I do not recommend viewing the spoilers if you intend to play this game. They are like viewing puzzle solutions.

First of all, if you're expecting a sequel to 2006's Prey, this is not it in any way. Many people are understandably angry that this is not Prey 2. I am going in without bias, never having played Prey '06. If you can detach this game from it's namesake, you will find a strong game that stands on its own. Prey 2017 is much closer to System/Bioshock or Dishonored. You are given a wide variety of tools and an open-ended enviorment to use them in. You are told early-on that you should explore and overcome obstacles in whatever way you want. This is the strongest part of the game. See that locked security booth? You could just find the keycard/code, or you could shoot the unlock button with a nerf gun or transform into a small object and roll through the opening in the window or sometimes you could find a backdoor or vent to sneak in through. Another example is the common "door blocked by large boxes and junk". You could get the ability for lifting heavy objects, or you could destroy them with a recycler charge or knock them away with an explosive barrel so you don't waste resources. Even if you don't view those spoilers, you can see how many options you have. And that's not just one place, the entire game is like that. Figuring out solutions like this is very satisfying and makes multiple playthroughs interesting. One time I might just take hacking and lifting skills and brute force my way through any door, another I might take typhon only abilities and have to think of ways around instead of through.

The game also has an amazing amount of verticality, similar to Dishonored. You can climb almost anything if you know what you're doing. This is helped by one of the game's most unique tools, the GLOO Gun. The GLOO gun shoots blobs of caulk that harden into solid objects that you can climb on, or you can paint enemies with it to freeze them.

There's also a large amount of looting and crafting, though not in the traditional "You need 5 more bear asses to craft this slightly better sword" way. Instead, you loot large amounts of junk and duplicate weapons, which then can be broken down into four basic materials and used to craft supplies. This encourages exploring every inch of the world, which is good because exploring is fun and there are many hidden stashes of items that you can stumble on or find hints about. Perceptive players are greatly rewarded.

The combat is overall very good as well. The gunplay is fine, average probably, but there's a similar mindset to fighting as there is to any other problem. You have a large number of tools, use them however you want. Tougher enemies are similar to puzzles in that once you figure out their weaknesses, you can take them out with much less effort. This could be seen as too easy or boring, but I enjoy taking out dangerous foes in clever ways. Direct combat is discouraged, though not at all impossible. Once I learned how to avoid some of the more difficult attacks, I enjoyed dancing around enemies that I used to hate fighting.

Lke the other parts of the game, the story is open to player choice. I won't go into much detail here, but there are no simple dialogue options; instead, you can choose what you want to do. You could kill that important NPC if you felt he deserves it and you won't be greeted by a game over screen or told that the story is ruined, there will be other ways to finish the game. There are also several choices that are morally grey.

So now let's get to the bad part. The technical issues. As with any PC game, some may experience these, some may not. I will be purely speaking from my own experiences. The voice volume is ♥♥♥♥♥♥, not sugar coating that at all. Audio Log and phonecalls sound fine, but NPCs speaking directly to your face are about 2x too loud. Sad, because the voice acting is pretty good. Enemy sounds are also good, occasionally too loud but nothing that bothers me much. The game has crash issues. Sometimes it just freezes and I have to kill it, other times it crashes to desktop. These are the only major issues I've encounted, but they are very major issues. I have not been able to fix them.

In conclusion, I recommend this game with the caveat that you need to save often and turn the voice volume way down. Honestly, this would probably be a near-perfect game without the technical problems. Even with them it makes it into my top 5 or 10 games in recent memory.

[h1]An incredible game marred by preconceptions and technical issues[/h1] [u]I do not recommend viewing the spoilers if you intend to play this game. They are like viewing puzzle solutions.[/u] First of all, if you're expecting a sequel to 2006's Prey, this is not it in any way. Many people are understandably angry that this is not Prey 2. I am going in without bias, never having played Prey '06. If you can detach this game from it's namesake, you will find a strong game that stands on its own. Prey 2017 is much closer to System/Bioshock or Dishonored. You are given a wide variety of tools and an open-ended enviorment to use them in. You are told early-on that you should explore and overcome obstacles in whatever way you want. This is the strongest part of the game. See that locked security booth? You could just find the keycard/code, or you could [spoiler]shoot the unlock button with a nerf gun[/spoiler] or [spoiler]transform into a small object and roll through the opening in the window[/spoiler] or sometimes you could [spoiler]find a backdoor or vent to sneak in through[/spoiler]. Another example is the common "door blocked by large boxes and junk". You could get the ability for lifting heavy objects, or you could [spoiler]destroy them with a recycler charge[/spoiler] or [spoiler]knock them away with an explosive barrel[/spoiler] so you don't waste resources. Even if you don't view those spoilers, you can see how many options you have. And that's not just one place, the entire game is like that. Figuring out solutions like this is very satisfying and makes multiple playthroughs interesting. One time I might just take hacking and lifting skills and brute force my way through any door, another I might take [spoiler]typhon only[/spoiler] abilities and have to think of ways around instead of through. The game also has an amazing amount of verticality, similar to Dishonored. You can climb almost anything if you know what you're doing. This is helped by one of the game's most unique tools, the GLOO Gun. The GLOO gun shoots blobs of caulk that harden into solid objects that you can climb on, or you can paint enemies with it to freeze them. There's also a large amount of looting and crafting, though not in the traditional "You need 5 more bear asses to craft this slightly better sword" way. Instead, you loot large amounts of junk and duplicate weapons, which then can be broken down into four basic materials and used to craft supplies. This encourages exploring every inch of the world, which is good because exploring is fun and there are many hidden stashes of items that you can stumble on or find hints about. Perceptive players are greatly rewarded. The combat is overall very good as well. The gunplay is fine, average probably, but there's a similar mindset to fighting as there is to any other problem. You have a large number of tools, use them however you want. Tougher enemies are similar to puzzles in that once you figure out their weaknesses, you can take them out with much less effort. This could be seen as too easy or boring, but I enjoy taking out dangerous foes in clever ways. Direct combat is discouraged, though not at all impossible. Once I learned how to avoid some of the more difficult attacks, I enjoyed dancing around enemies that I used to hate fighting. Lke the other parts of the game, the story is open to player choice. I won't go into much detail here, but there are no simple dialogue options; instead, you can choose what you want to do. You could kill that important NPC if you felt he deserves it and you won't be greeted by a game over screen or told that the story is ruined, there will be other ways to finish the game. There are also several choices that are morally grey. So now let's get to the bad part. The technical issues. As with any PC game, some may experience these, some may not. I will be purely speaking from my own experiences. The voice volume is fucked, not sugar coating that at all. Audio Log and phonecalls sound fine, but NPCs speaking directly to your face are about 2x too loud. Sad, because the voice acting is pretty good. Enemy sounds are also good, occasionally too loud but nothing that bothers me much. The game has crash issues. Sometimes it just freezes and I have to kill it, other times it crashes to desktop. These are the only major issues I've encounted, but they are very major issues. I have not been able to fix them. In conclusion, I recommend this game with the caveat that you need to save often and turn the voice volume way down. Honestly, this would probably be a near-perfect game without the technical problems. Even [i]with[/i] them it makes it into my top 5 or 10 games in recent memory.