Multiplayer Ownage!
Now everything I’ve described so far was in a walkthrough with Tim… sadly we didn’t get to have a go on the single player levels as they’re far from complete as yet. In fact, we’re so early in the build that there’s lots of ‘place holder’ animations and objects that have yet to be fully coded, but the glimpse we did have was pretty impressive.
Tim did let us get our hands on the game for a multiplayer session though, and it has to be said that this still gave us a very good idea of what it’ll be like to play Prey. Sitting down in a room full of other journos, we booted into Tim’s server for some multiplayer frag fun.
Sitting there with the half dozen or so other journos, we all finally got a chance to have a go and see if this gravity/spirit thing gels together like Tim reckoned it would. Plus we got a chance to try out the rather cool looking weapons on each other.
Click for larger imageSo the weapons… well you know we’ve already got the melee weapon in the monkey wrench, but alongside that we’ve got an assault rifle that double up as a sniper rifle for those one-shot kills, there’s an acid spitting shotgun style gun that has rebounding globs of acid as an alternate fire and then there’s a mini-gun style weapon that also fires off grenades.
Speaking of grenades, there’s little critters running around resembling crabs that you can gather up and use as lobbable explosives. In a nicely cruel twist, you break off one of their legs to prime them before throwing at your target for some splatter-frags. Later on you can pick up a gun to fire these things off and that can also lay down a temporary shield to hide behind when the fire is coming thick and fast.
The most original weapon has to be the Leech Gun that has three different types of ammo. You charge this up by finding variously coloured power points around the ship and sucking the power from them into the gun. Then you unleash various types of mayhem dependant on how the Leech is charged up. Sadly, Tim could only show us one type during the single player levels and I was too busy owning everyone in the multiplayer to bother charging it up.
Click for larger imageYes, that right, I owned the multiplayer… I know, as bad as I am at CS:S, I actually managed to win every round in the multiplayer, and soon found my favourite weapons to be the sniper rifle and the acid gun.
The walkways in Prey serve to add a new dimension to the gameplay as many people found to their cost. You can run up one and hang about on the ceiling, waiting for someone to run in. They don’t realize you’re up above them and before you know it they’re running around wondering why they’re taking damage and not thinking to have a quick look over their heads… So Harry from Boomtown, I take my hat off to you for a good, close game but you need to work on your aim, dude!
So in closing, other than the fact my alter-ego Not_Tommy ruled the multiplayer maps, Prey is shaping up to be something rather cool and refreshingly different. We’ve got plenty of new stuff here to interest the experienced FPS player and with the gravity and spirit walking, there’s plenty of scope for some varied, original gameplay. The storyline, though a little clichéd to start with soon pans out into something far more involving than the ‘loner saves the world’ stuff we’re used to and from what we’ve seen, Prey is going to have been well worth the wait.
