Prey (or, as I like to call it, NeuroShock) is a criminally underrated & overlooked masterpiece. An “immersive sim,” it is an incredible blend of action-adventure, survival horror, and RPG elements, drawing influence from classics such as System Shock & BioShock (serving as a sort of spiritual successor), Half-Life, Resident Evil, Deus Ex, Crysis, and Arkane’s own Dishonored and amalgamating the best parts of them into something both familiar and remarkably fresh. There is so much to love about it – it features a speculative sci-fi story with Lovecraftian existential & cosmic horror and themes of morality, distrust, dissociative identity, extraterrestrial life, and scientific responsibility, it gives the player the freedom to approach any given situation in a variety of ways, its environmental & level design is exceptional, highly interactive, and brimming with detail which allow for a variety of ways to approach exploration, its production values are top-notch across the board, its awe-inspiring art design is brought to life by amazing graphics, its sound design further brings its world to life, and its soundtrack (composed by the great Mick Gordon) features effects-laden electric guitars & synthesizers that have a contemporary John Carpenter-esque vibe which perfectly suits the game’s haunting & surreal outer space atmosphere.

Player agency is the name of the game. For every obstructed path or locked door, you are given a variety of tools & navigational means to progress in creative ways. There is a Metroidvania style of backtracking to previously inaccessible areas, but you can break the rules with the myriad of weapons & special abilities at your disposal. As the game progresses and you amass more of them, combat & exploration become increasingly complex & dynamic. Say you want to get into an area but the main door is locked and there’s a stack of crates obstructing an alternate entrance – you can look for a maintenance access shaft to make your way around and into it, climb onto things in the environment to find a hidden point of entrance from the level above or below, morph into an object and fit through a small opening, aim a toy bolt gun that shoots foam darts through that same small opening to hit an unlocking mechanism, use telekinesis to remotely access that mechanism, hack your way past the security system or lift the crates out of the way, throw a Recycler grenade at the crates to vaporize them, find an explosive canister to place near the crates and shoot from a distance to clear a path...the sheer variety of possibilities are mind-boggling, and I haven’t even mentioned one of the best videogame weapon ever conceived: the Gloo Cannon. This thing has an insane amount of utility; it shoots a liquid that quickly hardens, allowing you to create your own platforms to navigate the environment vertically, cover broken power panels and leaks in gas pipes that obstruct your path with electricity & fire, and temporarily freeze enemies in place to gain the upper-hand in combat or buy yourself some time to run away. These gameplay elements are a stroke of absolute genius that elevate Prey above many of its peers.

The combat is also a lot of fun; enemies are varied & interesting, presenting good stealth & combat challenges and adding an ever-present sense of unease to the already tense & foreboding atmosphere. Traditional weapons are limited to a wrench, handgun, and shotgun, but there are also a few sci-fi weapons including different types of grenades, each of which is highly situational; these all go hand-in-hand with the variety of special abilities you can use to shape how you play. The item crafting & management system is perhaps the best I have ever seen; interfaces are clean & intuitive, and you use recycling stations to break down items you collect into raw materials which you can then run through a fabricator to create different types of ammo & grenades, healing kits, upgrades for weapons & abilities, and other crucial tools. All of these things are also found on enemies and all over the environment, further incentivizing exploration.

The world-building and lore are fascinating. The characters' backstories, the events of the game's alternate history, and the history of Talos I, the space station setting of Prey, are largely presented to you via book excerpts, letters, and video & audio logs you find along your journey. These vestiges of a fictional timeline and the personal & professional correspondences of your fellow crew-members flesh out the game's world & lore and make Talos I feel like a truly lived-in place every bit as much as the excellent art design does. Its visual storytelling alone conveys so much, and the first hour in particular is a testament to this as it is one of the best videogame intros I have ever experienced. Though the pacing is a bit uneven at points during the roughly 15 hour campaign, the fact that it took me over 30 hours to reach the end is a testament to how good the exploration is and how interesting many of the side-quests are. The choices with which you’re presented throughout the campaign and how they affect its outcome further reflect the amount of freedom the game bestows upon you, and the story is so rich with subtext & mystery that it will keep you thinking & theorizing about it long after you finish.

I would recommend Prey to just about everyone – fans of shooters, action games, stealth, survival horror, RPGs & adventure games. It is a master class in borrowing elements from classics to create a foundation for something new, and it does so many innovative & unique things so well and puts its own spin on classic gameplay designs with such style that it is on the level of generation-defining games like Half-Life and Portal. Prey gives the player more agency & gameplay options than perhaps any other game of its kind, and it is a stellar title with exciting experiences around every corner and in every nook & cranny. It doesn't get even half of the recognition & acclaim it deserves as, in my opinion, it is one of the greatest games of all time.