drauch wrote:Yeah, I dug Prey quite a bit as well. Enemy variety is pretty weak and that ending is rough, but otherwise like you said, it was nice to have something feel like SS again. My only other niggling complain is their art style--it just doesn't fit the dark theme.
Yeah, I wouldn't have minded a more clear-cut clinical sci-fi with the empty feeling of true space horror. Drawing from the weird art deco style advertisements of the Bioshock setting felt completely out of place here, and I don't really understand the need for it.
Just curious what your hangups with Bioshock were? Haven't played it since launch and have been meaning to replay, but I recall enjoying it much more than Prey. But I'm also a bit more style over substance and enjoyed the logs and setting more than anything, so that may be where I'm coming from.
I actually really liked Bioshock. But it was advertised as a spiritual sequel to System Shock 2, and was anything but it. Ditching the inventory and customized way to approach the game, as well as making exploration a simple question of peeking a little off the beaten path to empty trashcans here and there, made it feel like a super dumbed down "AAA" version of System Shock.
By its own merits however, Bioshock was super cool. The setting is absolutely beautiful, with a ton of memorable setpieces, and using "adam" powers to play around with your enemies during combat was fun as hell (something Prey really lacked on the other hand).
The sequel, Bioshock Infinite is pretty much worse in every regard, with boring combat, terrible pacing, much more linear structure, and the setting feeling old less than a third into the game. However, the essence of it all is just that neither of them serve as a follow-up to System Shock at all, while Prey does in a lot of aspects.
What's interesting in that context I think, is that Prey feels every bit as "AAA" as Bioshock does, and proves that if not then, then at least 10 years later, the world is totally ready for a non-linear metroid-styled FPS game with a big inventory, tactical combat and multiple approaches to problem solving. I don't know if Prey was considered a success, but I hope it was.