[video]https://youtu.be/KS0NtNxlX-s[/video]
If you like these kinds of longform reviews you should check out his other videos, they're crazy high quality.
Excellent review. I don't always agree with his criticism on the story but he made me realise why I love this game so much and all the little details put into it - particularly with the fact that the inside feels like it'd actually fit into the station. They definitely got the scale right in this game.
The fact that the game is a metroidvania completely escapes him and drones on for 10 minutes about the metroidvania elements present within the game, as many other people did
otherwise very solid critique
I played the shit out of this game for 100 hours to 100% it. fantastic and underrated game but it's clear there were plans for much more
i fucking love the 70s-80s executive aesthetic to this game
[QUOTE=salty peanut v2;52566376]I played the shit out of this game for 100 hours to 100% it. fantastic and underrated game but it's clear there were plans for much more[/QUOTE]
Yeah, I felt the game was too short actually (even though I didn't do all the side quests... I could probably do with a third non neuromod run and a fourth "do all the things in the way I want" run). I felt it could have used two or three more sections to make it longer. I just loved the choice in this game.
The only critique I ever remember having about the game was that the ending was extremely lame through the lens of a second or third playthrough. The outro sequence could've been expanded into something pretty vast instead of some dialogue hotswaps.
[QUOTE=Doom14;52566616]The only critique I ever remember having about the game was that the ending was extremely lame through the lens of a second or third playthrough. The outro sequence could've been expanded into something pretty vast instead of some dialogue hotswaps.[/QUOTE]
Arkane don't really have much of a knack for endings I think. The Dishonoured games suffer the same problem where the endings are largely just a recap of any choices you may have made and a quick summary of what might be in the future based on your critical path choices/ playstyle.
It's a real shame as their games are incredibly solid. Their writing is excellent, the gameplay is easy to learn but has a high as fuck skill ceiling and the worlds are genuinely interesting.
[QUOTE=hexpunK;52566692]Arkane don't really have much of a knack for endings I think. The Dishonoured games suffer the same problem where the endings are largely just a recap of any choices you may have made and a quick summary of what might be in the future based on your critical path choices/ playstyle.
It's a real shame as their games are incredibly solid. Their writing is excellent, the gameplay is easy to learn but [B]has a high as fuck skill ceiling[/B] and the worlds are genuinely interesting.[/QUOTE]
I have to disagree, sort of. Even though the skill ceiling is very high especially with the Typhon neuromods, it's a case of diminishing returns. Past a certain point the enemies aren't challenging enough for leveraging your skill to its full potential to be worth anything for most players - So long as you have the stun-gun and pistol you're practically untouchable if you're capable of circle-strafing, dodging projectiles and rudimentary resource management to keep those weapons supplied. Part of it is down to level design, with too many open spaces and vertical elements the enemies are incapable of using to their advantage, and worse, incapable of effectively responding to the player when they do. They aren't mobile enough, and there aren't enough different enemy types to keep ramping up the challenge as the game goes on.
Resource management in Prey is trivial. Especially for a human-only run, the only thing you need to worry about is metals, and if you spend time working out what objects yield the most (Sentries, destroyed operators) and recycle them at every opportunity, you're hard-pressed to run out of ammo past the first quarter of the game.
I don't think I died to an enemy past Psychotronics, and it was only up til I got the pistol and a steady supply of ammo that I felt properly challenged. The Mimics become easy fodder dying to one or two pistol shots, their gimmick becoming very easy to account for after not too long (Even without the psychoscope). Phantoms were ass-hard at the start, but again, they don't stand up to much fire and simply aren't mobile, numerous or intelligent enough to threaten the player past Psychotronics. Everything else is just a big, easy and dumb target that relies on high damage output from attacks that follow the player, in some ways they're easier to fight than Phantoms and Mimics.
The operators are barely worth mentioning. They all die to two shots from the stun-gun, or can be turned friendly with one and a hack. Again, they were challenging earlier in the game, mainly because areas were a bit more cramped and you simply didn't have the equipment to deal with them effectively. But relatively poor AI coupled with level design that doesn't do them any favours makes them trivial to deal with. In the last few sections I was camping the operator dispensers, wrenching the military operators then hacking them one-by-one, I barely had to fire a shot in the shuttle bay.
As cool as Talos-1 is visually, it really doesn't work for the kind of gameplay Prey was going for. Look at any of its predecessors and they all rely on cramped, twisting hallways, always short engagement distances, enemy designs with widely varying attack and movement patterns, and almost more importantly, weaknesses, and a more punishing and rewarding take on resource management. It's that in particular that Prey lacked.
Comparing SS2 to Prey, it has so much more going for it in that respect. Not only do you have to account for 5 different ammo types across the pistol and shotgun alone (And shoot the right ones at the right enemies), but you need to spend nanites and tools on keeping the guns functional in the first place. You could get by without buying a single bullet or maintenance tool, but even then, for everything else there is to spend your nanites on, you're never more than a couple mags away from being empty or jamming your gun. The shooting mechanics themselves are trivial so long as you have the right ammo for the enemies you were fighting, but that didn't stop combat from being a question of not only your ability to kill the enemy before they kill you, but whether you'll have enough resources to do the same in the next fight. And the opportunities to acquire those particular resources are few and far between. Each of the replicators across the ships
only have a maximum range of 4 items, and that can be anything from Frag grenades for the grenade launcher, to a can of soda, to psi-hypos that you might not use. And the currency you use to buy this ammo is the same one you use to hack boxes, security terminals, turrets, keypads, heal at surgical units, repair jammed guns and damaged replicators and upgrade weapons. In other words, there's a finite number of nanites in the game and you're often strapped for them, but you need them for all sorts of actions. Prey has no such quandaries, ditto with Neuromods vs Cyber-Modules. The latter you have to earn through completing objectives, and exploration if you're observant enough. Neuromods are a dime-a-dozen, at one point (Arboretum) I bought too many by accident, had 12 with only 8 to spend in the human tree, and still had the metals left over for a few more bullets and shells to add to the 350-large pile.
Long and short of it is they'd have made a better game if they aped System Shock 2 a bit more in weapon degradation, ammo types, enemy variety, level design and general resource systems. I didn't even get on to comparing it to BioShock 1, but it's more or less the same deal.
All these disagrees piling in, it'd be nice if at least one of you were to elaborate
[QUOTE=BlackMageMari;52566272]Excellent review. I don't always agree with his criticism on the story but he made me realise why I love this game so much and all the little details put into it - particularly with the fact that the inside feels like it'd actually fit into the station. They definitely got the scale right in this game.[/QUOTE]
If you watch speedruns of this game, players often go out of bounds to do some sequence breaking. You then see that a lot of Talos 1's base structure is built in areas you can't access from within the current map. To me, this means that the devs did their utmost best to keep the space station's size and scale consistent.
This, combined with the fact you can navigate around Talos 1 even from the outside, makes it all feel very connected and believable.
Contrast this with Rapture, for example: it's all a jumbled mess of random disconnected maps. Even though you look outside and see skyscrapers, there is not verticality to the levels. You can't look out of a window and see where you started from, and where you stand now in relation to that.
[QUOTE=Ager O'Eggers;52568173]If you watch speedruns of this game, players often go out of bounds to do some sequence breaking. You then see that a lot of Talos 1's base structure is built in areas you can't access from within the current map. To me, this means that the devs did their utmost best to keep the space station's size and scale consistent.
This, combined with the fact you can navigate around Talos 1 even from the outside, makes it all feel very connected and believable.[/QUOTE]
It does make for a boring speedrun though. Falling for 4 minutes is hardly compelling, from a player or viewer perspective.
[QUOTE=Morbo!!!;52568064]I have to disagree, sort of. Even though the skill ceiling is very high especially with the Typhon neuromods, it's a case of diminishing returns. Past a certain point the enemies aren't challenging enough for leveraging your skill to its full potential to be worth anything for most players - So long as you have the stun-gun and pistol you're practically untouchable if you're capable of circle-strafing, dodging projectiles and rudimentary resource management to keep those weapons supplied. Part of it is down to level design, with too many open spaces and vertical elements the enemies are incapable of using to their advantage, and worse, incapable of effectively responding to the player when they do. They aren't mobile enough, and there aren't enough different enemy types to keep ramping up the challenge as the game goes on.
Resource management in Prey is trivial. Especially for a human-only run, the only thing you need to worry about is metals, and if you spend time working out what objects yield the most (Sentries, destroyed operators) and recycle them at every opportunity, you're hard-pressed to run out of ammo past the first quarter of the game.
I don't think I died to an enemy past Psychotronics, and it was only up til I got the pistol and a steady supply of ammo that I felt properly challenged. The Mimics become easy fodder dying to one or two pistol shots, their gimmick becoming very easy to account for after not too long (Even without the psychoscope). Phantoms were ass-hard at the start, but again, they don't stand up to much fire and simply aren't mobile, numerous or intelligent enough to threaten the player past Psychotronics. Everything else is just a big, easy and dumb target that relies on high damage output from attacks that follow the player, in some ways they're easier to fight than Phantoms and Mimics.
The operators are barely worth mentioning. They all die to two shots from the stun-gun, or can be turned friendly with one and a hack. Again, they were challenging earlier in the game, mainly because areas were a bit more cramped and you simply didn't have the equipment to deal with them effectively. But relatively poor AI coupled with level design that doesn't do them any favours makes them trivial to deal with. In the last few sections I was camping the operator dispensers, wrenching the military operators then hacking them one-by-one, I barely had to fire a shot in the shuttle bay.
As cool as Talos-1 is visually, it really doesn't work for the kind of gameplay Prey was going for. Look at any of its predecessors and they all rely on cramped, twisting hallways, always short engagement distances, enemy designs with widely varying attack and movement patterns, and almost more importantly, weaknesses, and a more punishing and rewarding take on resource management. It's that in particular that Prey lacked.
Comparing SS2 to Prey, it has so much more going for it in that respect. Not only do you have to account for 5 different ammo types across the pistol and shotgun alone (And shoot the right ones at the right enemies), but you need to spend nanites and tools on keeping the guns functional in the first place. You could get by without buying a single bullet or maintenance tool, but even then, for everything else there is to spend your nanites on, you're never more than a couple mags away from being empty or jamming your gun. The shooting mechanics themselves are trivial so long as you have the right ammo for the enemies you were fighting, but that didn't stop combat from being a question of not only your ability to kill the enemy before they kill you, but whether you'll have enough resources to do the same in the next fight. And the opportunities to acquire those particular resources are few and far between. Each of the replicators across the ships
only have a maximum range of 4 items, and that can be anything from Frag grenades for the grenade launcher, to a can of soda, to psi-hypos that you might not use. And the currency you use to buy this ammo is the same one you use to hack boxes, security terminals, turrets, keypads, heal at surgical units, repair jammed guns and damaged replicators and upgrade weapons. In other words, there's a finite number of nanites in the game and you're often strapped for them, but you need them for all sorts of actions. Prey has no such quandaries, ditto with Neuromods vs Cyber-Modules. The latter you have to earn through completing objectives, and exploration if you're observant enough. Neuromods are a dime-a-dozen, at one point (Arboretum) I bought too many by accident, had 12 with only 8 to spend in the human tree, and still had the metals left over for a few more bullets and shells to add to the 350-large pile.
Long and short of it is they'd have made a better game if they aped System Shock 2 a bit more in weapon degradation, ammo types, enemy variety, level design and general resource systems. I didn't even get on to comparing it to BioShock 1, but it's more or less the same deal.
All these disagrees piling in, it'd be nice if at least one of you were to elaborate[/QUOTE]
I was mostly talking about Dishonoured there to be honest, the skill ceiling in Prey is a fair bit lower due to the nature of some of the powers and the more varied weapons (Dishonoured has a few weapons, but I don't think it's to the same degree as this by a long shot).
The threat of the enemies in Prey really does drop off, I think around the halfway point the only thing that gave me grief were the Voltaic Phantoms and Weavers in zero-g (fucking Cystoid spam got out of hand at times). I think you're right, the design of Talos 1 doesn't actually lend itself to most of the enemies. Phantoms can short warp, but I rarely saw them do it vertically, Operators can fly to you no matter where you are but aren't remotely threatening. Mimics just become a nuisance, etc. The other flying enemies like the Telepath and Technopath are threatening for a bit longer perhaps, the Technopath more so because of the likelihood it'll snatch turrets away from you. But even then I was running dick first into them by just over half way into the game.
Having never fully played SS or SS2 (I only fucked around with them a bit on a mates machine years ago) I can't really compare the two games fairly. But some aspects of the SS2 systems sound painful, having to maintain weapons isn't a fun feature and is at best inconvenient. Requiring certain ammo types for certain enemies to maximise damage also sounds like a pain in the ass (Prey averted that for me by having each power and weapon serve distinct functionalities, rather than pulling double or triple time based on some variable).
Part of me wonders how much closer to SS2 Prey was meant to be initially. There's flavour text related to the Fabricators mentioning how goods produced from them aren't anywhere near as good as machined or hand crafted things, but they would get the job done. I do wonder if Fabricated weapons were meant to be more replaceable in earlier revisions of the game. As it stands, short of inventory space leading you to drop something, there's no reason to ever print a weapon.
[QUOTE=hexpunK;52568843]I was mostly talking about Dishonoured there to be honest, the skill ceiling in Prey is a fair bit lower due to the nature of some of the powers and the more varied weapons (Dishonoured has a few weapons, but I don't think it's to the same degree as this by a long shot).
The threat of the enemies in Prey really does drop off, I think around the halfway point the only thing that gave me grief were the Voltaic Phantoms and Weavers in zero-g (fucking Cystoid spam got out of hand at times). I think you're right, the design of Talos 1 doesn't actually lend itself to most of the enemies. Phantoms can short warp, but I rarely saw them do it vertically, Operators can fly to you no matter where you are but aren't remotely threatening. Mimics just become a nuisance, etc. The other flying enemies like the Telepath and Technopath are threatening for a bit longer perhaps, the Technopath more so because of the likelihood it'll snatch turrets away from you. But even then I was running dick first into them by just over half way into the game.
Having never fully played SS or SS2 (I only fucked around with them a bit on a mates machine years ago) I can't really compare the two games fairly. But some aspects of the SS2 systems sound painful, having to maintain weapons isn't a fun feature and is at best inconvenient. Requiring certain ammo types for certain enemies to maximise damage also sounds like a pain in the ass (Prey averted that for me by having each power and weapon serve distinct functionalities, rather than pulling double or triple time based on some variable).
Part of me wonders how much closer to SS2 Prey was meant to be initially. There's flavour text related to the Fabricators mentioning how goods produced from them aren't anywhere near as good as machined or hand crafted things, but they would get the job done. I do wonder if Fabricated weapons were meant to be more replaceable in earlier revisions of the game. As it stands, short of inventory space leading you to drop something, there's no reason to ever print a weapon.[/QUOTE]
I thought you might've been more on about Dishonored than Prey, but I think it still stands, you can do some pretty interesting stuff with comboing typhon abilities and use of stun/gloo gun and the jetpack, but there's no reason to push yourself to that level of capability because the enemies just won't stand up to it long enough for there to be any point. Pumping 9mm rounds out a fully upgraded pistol kills most enemies within a second or two.
From an aesthetic perspective the enemy variety or lack thereof is boring too. Man-shaped black blob, with fire, electric and don't forget purple mystery flavours. Big floating monolithic black blob with angular surfaces. Big floating tentacular black blob. Small exploding suicide black blob. Everything else is mechanical and familiar. The mimics are by far the most interesting visually, but they're still spidery black blobs.
Contrast that to SS2. Dudes who have a parasite burrowed from their skulls to their chest cavity, with different clothing to distinguish the three different type. And when they attack you they spout some haunting shit, telling you they're sorry while they charge at you, and then that the Many sings to them and you're not part of the harmony, shouting "Submit!" while they cave your skull in. The cyborg midwives, brutally fused with machinery and speaking in a semi-synthesised voice about protecting their young ones who need plenty of meat so they can grow big and strong. Protocol droids who wave as they congratulate you on your marvellous choice of shitting yourself on top of a box so they can't walk into you and explode. And that's just three. SS2's enemies ooze character, corruptions of otherwise familiar things and really letting you know they're out to fucking get you. Prey's have next to none in comparison.
RE: Weapon degradation, I believe it was a planned feature if the description of a certain mod for Prey is to be believed. Whether it was scrapped due to a lack of time, or consideration of demographics isn't clear. It's the marmite of game mechanics, and I can understand how it can be tedious, but again, alongside ammo types, it reinforces the notion of everything working against you in addition to compounding resource management mechanics. It forces you to experiment and improvise, using weapons that aren't suitable for the current situation or your character but just to get by, using the environment against your enemies or finding a way to bypass them. But above all, the biggest purpose it plays is limiting the player's power, their capacity to protect themselves, but it's not insurmountable at all. It's yet another factor that rewards exploration and exploitation, not because you got sent on a fetch-quest and might as well check the surrounding areas, but because you're desperate for even half a mag of AP bullets before you go through the cargo bays full of suicide bots or a maintenance tool so your gun doesn't jam when you try to shoot them. In my eyes, it'd be a less fun game without these features. So I hope you can see where I'm coming from in that the fun I had in Prey was undermined by its resource mechanics. Past that first few hours, I was swimming in ammo so I was never forced to experiment with other methods of overcoming the challenges the enemies posed, like the OP video guy mentions, I was playing it like Quake or Doom and doing so successfully because even on Nightmare, the damage output, intelligence, mobility and capabilities of the player far outweigh those of the Typhon on an otherwise even playing field, which isn't far from what most of the game is due to the level design.
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