Episode 126 - Coulda, Shoulda, Keycards - Prey

We spent years trying to put the podcast into you, we never tried
to put you into the podcast. Welcome back! We’ve had a pretty good
time so far on Fanbruary, the month where our listeners select the
games we play, and we’re going to continue that good time with
Prey, the 2017 Arcane immersive sim game. Prey is a first person
shooter, but with a heavy focus on systems and a wide array of
things the player can do, either by default or by spending some
resources to unlock abilities. This is fairly standard for the
immersive sim genre, but as the games that meet that criteria are
pretty few and far between, it’s safe to say this is among the most
accessible of them. The game is pretty not confusing, and the
threats and objectives are always clear, so even a player with
little to no experience in specializing toward a playstyle can jump
in and get a handle on it. I mention this because it describes both
of us prior to playing this game, and once we jumped in, we ended
up taking two entirely different paths and found the game about as
balanced and fluid despite our vastly different playstyles. This is
the strength of Prey’s design: the game gives you tools and lets
you decide how best to use them, and no matter your choice, you’ll
find yourself uniquely capable of taking on its challenges without
needing to bend your playstyle around them. We’re going to be
talking about tried and true vs novel mechanic sets, world design
across the whole title with special emphasis on the brilliant
intro, and we talk about how the fat cats over at Big Arrow got
their hands into our games again. Thank you for joining us again
this week! This is the last full episode of “Fanbruary” (and, would
ya look at the time, maybe the last episode in February at all),
but we have one more listener-suggested pocket title to get to next
week. We’re extremely pleased with how these turned out as far as
quality and variety, so we’re going to count this as a successful
theme and will probably revisit it next year. If you want to get in
on it, let us know in the comments, or come join our Discord server
where you can talk about this and all the other games, as well as
make regular suggestions whenever you want. What did you think of
Prey? Did you play it at launch, or is it one you came back to? Did
you become hopelessly addicted to Neuromods like I did? Did you
accidentally play the 2006 game because they share the same name?
Let’s hope not. Next time, we’re going to be diving into Elden
March, which is to say, we’re talking about Shovel Knight, a game
that has very little to do with Elden Ring. But I hope it’s
exciting nonetheless.