With special powers, first-person gunplay, and a damaged art-deco setting, some have wondered if the sci-fi shooter Prey (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC) was going to be like BioShock in space. And in many ways, it is. But thanks to a lot of little things that collectively numbed my enthusiasm, this action game just never grabbed me as much as BioShock.
In anticipation of their adventurous sci-fi first-person shooter Prey being released May 5th for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC, the good people at Arkane Studios and Bethesda Softworks held an event at the Andaz Hotel in Los Angeles where they gave local game journalists, myself included, a chance to play the first thirty, forty minutes of the game, and an opportunity to interview Ricardo Bare, the game’s lead designer [which you can read here]. What follows is my assessment of my brief time with the beginning of the game.
Suffice it to say, spoilers follow.
Though it was originally going to be a sequel to the 2006 sci-fi first-person shooter of the same name, the version of Prey being released on May 5th for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC is actually a totally new, unconnected game that, unlike the original or scrapped sequel, is being developed by Arkane Studios; the Austin, Texas one, not the Lyon, France one that made Dishonored 2. To promote its release, Lead Designer Ricard Bare recently brought the game to Los Angeles, where he gave local journalist a chance to try it out [my assessment of which you can read here] and to ask him questions about it.
I have a confession to make. While I enjoyed the original Dishonored four years ago, and while I had fun when I got to play its sequel for an hour at an event about a month ago, my initial thought when my review copy of Dishonored 2 (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC) arrived at my house this week was, “Uh, okay.” But as I started to play it, as I grew confident in my abilities and got caught up in the action, my feelings for this first-person stealth action game grew well beyond just “Uh, okay.”