How many times have you beaten Prey? Is there something you wish a "Prey 2" would do?

What a great game. Deserved so much more attention and more sold copies.

I've played hundreds of games and Prey has been top 5 since I played it shortly after its release. Criminally underrated.

It’s tragic this game didn’t sell as well as it should have, leaving the arrival of a sequel nebulous. It’s even more tragic an sdk or level editor was never released so the fans could carry it on.

Thanks for playing the game! It was an honor to guide you through Talos I.

I heard they wanted to call it PsychoShock. I love this game. My partner watched me playthrough it and we had a great time. Its easily one of my favorite games. The only thing that could get me more excited is the System shock remake coming in March.

honestly I've played a lot of immersive sims, action shooty-shooty games and even rpgs and rts games, and yet Prey is still the game that remains in my memory.

I'm just glad you finally got to play this and experience this badass game. Can't wait to dig in! As I'm working a Deathloop script now, I'm actually very much in need of a contextualization of a game that unequivocally plays to Arkane's strengths, not one that seems to sell out to industry trends. This'll be of immense help to there as well as just being a standard banger from you!

Prey and Prey: Mooncrash are two of the best im-sims ever made, hands down. As others have noted, it is almost criminal how underrated/underplayed they are, and I think that falls squarely at the feet of Bethesda for forcing the name Prey on it rather than PsychoShock.

Prey has one of the best aesthetics in all of gaming

That intro is so awesome. I wanna experience and review this game all over again thanks to it

Hearing that "Good morning Morgan" bit and the music at the end of the intro felt like returning home after a long trip. I've completed Prey many times, bought it on at least 2 different platforms with the dlc. The game has left me with such a profound mark that Talos 1 feels like another home to me, even though I've spend literally many hundred times more time on Warframe's Orbiter.

Literally beat this game a couple months ago, and wondered why this game was so slept on. So Happy i gave it a chance!

"We're gonna shake things up -- like old times." Poor Morgan.

My favorite tactic father as many rurrets as possible into my office and just lure enemy's to me the nightmare couldn't even get to the door 😂

I think the biggest reason this game bounced off of so many people is the enemy design. The inspiration behind the function of the enemies was great. I just know personally nearly all of them being amorphous goo creatures or uninteresting robots later on got old really quickly and left the enemy visual design feeling rushed and uninspired. It also didn't help that the combat felt like it lacked weight/impact. I feel like just a couple of tweaks could have really expanded this game's reach and legacy.

This is the 2nd best game ever made, behind Deus Ex.

I’m my opinion prey is an extremely special and rare game, absolutely took over the mind for a few months. I love it.

I love your reviews good sir! So glad you brought attention to this wonderful game. Quick note: Dr Calvino's workshop recording actually shows you a secret compartment you can open by placing his mug on the weighing scale by a wall. If you look at him through the glass after his assistant leaves, you'll see him open this secret compartment. There are also emails from his workstation that he requested a weighing scale be fabricated that opens when an exact weight is put on it. It's such an awesome little investigative piece, I wish they had much more of this.

The first two thirds of Prey are world-class. My disappointment came in the final third. Once you reach a certain level of power, the mystery and fear regarding the Typhon is gone. In the beginning of the game, they are just.. there. You get no guidance on how to handle them, you have no idea what they are capable of. By the end, you know exactly what they are capable of, and its not scary.

Best game I'll likely ever play. Unbelievably enjoyable first playthrough

The question of what happened to the REAL Morgan is still a mystery

Prey (2017) [oh boy, what a name...] is everything that i could have wished for of a System Shock 3 and it's the reason why I'm not even all that bummed out by SS3 development having gone the way it did. The amount of "fuck around and find out-ery" going on in this game is mindbogglingly immense. Even though we both seem to have focused on mostly human abilities for our first playthroughs, yours sounds so vastly different from mine. The game just offers that many different approaches to all kinds of scenarios and uses for abilities that you'd never even imagine before messing around with them. Like, something that happened very early on in my playthrough was me coming across that doorway in the main lobby that was blocked by heavy objects. And immediately I became so utterly transfixed by getting past it that getting Leverage 3 was my main goal. And I can't stress just how transformative this goal was for my entire playthrough. Having pumped my first Neuromods into Leverage 1 and 2 instead of any proper combat abilities I quickly found myself outmatched whenever trying to approach any typhons with my meek pistol. It didn't take long until I figured "What happens if I take this incredibly heavy looking object using Leverage and hurl it at the typhon instead?" Seeing it die right after completely changed how I approached combat encounters, barely using weapons at all and mostly focusing on Engineering skills to use the station itself as my strongest weapon. And the most amazing thing about this is the fact that you don't even need Leverage 3 to get past that blocked of doorway in the lobby. As I found out much later, Recycler Charges do just as much of an effective job at clearing out paths blocked by objects, and you get some nice resources out of them to boot! The entire time the thing that became my main motivation could have been dealt with right at the beginning, if only i had messed around with different tools in my sandbox a little more. At the same time, I can't imagine how that alternative playthrough would have gone, as I would have never discovered the power of hurling heavy things at enemies, had it not inspired me to go for Leverage in the first place. And there are so many other points in the game just like this where two different players might take two vastly different approaches, completely transforming the way they play this game for the first time. Truly a game worthy of its legacy...

When you are mimicking an object, you are not affected by environmental hazards such as fire or electricity. And if you level it up and mimic a turret, you get infinite ammo at the cost of easily replenishable psi. But yeah, it only really matters on highest difficulty, when resources are scarse.

This was so well done and such a joy to watch! After finishing the game 2 weeks ago I watched several indepth reviews and commentarys on Prey. They made me love the game even more and your review is among my favorites. I really enjoy your narration style and could listen to you for hours. I highly enjoyed the way you structured the review, it made a lot of sense and captured the different aspects of the game really well. Thank you for putting out such a indepth and thoughtful review for one of my favorite games.!

I played the game during Christmas 2022 and oh my what an amazing experince i also played it without giving Morgan any alien powers to keep him human in my mind.

Your editing is so fluid in this one, boss; easily your best and I can feel a sense of fluidity in your writing here too, like you had a really good time and are just able to make something great in response. humor was effortless and very you! also i had no idea this game had a new game plus, one of my absolute favorite things. that makes my inevitable 2nd and 3rd playthroughs all the more enticing.

i like how after all the reviews i see, when i start running out of long video essay stuff about topics i like, i can always count on Nth Review to likely cover a game for me :)

I believe you missed that the very ending, where you choose between killing them all and shake hands, is still a simulation, indicating they still don't trust you. There's an inserted broken frame there, which is present during all other instances when you're in a simulation. So this ending does not undo all of the choices you made during your playthrough.

The second you mentioned Mae Whitman I couldn't help but reflexively say, "Her?" Hahaha

1:32:41 Ackshually, if you looked up, you would see an opening to where you can scale over that wall and into that room. Heck, there is another room to the right where you can also drop into. The verticality is in this game is really great.

Love that intro!!! More thoughts pending, I'll update as I watch :P A great point about scouring areas for goodies allowing you to appreciate the mechanical and narrative design. It's how I love to play too, and I feel that the experience was greatly enhanced because of it. I agree about the typhon ability tree. Some of the abilities feel highly circumstantial and are wasted when there are so few opportunities to use them.

I remember playing prey and thought "this is a pretty cool unique game!" Then I went and played system shock 2, then system shock 1, and now I'm playing the system shock remake. And it's crazy how well prey got it down being a spiritual successor, while having the ambition to not be a sequel. Also system shock remake and prey play very similar to each other

For me it was a refreshing take on an rpg genre, my mind was blown when it was all smoke and mirrors literally .. and turning in to a cup I mean it was fantastic down to recycling items for materials and the detail they spared no expense on

One of my favorite games I've played through 3 times and enjoyed each playthrough. By the way the bolt caster is the best weapon to use against cistoids. 1 shot to pop the nest and another for the little balls to chase and blow up

Prey is such a great game! It's so underrated...

Hey Nth, I've been planning to play this since it came out and just never got around to it. I watched your review when it came out and decided to get on it. Still didn't happen until I picked up a steam deck earlier this month. Holy crap it is amazing and a really good example of the best things about immersive sims. Thanks for continuing to put out excellent reviews, I think they're spot on.

Nice to see more of you in the video - it gives more "authorship" to it)) Regarding the game - I was so mislead by the marketing campaign (yes, including naming), emphasizing action over immersive sim features, that I've actually skipped it at first, only trying it after it came to PS+ giveaway. After giving it a try completed it twice, especially impressed with the ending and the whole concept "the game is actually a test, and the test subject is you - player, and your own human ethics". Sadly realized that probably because of people like me, who like immersive sims but skipped this gem, Arcane moved to relatively simplified formula of Deathloop(( And now they're doing some co-op vampire FPS. Forgive me, gamerkind!

Prey was so awesome. Games have a really hard time to catch my interest, thats why I play mostly older games. But Prey really blew me away. I would pay a lot of money for a second part. The only things would want on top of the first part, would be to have more non Typhon Neuromod options and maybe a long range weapon, to play a sneaky sniper. The latter should be balanced by rarity of the ammo and very expensive fabrication. And I really want to know how the story will progress. Arcane...please!

the nightmare actually just shows up whenever you first go to the arboretum, which feels like a bit of a weirdness. especially because once you have that metaknowledge there's a LOT you can do in the game before causing it to spawn for the first time, which means that you don't have to worry about getting ambushed until you've looted most of the station of neuromods and crafting materials, at which point you've potentially murdered hundreds of typhon and jammed them into your head. it's a strange contrast to a typhon-focused run, where you're gated by finding more advanced typhon species to scan them, while human can just reach godhood with an upgraded shotgun, taser pistol, q-beam and combat focus. i really liked this game an awful lot even if it probably shouldn't have had the prey name -- i think it's one of the best if not the best game that arkane has ever made. i replayed it only a couple months ago myself (finally doing a nightmare playthrough as i had no reason to before), and it really is just a good time semi-casually exploring the station, building up your strength and accumulating resources. some abilities like hacking or leverage let you bust in through the front door by slamming your head against it, or you can find small gaps to shoot darts through to open security booths or offices, or you can turn into a mug and roll your way through other gaps, it's all great. my major complaint with the game is that the last like, 10-20% of the main story just kind of rushes you through it, with the final act being somewhat unsatisfying compared to the rest of the game. prey 2 certainly has a lot of potential with the reveals at the end and the story of mooncrash, but i worry we'll never get it. also mooncrash was a far better version of what deathloop went for.

Thanks for the shoutout my man! And now - it’s time to dig into this one, even if it’s the “Prey” game I’m a little less enthusiastic about.

I'm creatively bankrupt from playing AAA games, I hated playing Prey, but loved watching everyone else play Prey and do it more creatively and have more 'fun' than me just shooting things.

I love that, like Deus Ex, you can use the numpad to type in codes. Nice little touch of immersion.

The looking glass stuff is hilariously consistent. If you like me break all the screens, the plot things play with no visuals or context.

I heard it was going to be called Psychoshock before it change to an existing IP. A lot more fitting name.

Great video man, just finished it! The Dishonored connections made me excited for a potential video. Like you said in the conclusion, I am excited for what Nth reviews AREN’T today ;)

The moment you break that glass wall, the feelings of give, priceless. One of the best video games I ever played.

I only got Prey recently, and it blew me out of the water, its definitely one of my favourite games to date, especially the persistent turrets, you can strategically clear your routes permanently with clever turret placement and it instantly became this like chess game for me, and then i was like "oh, we have an alien skill tree" and you know how that wouldve turned out 😂

I'm going to be the pedantic jerk here, but the Hacker in SS1 didn't have amnesia. He was in a healing coma. He didn't lose any memory, he just woke up after most of the crap went down, and caused a lot of crap of his own.

Watched your system shock review the other night and it inspired me to download it and prey and I’m happy to discover you’ve also got a prey review up.

I usually hate the Pre-release bonuses in games but I am so very glad I got the pre-release gear in PREY. The margrove (name) is Much better than the shotgun. Especially when you upgrade them both. And whatever else was in the pre-release loot.

Man, I was hoping some articulate KZfaqr would do a long analysis on Prey and here we are! Thank you bro! This is a great birthday gift. I hope you have a beautiful day and a promising tomorrow.

I have heard that Prey 2017 is an excellent game, which makes it all the more tragic and angering that Bethesda decided to force these devs to use the name of an older franchise for "profit", not only hurting this games sales, but also permanently killing off the original franchise completely. It sucks that I'll never get to revisit that old universe ever again, outside of the small slice we are given.

Prey 2017 is awesome. Thank you for reviewing it!

If you play the game on high difficulty + human build only, you'll really come to appreciate the gloo gun, the spark gun and the boltcaster. On high diff, with ammo sparsity + high-risk close combat, I don't think I'd have been able to manage without. The boltcaster has benefits it seems you missed, as a stealth option/lure for low-iq typhon. One example: Cystoids react to bolts, both indoors and in space. I'm not quite sure if they follow the bolt itself or if they seek out the impact site of the bolt when it hits a surface, but either way .. eventually they catch up to the bolt and detonate, damaging anything in detonation range .. explosives, other typhon etc. One well-timed bolt shot can take out one or more groups of cystoids in one go - shoot at a nest and that group detonation will take out the nest too. You can retrieve the bolt afterwards, no ammo wasted. Very helpful.

Another way to look at it is naming the old game Prey: Lost World and the new one Prey Fusion. Respectively they’re named after other games with similar elements: Prey Lost World (2006) is named for another action game that involves Psychonauts style gravity mechanics and characters getting turned into Strogg, whereas Prey Fusion (2017) is named for another albeit this time 2D game set on an isolated space outpost that’s under attack by shapeshifting hostile aliens and requires collecting special upgrades to survive.

the ceiling of deep storage was useful! on the other end of the map, getting through above that locked door

1:24:23 bro, u just blew my mind! I went crazy trying to figure out what the combo for that safe was!

I loved this game... while I played it. After the years, all I can remember is how great space looked in it... and that nauseatingly gilded art deco mixed with sterility. Same with Bioshock games, more or less. Really dug the gameplay of these games, but their visual styles, different yet also kinda similar, are the opposite of what I find appealing. I just don't feel warm towards them, despite rationally understanding how awesome these games are. This is how my selective memory, a rather shallow phenomenon overall, screws things up in hindsight. But hey, I appreciate you reminding me exactly why I loved this Prey. It's underrated, hands down. Edit: System Shock's aesthetic I dig, though. It's a thing of its own. Not tacky and pompous at all.

This is one of my favorite games. It's the most immersive sim I've ever played. You could feel Talos 1 being alive by reading the messages between people, audiology and seeing hope some corpses are found, which often tell a story. I'm sad that some quest lines like the cook cannot be finished by discovering he is an impostor and confronting him in a way, or getting a prompt after finding evidence he's not the chef. Mooncrash is wonderful, it took me a while to get into it, but once you connect the dots and realize the story behind the simulation, I got more eager to get more Prey content. It's sad this game didn't get as big as it should've.

Coming off a long Bioshock jag I thought I’d do some retro gaming and bought what I thought was the game first named Prey. Wrong! I gave it a try before yelling at myself. Kiss a year of playing any game other than Prey ‘17 goodbye. I love this game and its challenging DLC, Mooncrash. I play it every year now.

I played this out of curiosity one day and I fell In love with it from start to finish

when I realized I could use Leverage II objects to shove Leverage III objects, i knew I was gonna have fun.

The nerf gun I think was more for the fun of it, have it isn't a problem, but the thing about the mimic skill there is one amazing thing that blewed my mind after I discover it: Enter locked rooms. Let's use the security posts as an example, you put a small object like a banana or a cup in front of the small opening where you would interact with the security, climb into the table, transform into the object and just roll inside of the post! That was amazing, there is a significant amount of places where this trick can be used, and since you don't need to carry any space with you (like the nerf gun), you don't sacrifice any space of a more useful item like a weapon or health. P.S.: Gloo gun is one of my favorite weapons of all time in games, together with portal gun and gravity gun, simply love it.

i still dont like that bethesda recycled the prey watermark title instead of making a new one neuroshock is the true name of this game

I always got confused when people talked praise about PREY and I looked reviews of the other prey which declared it a somewhat interesting but mostly paint-by-numbers shooter.. so thanks for finally clearing that up! Might check out the newer Prey now

Hello there, glad i randomly found this new videogame documentary channel

Btw for the deep storage ceiling pipes, I believe l scaled them as you did but then used the gloo gun to get a bit higher, then letting me into the electrical hazard room

31:16 you ain’t slick with that 0451 reference 😂

Lol, the cat in the outro totally stole the limelight :)

This video is so long and immersive that it is an immersive sim in itself😅 loved every minute of it (and of prey of course), keep up the good work👍

A minor rave, but going from System Shock inventory management to Prey's automatic inventory management was a real sigh of relief lol

I've played it twice and still not once installed a single alien neuromod. Every ability I actually wanted was always in the normal skill trees so lucky me never gets attacked by the station.

Prey is probably my favourite game of its generation, and Mooncrash is the best expansion I've ever played. I also recommend anyone who likes the theme and narrative of these games to check out SOMA. It's a walking sim rather than an immersive sim but the atmosphere and narrative theme are very much there.

There is a good possibility that the phantom you play as is just using Morgan's body as a teather. Also, moon crash got way better. You dont have to play it bro, but it gets waaay better. It took me a few months on and off to get into the base game, so i understand.

Good review, as usual! I'm glad you enjoyed the game, and I agree with most of your thoughts and conclusions on it. Prey's intro feels like a tutorial for a different, more mindfuck-y game that would have at least one or two areas like Dishonored's clockwork mansion or A Crack in the Slab. And while it has the mimics disguising themselves as objects, and the occasional smashing of a "looking glass", none of the actual game really requires you to be as paranoid or think out of the box like that intro is preparing you for. I love the game though, it's probably the best imsim out there. And I'm just a sucker for hard sci fi NASA looking space settings in games. Also, I did manage to enjoy Mooncrash after a few hours with it. Didn't finish it, but I did have a few of the most memorable Prey stealth and combat encounters in there. The limited resources and permadeath nature of that thing do heighten the tension in cool ways. Can't wait to see what weird new direction the fourth entry in the Prey franchise is gonna take.

Prey was criminally underrated. I went in skeptical. I didn't want to like it. It ended up feeling like what you might get if Valve got the license for Metroid Prime and went a little bonkers on creating wild abilities instead of enemy variety. The creative agency and atmosphere are second to none. It was also surprisingly philosophical.

I just played Prey for the first time and it’s in my top 3 single player games for sure

I played it on survival on my first play through. Honestly weapon degrading is a great mechanic. Like it really makes your gun play matter more so long it's not tedious. Same with the healing systems.

Prey(2017), System Reshock (2023) and The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (2002) are the only titles that have given me the true sense of in-world atmosphere done right. Also Prey (2017) was the only of the 3 games I could not beat with my skillset.

If it was less clunky with too many game mechanics and tighter end game pacing, it could be a 10/10. It's got a solid 7.5 for me.

Originally I didn’t buy Prey because it didn’t seem to be as narrative driven as I usually like, but after seeing this I am definitely going to give it a try.

It's a great experience, isn't it? Settling in to watch this vid in one go now.

I would also consider it an evolution of a metroidvania because there are so many ways to traverse the space station.

There is a narrative component of Mooncrash that relates back to the main story for those that are interested. It's not strictly needed to understand what's going on but its a nice addition for people looking for a bit more. I will agree that my initial reaction to the structure of the DLC wasn't ecstatic either, though I did stick with it to the end and ended up enjoying more as it went along. Overall I would say it was good and I had fun w/ it, though it's unlikely I would return to it again (unlike the base game), and it's entirely understandable why some people will simply bounce early on.

@1:24:44 they use it at least one other time to reveal a secret safe. But there were other clues how to solve the puzzle if you missed the video playback. It involves a coffee mug of sorts

The sales figures from this game is why we can't have nice things.

Fun fact: if you open the fake chef’s freezer before he sends you there to off you, he runs and cowers in a corner in the kitchen

Your inventory management hurts me on a deep and personal level. ORGANIZE!!

Great video, I finished it in one minute Also: HOLY SHIT I’M IN THIS. Thanks for the shout out, my man!

An outstanding game, worth replaying every year or 2!

Watching this video after the terrible release that was Redfall hits very differently. Arcane has fallen atrociously since its Prey release.

Love your videos. Is "streets ahead" a reference to Pierce Hawthorne from Community?

I still wish we got the original prey 2

It was originally supposed to be named Neural shock. That would have been a much better name that explains the game so much better literally right out of the box. I think that the name, Pray, is largely at fault because it confused a lot of people about where this game fit in and what it's genre was. If it had been named Neural shock, EVERYONE would have understood what kind of game it was. Yet another example of the publisher totally screwing the developer.

Brilliant game. I'm just sad you missed the chance to name the first section of the notes "Preyamble"

An overlooked and underappreciated MASTERPIECE. It's really unfortunate Arkane was forced to bind their game to the Prey license as it doesn't communicate what the game truly is, which is 100% the System Shock 3 we never got. Nightdive has done a pretty good job with the System Shock 1 remake but lost the license to Tencent. Hopefully they can do the IP justice. But for now, Prey 2017 is it, and it's great. Anyone who hasn't played it and is at least a bit interested in the immersive sim genre, needs to put this right at the top of their list.

I've played this game recently again. I did have a fond memory of it, but I also remember hating certain parts of the game. Now I remember why: It's the enemy design, easily the worst part of it. They teleport around, they are not interesting in their design (just some blob of black sludge/mist?), they have lots of undodgable attacks or poorly telegraphed attacks.. And weirdly enough the strategies around combating these enemies often revolve around... disabling their abilities. Fighting a "thunder-phantom"? Throw EMP. Fighting some other.. phantom? Throw ability-supressing grenade. But it's really just two grenades with different colors. Throw the red grenade against red enemies, the blue one against the blue ones. And there are a lot more cases like these. The game really doesn't offer that many cool or interesting alternative ways of approaching things. Typically you are gonna have a bad time if you don't use exactly the right tool against an enemy - but the game still throws so many medkits and other resources at you that it's mostly a complete non issue. It sort of creates that Skyrim gameplay where you just unga bunga through encounters by spamming health packs. And on higher difficulties it just feels like enemies are unfair (seriously you will get oneshot a lot). So yea. I think this game does a lot of things really well, namely the space station (level design) is really cool and it's awesome to get immersed and rat around and loot and feel like you are a small insignificant insect trying to get off a sinking ship. But the combat majorly sucks. Also controls kinda suck, you really feel those out of sync animations and sound effects when reloading your weapons. Overall it doesn't surprise me that the game didn't achieve as much success. The System Shock Remake that recently released was actually MORE fun for me.

The most obvious sequel would be one with Morgan helping fight the Typhon on Earth, which would require them to canonize the empathy ending, but if the player has Earth as the playground then obviously a big interconnected series of levels in the same space isn't possible. There's no way for them to create a fitting sequel to Talos 1 without choosing a centralized "Typhon HQ" location on Earth and having the player get through that as the game progresses

Love your super indepth reviews subed 👍