Prey (2006)

Basically in development on and off for 11 years, came out in 2006, and now has been killed from ever being bought officially (ran out of keys). the gameplay is very similar to doom 3/ quack 4 (same engine). you get abducted to an alien ship with your gf, and the whole story is literally muh jenny. the environments are really trippy and actually disorienting, this is the first game ever(?) to introduce portal mechanics and the Portal series literally ripped it straight out of this. so much of the environment is going though crazy looking area to the next, crouching through 2 dimensional boxes (???), walking upside down on walkpads, hitting switches, going through portals, solving puzzles. this is kind of one of those games where you're often (Where do I go now?) because the environments quite literally are Alien.

for a 2006 game its very visually impressive and design wise environmentally. some of the levels have you outside and can scale planets walking in all directions, you really feel like you're in an alien realm. graphically the lighting feels way ahead of its time, and the shaders still hold up. theres a few parts where its jawdropping the scope and scale of the truly desolate and inhuman place your character is in.  i think the game looks great. the gameplay loop consists of using your strange found weapons, all of an alien variety, which look unique and creepy (with great animations) but i honestly didn't find many of them that enjoyable to use, and theres only like 6 of them. the first machine gun type weapon is most of what you'll be using, and just in general the weapons lack a punch of have much depth to them. after you deal with a wave of enemies, you go to the next empty area staring looking for the next trigger/switch/barrier. its basically fight>puzzle>fight>puzzle, end level, sometimes boss fight. atleast the enemy variation is amazing and all the enemies look pretty creepy and some of the parts feel intense. theres a shoehorned in native american alternate reality mode that is required to progress puzzles and environmental parts, you get a bow and detatch from your main body and wander around going through otherwise impossible gates & shit, just feels like a way for them to vibe off the native American storyline but its boring I don't know. Also vehicle sections. They sucked. I didnt like them. You fly around in openended areas awkwardly floating around trying to find the next switch or some stupid puzzle to progress, its just tedious

the death system is dumb, theres no real penalty for dying, you just go up into the sky and shoot some red birds(health boost?) blue birds (native American bow mode?) its just poorly put together and its almost like dying is a bonus since you can just stack health, and go right back to where you "died" its just a perplexing system, whats the point? it just feels like them trying to do something different just for the sake of it. it gets old fast. since theres no real penalty for dying, any possible threat is gone and the game just feels boring and tedious after awhile. i couldn't play more than 1 level in a sitting without desperately wondering when the next level was happening so I could turn it off.

so the combat is underwhelming in feeling, the environments while really impressive and cool looking, get annoying trying to navigate, the puzzles really just ruin the pace and make you feel like you're wasting your time......its not great, but graphically and as a crazy alternate dimension type thing to look at, its kinda cool..

6/10