly my best friend in all the FPS since the DOOM of 1994. What memories...
Far from being perfect, suffering in particular from a little in pain and unequal gameplay possibilities, Prey is however an excellent game. Immersive Sim with roded mechanics, allowing sympathetic and jubilatory compositions, he benefits from Arkane's expertise in Level Design, and an obvious love of his developers for the Science Fiction in the broad sense. Relatively gone unnoticed at its release, despite an ambition that honors it, Prey deserves today your gaze and your money, whether or not you know the past productions of the French studio. A fortiori to the extent that it will not cost you much.
For
- Exceptional Level Design
- Rich and fascinating universe
- References caressing SF fans in the hair direction
- Possibility of customization
- Good replayability and several ends
- 3D printer, a great idea
- Bestiary that makes its small effect
- Glue gun <3
- Soundtrack
- Often on the promo for misery
Against
- Telephoneed history
- Unequal interest according to buildings
- Guns lack potatoes
- A lot of bugs and a weak technique
- Collecting and recycling won't suit everyone
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