Mugs and mayhem: eight minutes of Prey
Mimic memes
Prey [official site] is the game where you can turn into a mug. It's a sign of developer Arkane's reputation as Makers of Interesting Games that it isn't simply known as "That Game Where You Turn Into A Mug". Eight minutes of footage, some of which you may have seen before, shows other reasons to be excited about this sci-fi thriller. There's the shadowy creatures, the gloopy gun-gadget, some handsome environmental design, and the kind of combo-chaining of abilities that Dishonored 2 does so well.
And, yes, a mug trundling around a space station.
I love that the aliens look almost intangible but manage to make such a ruckus, phasing about the place and sending objects skittering around the room. I couldn't help but cringe when the commentary mentioned how rare weapons are and then the player shot a bin to check if it was an alien in disguise - USE THE WRENCH TO DO THAT, THAT'S WHAT THE WRENCH IS FOR. Prey is almost certainly going to be a game in which I spend most of my time clobbering everything with a wrench. It's the natural end-point of my FPS habits.
It all looks great to me, but I'm still completely in the dark as to how the structure works. Arkane talk about the station as being an open setting, so I'm interested to know how difficulty is gated, and how I'll go about picking up objectives and getting a sense of direction.
Along with the video above, there's also a shorter trailer that contains some of the same scenes cut short, and a tagline that probably means something. It was shown at last night's Game Awards so there's a brief introduction from the show.
