As an immersive sim obsessive, Prey should rank highly among my favourite games. Yet when I first played Arkane’s ode to System Shock back in 2017, I didn’t fully get along with it. I admired much of what it did – the art-deco labyrinth of Talos 1, the freeform exploration, those exquisitely tricksy Mimics playing the solar system’s deadliest game of hide and seek.
Despite this, something didn’t click. I’ve thought about it often in the years since (like I said, I’m an obsessive), and I’ve concluded the problem lies with Prey’s combat. I relied on shotguns and psychoshock too heavily in my first run, and combat perhaps isn’t Prey’s greatest strength. Consequently, I’ve decided to try the game again, but with the added rule that I’m not allowed to kill any enemies in the game directly.
To be clear, I’m still allowed to eliminate any Typhon I encounter, but only through indirect methods. I’m not allowed to shoot them, blast them with psychokinetic powers, smash them with a wrench, or harm them in any way such that you could trace a straight line from my weapon to the alien corpse by my feet. As for what I can do, we’ll find out as I go. It’s been nearly six years since I last played Prey, and my memory of it is fuzzier than that of a TranStar employee after a Neuromod removal.
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Special Report- Stacked Deck - Monster Train, a deckbuilding roguelike that firmly entrenched itself as the crown prince to the kingly Slay the Spire back in 2020, was the kind of smash success you might call Champagne Big.
Monster Train, a deckbuilding roguelike that firmly entrenched itself as the crown prince to the kingly Slay the Spire back in 2020, was the kind of smash success you might call Champagne Big. Four years later, its successor Inkbound’s launch from Early Access was looking more like Sandwich Big.I’m not just saying that because of the mountain of lamb and eggplants I ate while meeting with developer Shiny Shoe over lunch, to feel out what the aftermath of releasing a game looks like in 2024. I mean, have I thought about that sandwich every day since? Yes. But also, the indie team talked frankly about the struggle of luring Monster Train’s audience on board for its next game.
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