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Prey (2017)

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Well, I've finished Prey. Definitely liked that game.

Got way easy towards the end, though. I ended the game with over 20 neuromods left and nothing useful to spend them on, zapping through the station without a care in the world.

The Nightmare showed up all of three times. Is that normal? The first time was complete panic and I managed to kill it by luring it into a convenient environment, hurling grenades and burning through half my Q-Beam cells. By the third time I stunned it with a Psychoshock and it was dead from shotgun before it even recovered. Probably wouldn't have done much if it had showed up more, really, unless it started earlier.

The objective pathing is bugged as fuck. I had to drop a couple of missions towards the endgame because the objective indicators simply refused to comply and I wasn't going to spend several RL hours manually searching the entire Talos I exterior for a given corpse. I think I missed some Quests, and completed others earlier (exploring areas got me a Quest Received/Quest Completed message within a couple seconds of each other a few times). I never received Mixed Signal, and I think I found the Shuttle Advent data too late to trigger the obligatory blind trolley choice?

The Fabricator balance is hilarious. Early in the game I thought Exotic Material was this super-rare thing that I had to risk my hide to get by killing Typhons, and most of the materials would be used for less powerful but more practical things like ammo. In the endgame I was angrily Recycle Charging big metal environment items for that sweet, sweet Mineral Material. Rarer than literal alien organs. On a giant space station made of metal.

Combat felt pretty good, although too swingy. By the endgame you're a murdermachine capable of slaughtering a room full of Phantoms, but I was still so squishy many enemies could breathe on me and I'd die, even with like 200 Health.

The ending is...

It's definitely the best take on "All Just A Dream" that I've seen. It is decently foreshadowed, makes sense in the narrative, and builds up to a thematic point that ties together the whole game and the questions of ethics it is centered around.

It is still a fucking all just a dream. Being the best at a terrible twist only gets you up to mediocre. I rate the ending 5.5 out of 10.
All in all this is the game I wanted BioShock to be :V
 
Has anyone tried to do a playthrough of not killing any Typhon? I noticed that is part of the evaluation, so i wonder what would happen if you do your best to not kill Typhon or humans... Would that even be possible without using a glitch?
 
Chaoswind said:
Has anyone tried to do a playthrough of not killing any Typhon? I noticed that is part of the evaluation, so i wonder what would happen if you do your best to not kill Typhon or humans... Would that even be possible without using a glitch?
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I don't think so. There's the Voltic Phantom in Psychotronics, the Main Lift control would be locked through the whole game which means GUTS trips or Exterior scaling, and I don't recall precisely where, but there's an area transition that's being locked down by a technopath somewhere (it might be optional). Saving the Cargo Bay also requires the big battle too.
 
Dragoon said:
I don't think so. There's the Voltic Phantom in Psychotronics, the Main Lift control would be locked through the whole game which means GUTS trips or Exterior scaling, and I don't recall precisely where, but there's an area transition that's being locked down by a technopath somewhere (it might be optional). Saving the Cargo Bay also requires the big battle too.
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You can't access the reactor level without killing a Technopath, it isn't optional.
 
Fell said:
Every time I walk into a new room I have to ask myself "Is that a real chair, or a mimic pretending to be a chair?" And then every successive time after it doesn't attack me the first time I have to wonder "Is that a real chair or a mimic playing the long game?"
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There is something very satisfying about walking into a room where it looks like there's no enemies around but there's an object that's just sort of kind of vaguely... suspicious, then shooting it so it screams that surprised mimic death scream. Makes all the times when I wasted bullets on normal debris worth it.
 
Okay so I finally made another concerted push through Prey but I've come up to a brick wall and I feel like I'm doing something super wrong but I don't know what yet.

Basically I feel hideously underpowered, to the extent that it feels like I'm trying to sequence-break, except I'm not, I'm following the mission critical path more or less. My only long-ranged option is a piddly pea-shooter that requires multiple button-mashed clips of sustained fire to down anything bigger than a Mimic and I am rapidly and woefully outmatched in a DPS race with anything bigger than a Phantom. My first serious encounter with a Weaver was a symphony of quickloads until I... can only assume I got lucky because it seriously felt like my bullets just arbitrarily did more damage after I pegged a lure at the GUTS wall to lure it into my sights. And just now I went up against the greenhouse Telepath which was just... a shitshow basically. I try to burst in and save the people it's mind-controlling, they explode and kill me. I stun them beforehand and chase it down with a shotgun and it explodes with potent psychic farts and kills me.

I also forgot about the Q-beam which I just realised but in my defence when I tried it out first thing it felt really bad and it doesn't allow loot drops so using it is pretty heavily disincentivised.

I can always run away I guess but that just feels like a bandaid at this point unless the Doom Super Shotgun is waiting for me on the mission-critical path or something is the thing.

EDIT: Also FUCK that jumpscare in Psychotronics, you know the one, jesus christ
 
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ZerbanDaGreat said:
Okay so I finally made another concerted push through Prey but I've come up to a brick wall and I feel like I'm doing something super wrong but I don't know what yet.

Basically I feel hideously underpowered, to the extent that it feels like I'm trying to sequence-break, except I'm not, I'm following the mission critical path more or less. My only long-ranged option is a piddly pea-shooter that requires multiple button-mashed clips of sustained fire to down anything bigger than a Mimic and I am rapidly and woefully outmatched in a DPS race with anything bigger than a Phantom. My first serious encounter with a Weaver was a symphony of quickloads until I... can only assume I got lucky because it seriously felt like my bullets just arbitrarily did more damage after I pegged a lure at the GUTS wall to lure it into my sights. And just now I went up against the greenhouse Telepath which was just... a shitshow basically. I try to burst in and save the people it's mind-controlling, they explode and kill me. I stun them beforehand and chase it down with a shotgun and it explodes with potent psychic farts and kills me.

I also forgot about the Q-beam which I just realised but in my defence when I tried it out first thing it felt really bad and it doesn't allow loot drops so using it is pretty heavily disincentivised.

I can always run away I guess but that just feels like a bandaid at this point unless the Doom Super Shotgun is waiting for me on the mission-critical path or something is the thing.

EDIT: Also FUCK that jumpscare in Psychotronics, you know the one, jesus christ
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What difficulty are you playing on?
 
ZerbanDaGreat said:
Okay so I finally made another concerted push through Prey but I've come up to a brick wall and I feel like I'm doing something super wrong but I don't know what yet.

Basically I feel hideously underpowered, to the extent that it feels like I'm trying to sequence-break, except I'm not, I'm following the mission critical path more or less. My only long-ranged option is a piddly pea-shooter that requires multiple button-mashed clips of sustained fire to down anything bigger than a Mimic and I am rapidly and woefully outmatched in a DPS race with anything bigger than a Phantom. My first serious encounter with a Weaver was a symphony of quickloads until I... can only assume I got lucky because it seriously felt like my bullets just arbitrarily did more damage after I pegged a lure at the GUTS wall to lure it into my sights. And just now I went up against the greenhouse Telepath which was just... a shitshow basically. I try to burst in and save the people it's mind-controlling, they explode and kill me. I stun them beforehand and chase it down with a shotgun and it explodes with potent psychic farts and kills me.

I also forgot about the Q-beam which I just realised but in my defence when I tried it out first thing it felt really bad and it doesn't allow loot drops so using it is pretty heavily disincentivised.

I can always run away I guess but that just feels like a bandaid at this point unless the Doom Super Shotgun is waiting for me on the mission-critical path or something is the thing.

EDIT: Also FUCK that jumpscare in Psychotronics, you know the one, jesus christ
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What weapons do you have, and are you using any Typhon mods?
 
Omicron said:
What weapons do you have, and are you using any Typhon mods?
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Pistol, Shotgun and Q-Beam, haven't actually upgraded the latter but the first two are upgraded to the extent my pathetic amateur hands allow. I just don't really want the Typhon powers so I picked up Wonder-Twin Powers: Form Of Coffee Mug to fit through small spaces and spent everything else on the human tree. I mean... I guess that's my problem right there but in my defence in other games just like this one that worked just fine y'know? The two modern Deus Ex games and Dishonoured asked me to buy combat upgrades and I said 'no' and bought exclusively exploration upgrades until I had everything I wanted (or nothing at all in the case of my near-powerless Dishonoured run) and even in quickload-heavy sections it still came with the sense of "yeah this is possible I can do this".

Prey, I run up against gigantic fuck-off damage sponges that fire Kamehamehas from their quad-barrelled Typhon dicks and I'm just kinda at a loss because I don't even see alternate paths.
 
ZerbanDaGreat said:
Basically I feel hideously underpowered, to the extent that it feels like I'm trying to sequence-break, except I'm not, I'm following the mission critical path more or less.
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One thing Prey doesn't tell you is that because of how its spawning mechanisms work (i.e. as you progress through the main quest, more and more dangerous shit spawns, and progressing through the main quest respawns enemies in areas) you're heavily encouraged to go exploring as early as possible to get a ton of good shit while the enemies you face are like, regular mimics and phantoms instead of super-upgraded Typhon.

If the main quest is too hard, go exploring for more neuromods. When you're basically the lovechild of Captain America and Batman, it makes things a fuck of a lot easier.
 
ZerbanDaGreat said:
Pistol, Shotgun and Q-Beam, haven't actually upgraded the latter but the first two are upgraded to the extent my pathetic amateur hands allow. I just don't really want the Typhon powers so I picked up Wonder-Twin Powers: Form Of Coffee Mug to fit through small spaces and spent everything else on the human tree. I mean... I guess that's my problem right there but in my defence in other games just like this one that worked just fine y'know? The two modern Deus Ex games and Dishonoured asked me to buy combat upgrades and I said 'no' and bought exclusively exploration upgrades until I had everything I wanted (or nothing at all in the case of my near-powerless Dishonoured run) and even in quickload-heavy sections it still came with the sense of "yeah this is possible I can do this".

Prey, I run up against gigantic fuck-off damage sponges that fire Kamehamehas from their quad-barrelled Typhon dicks and I'm just kinda at a loss because I don't even see alternate paths.
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As far as human powers go, the one Psi power in their tree (Combat Focus) is really good when it's fully upgraded. I'd recommend pumping the security weapon upgrade tree because a fully upgraded shotgun is complete murder. It's also the tree that lets you upgrade the stun gun to full, which is also very effective.

Mindjack has very limited use, but one of these uses is making it way more convenient to free mind-controlled humans from outside their exploding range - and its prereq is Psychoshock, which trivializes a lot of enemies once it has two or three ranks.

But without Typhon Mods, I'd boost the shotgun to max and go Stun Gun/Shotgun as a combo to incapacitate and kill most stuff. Basic phantoms go down to a single shot of a full shotgun, stronger phantoms only take two or three. There is also a sidequest which allows you to get a Golden Gun that can completely replace your ordinary pistol and has actually decent damage; I would advise doing it.

The game definitely isn't as stealth-friendly as Dishonored, in my experience. The ability to sneak and the enemy detection are... Looser, harder to reliably plan on.
 
Omicron said:
Mindjack has very limited use, but one of these uses is making it way more convenient to free mind-controlled humans from outside their exploding range - and its prereq is Psychoshock, which trivializes a lot of enemies once it has two or three ranks.
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As long as mind-controlled humans are not alerted to your presence, hitting them with the stun gun will knock them unconscious instead of kill them.

Actually, @ZerbanDaGreat, why don't you have the fuckin' stun gun? The stun gun is probably the most powerful weapon in the game for these reasons:

1. Fully upgraded it stuns most enemies for like, ten seconds, which is plenty of time to murder them with a wrench as they plead for their life. There are like, two enemies which are immune to stun, and one of them is a very rare boss-type.
2. Because it's a battery weapon, upgrading its ammunition capacity makes it more ammo-efficient (this also applies to the Q-Beam). At base level, it gets 4 shots per 100 charge, but you can upgrade it to like, 15 shots per battery charge.
3. It does a shit-ton of damage to robots and turrets, and stuns them afterwards.
4. It's silent.
5. Fully upgraded it fires very rapidly and has pretty good range.

Basically, it makes the game a lot easier if you have it, because you can then taze the Typhon and then start screaming "STOP RESISTING! STOP RESISTING!" while you beat them to death with a wrench.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
As long as mind-controlled humans are not alerted to your presence, hitting them with the stun gun will knock them unconscious instead of kill them.

Actually, @ZerbanDaGreat, why don't you have the fuckin' stun gun? The stun gun is probably the most powerful weapon in the game for these reasons:

1. Fully upgraded it stuns most enemies for like, ten seconds, which is plenty of time to murder them with a wrench as they plead for their life. There are like, two enemies which are immune to stun, and one of them is a very rare boss-type.
2. Because it's a battery weapon, upgrading its ammunition capacity makes it more ammo-efficient (this also applies to the Q-Beam). At base level, it gets 4 shots per 100 charge, but you can upgrade it to like, 15 shots per battery charge.
3. It does a shit-ton of damage to robots and turrets, and stuns them afterwards.
4. It's silent.
5. Fully upgraded it fires very rapidly and has pretty good range.

Basically, it makes the game a lot easier if you have it, because you can then taze the Typhon and then start screaming "STOP RESISTING! STOP RESISTING!" while you beat them to death with a wrench.
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I do have the taser. I mentioned stunning the mind-controlled peeps in my initial post :p. I just didn't consider it a 'weapon' and forgot to mention it a second time.
 
ZerbanDaGreat said:
I do have the taser. I mentioned stunning the mind-controlled peeps in my initial post :p. I just didn't consider it a 'weapon' and forgot to mention it a second time.
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And now you know. :V

Because seriously, once I realized how ludicrously overpowered the stun gun was in Prey, the game suddenly became a hell of a lot easier. Remember that stunned or otherwise disabled enemies take significant extra damage (I think it's either 50% or 100%).
 
MJ12 Commando said:
As long as mind-controlled humans are not alerted to your presence, hitting them with the stun gun will knock them unconscious instead of kill them.

Actually, @ZerbanDaGreat, why don't you have the fuckin' stun gun? The stun gun is probably the most powerful weapon in the game for these reasons:

1. Fully upgraded it stuns most enemies for like, ten seconds, which is plenty of time to murder them with a wrench as they plead for their life. There are like, two enemies which are immune to stun, and one of them is a very rare boss-type.
2. Because it's a battery weapon, upgrading its ammunition capacity makes it more ammo-efficient (this also applies to the Q-Beam). At base level, it gets 4 shots per 100 charge, but you can upgrade it to like, 15 shots per battery charge.
3. It does a shit-ton of damage to robots and turrets, and stuns them afterwards.
4. It's silent.
5. Fully upgraded it fires very rapidly and has pretty good range.

Basically, it makes the game a lot easier if you have it, because you can then taze the Typhon and then start screaming "STOP RESISTING! STOP RESISTING!" while you beat them to death with a wrench.
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I went without a good stun gun for most of my run because I am an idiot.

You see, it's a sci-fi looking weapon that literally fires a lightning bolt. So I had assumed it was a "science weapon" and I didn't want to invest in the science weapon upgrade tree just for this one weapon.

Turns out no. It's a stun gun designed to non-lethally incapacitate people on the station, so sensibly enough it is a security weapon. When I realized my mistake I poured half my weapon kits into it and started zapping everything left and right.

Psychoshock is still better on organic targets because of its point-and-click nature, superior range and time stopping while you aim, so you never have that window during the charge-up time when you're vunerable, but it's not really competitive when you consider that it costs tons of neuromods on its own while the stun gun upgrades with the same tree as the shotgun and pistol and also works on machines, and doesn't have a cooldown.
 
ZerbanDaGreat said:
I do have the taser. I mentioned stunning the mind-controlled peeps in my initial post :p. I just didn't consider it a 'weapon' and forgot to mention it a second time.
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Also, @Omicron's advice wrt Combat Focus is very good. Combat Focus is ludicrously powerful. Maxed out, it's basically "you thought this was Bioshock, but it is actually FEAR." The initial level is decent, but the second and third levels make you move several times as fast and give you a damage bonus to boot, and that means you can just unload so much damage on things you can kill greater Typhon before they can even try to fight back.
 
ZerbanDaGreat said:
Pistol, Shotgun and Q-Beam, haven't actually upgraded the latter but the first two are upgraded to the extent my pathetic amateur hands allow. I just don't really want the Typhon powers so I picked up Wonder-Twin Powers: Form Of Coffee Mug to fit through small spaces and spent everything else on the human tree. I mean... I guess that's my problem right there but in my defence in other games just like this one that worked just fine y'know? The two modern Deus Ex games and Dishonoured asked me to buy combat upgrades and I said 'no' and bought exclusively exploration upgrades until I had everything I wanted (or nothing at all in the case of my near-powerless Dishonoured run) and even in quickload-heavy sections it still came with the sense of "yeah this is possible I can do this".

Prey, I run up against gigantic fuck-off damage sponges that fire Kamehamehas from their quad-barrelled Typhon dicks and I'm just kinda at a loss because I don't even see alternate paths.
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My first playthrough was 99% human mods and by the end I was basically Captain America complete with throwing fridges at motherfuckers so that shouldn't be the issue. I think MJ has some of it--if you do minimal exploration you have fewer resources and are less powerful, whereas enemy types scale according to how far you advance in the plot. I don't know what your playstyle is but I feel obligated to mention that the game is set up to encourage you to occasionally "nope" on encounters and come back later instead of thinking "If I see it I must kill it".

Also, turret-cheese is a wonderful if situational tactic in areas where you can scavenge multiple autoturrets and establish "safe zones" (At least early on). When I got to the Arboretum and cleared the Telepath out of the greenhouse that building became my fortress thanks to the half dozen turrets I set up guarding the stairway up. Saved my life the first time I got in a tussle with Mary.

Also, if you aren't using it Gloo Gun is your friend in one on one fights with Phantoms. If you attack from stealth you can freeze them before they get more than one blast off (Which you can dodge) and then a point blank shotgun blast will knock them on their ass while you beat them to death with the wrench.
 
ZerbanDaGreat said:
Pistol, Shotgun and Q-Beam, haven't actually upgraded the latter but the first two are upgraded to the extent my pathetic amateur hands allow. I just don't really want the Typhon powers so I picked up Wonder-Twin Powers: Form Of Coffee Mug to fit through small spaces and spent everything else on the human tree. I mean... I guess that's my problem right there but in my defence in other games just like this one that worked just fine y'know? The two modern Deus Ex games and Dishonoured asked me to buy combat upgrades and I said 'no' and bought exclusively exploration upgrades until I had everything I wanted (or nothing at all in the case of my near-powerless Dishonoured run) and even in quickload-heavy sections it still came with the sense of "yeah this is possible I can do this".

Prey, I run up against gigantic fuck-off damage sponges that fire Kamehamehas from their quad-barrelled Typhon dicks and I'm just kinda at a loss because I don't even see alternate paths.
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While the game is compared to Deus Ex and Dishonored a lot in terms of its upgrade paths, its really not a stealth game. Like, you COULD play it as a stealth game, I guess, but Dishonored and Deus Ex put you at the advantage in stealth, while in Prey you don't really have that since its a horror game and the enemies are the ones waiting in the shadows to gank your sorry ass.

That said, correct human powers do let you fight pretty well. There's an achievement for going full human and going full typhon exclusively, and of the two the typhon one is by far the harder (and then there's a no neuromod achievement which is oh god why). Upgrade your shotgun and combat focus into enemies to blow them to pieces. Even Mary can't survive combat focus 3+max damage shotgun.
 
They aren't kidding when they said that Psychoshock trvialises the Typhon. When I got it I pretty much started making the various 'paths' and the Nightmare my bitches. It's worth it for shutting down enemy powers alone, the hefty damage (assuming max) is just gravy.

That said, I would also highly recommend getting a max upgraded shotgun, that thing alongside the stungun are going to be your workhorses.
 
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I found Electrostatic Burst the most valuable typhon power, a low cost, fast recharging AoE that stuns everything it hits, electronic or biological? Hell to the yeah! Sign me up. Even if they survive you beating them to death with the wrench or filling them full of lead while they're stunned, they still have to get up once the stun wears off. By the end of the game, I had an array of chips that let me recover mana through contact with the coral and reduced the cooldown of energy powers a fair degree, that combination meant I could stunlock pretty much anything and keep it up for a long time before I had to resort to backup psy hypos.
 
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