Where the hell should I start? This game is of such high quality that those 50 hours I spent with it seemed like an instant. It is the wet dream all the System Shock, BioShock, Deus Ex, and Half-Life fans have been awaiting.

You get a brilliantly built interconnected space station that you slowly explore while following a very intricate plot. The plot of the game deals with a world where anything is possible thanks to Neuromod technology. It's a consequence of serious neuroscience research and some shady experimental practices, including Typhon alien organisms. Minus the aliens, I believe this could definitely be a vision of a world of tomorrow in a few hundred years when we unlock the power of the human brain by installing upgrades built by scanning a few highly-skilled individuals.

However, there is the alien factor that is essential in building these Neuromods. We would be nowhere near able to build them in 2032 without having made contact with neuron-consuming aliens with cool parapsychological abilities, even with space program support by the never-assassinated Kennedy and collaboration with the Soviet Union. And thanks to those aliens breaking containment, we have Prey.

The game itself is a thinking man's immersive sim heavily inspired by System Shock 2. It doesn't try to be radically innovative, and it's the same structure we have seen many times before. But, oh boy, the quality. I spent up to 10 hours playing and appreciating the first level or two simply because the world is executed with such a refined sense of detail. It's a scavenger's delight thanks to the recycling system, meaning that you can collect and make use of literally everything you come across, including banana peels and used cigars. It's an explorer's wet dream with every level designed as a semi-open world experience, where not everything is accessible to you at once, but slowly revealing itself after thorough scrutiny of the environment, sticky notes, emails on workstations, or after gaining new skills and equipment like repairing, hacking or increased mobility.

You can splice yourself with alien powers after researching them with your Psychoscope. Still, like in System Shock 2, I found those powers cool and powerful but not as useful for survival as the good ol' Human abilities. You'll use your scavenged equipment and acquired skills against many forms of Typhon ecology, including shape-shifting Mimics, robot-corrupting Technopaths, mind-controlling Telepaths, or colossal Nightmares. The game functions well as sci-fi horror, especially in the beginning when you are paranoid about every mug, which could be a Mimic.

The OST boasts the name of Mick Gordon, and he delivers, creating a compelling horror ambiance. CryEngine performed amazingly well, and the graphics reminded me of BioShock and Dishonored. There were some performance hiccups when more NPCs were present, and the game sometimes plays random sounds after loading a saved game.

I could forever write on and on about how great and inspiring the gaming experience was for me, that I need to jump in again and that it was definitely one of the best games I've ever played (or ever made, if you will), but I think I will instead play a bit of the game again, and you should do the same.

9.5/10

+ Talos I space station, amount of content and length, freedom in how to progress, graphics, sound, and OST
- some performance issues, some backtracking near the end

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I've unlocked all achievements! 58 of 58 (100%): Achievements list

Překlad recenze do češtiny: Databáze her [dbher.cz]

This game ruined my life. 10/10