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I locked my Xbox 360 s-foils into download position and snagged the Prey Demo from Xbox Live Marketplace. It weighed in at about 1.2 GB, so it took some significant time to download. The size is likely due to the fact that this demo has a couple single-player chapters and a few multiplayer levels as well. It’s got it all, I guess.

First, I decided to jump right into the single-player game.

The single-player story of Prey had me intrigued from the very beginning. In Prey, you play as Tommy, a Cherokee living on the “reservation”.

The game opens with Tommy talking to himself in a bar restroom. I was immediately reminded of Deus Ex. In Deus Ex, there were several times where you could go into the restroom and see your reflection in the mirror. In Prey, this gave me a chance to check out the character models and animations.

I was not very impressed, because it again reminded me of Deus Ex, in that the models and movement animations seemed forced and not even remotely realistic. It was quite jarring actually. It looked like the main character was rolling around the game on omni-directional roller skates. The poor quality of the character models continued to annoy throughout the demo.

Another observation, is that the enemy AI, like every other FPS (with a few notable exceptions) has horrific AI. Portal opens. Enemy steps through. Enemy shoots at you without moving. You shoot alien until it dies. Another alien steps through portal… ad nauseum. For all the hype the AI has gotten for Prey, I found it completely underwhelming.

As the demo progresses, there are many things in Prey that have been done before. Of course, this is a FPS, so it’s to be expected. I mean, here I am, another next-gen FPS, and I’m still seeing environments and models that look like they were lifted right from Id Software’s throw-away hard drives. It was hard not to compare Prey to Doom 3 or Quake 4 when the settings and graphics are SO similar.

After a few minutes of gameplay that seemed exactly like the “train ride” sequences from Quake 4 and Half-Life 2, I was hunkering down for another ho-hum trip on the “been there done that” FPS railroad.

However, 3D Realms had a few surprises up their sleeves.

The physics in this game amazes, not for how well it mimics real-world physics, but in how it purposely breaks the modern laws of physics as we know them, and does so in interesting ways. Prey is filled with gravity generators that allow you to walk on walls and ceilings, or change the direction of gravity in certain areas. This seems like such an obvious gameplay enhancement, but has great potential for utter failure. In Prey, the execution adds to the game, rather than taking away. Especially when I, as the player, am forced to agree with the in-game expressions of my Cherokee alter-ego, “Now, THAT is f***ed up!”

Indeed it is. But not as much as entering a room with an odd little rock floating on a pedestel. Then, moving into a teleporter pad later in the game that SHRINKS you, and then places you on the floating rock, allowing you to “Little Prince” your way across it’s surface. Oh, and then the guards came into the room…

“Oh, no WAY!”

Preach on, brother Tommy.

Besides the creative physics models in Prey, Tommy also gains the ability to “Spiritwalk”, which effectively allows you to leave your meat body behind and interact with the game in a more… ethereal way. As a Spiritwalker, you gain the use of a spirit bow, which can come in handy if, like me, you run out of ammo early and often when first playing a game. The demo gave a cursory overview of how spiritwalking worked and only a tiny handful of situations to use it in. Only the full game will prove whether this aspect of Prey will be able to stay interesting.

The demo also gave a fairly good glimpse into what the story of Prey is all about. Some of it is totally cliche. Aliens are invading. Again. But wait… what was that strange voice? How do the aliens react to “Spiritwalking”? These aspects of the single-player story had me wanting to come back for more. I am fairly sensitive when it comes to story elements, especially in a FPS, and if the story is not self-consistent and interesting, I consider it a waste of time. Prey’s story has a lot of old standby’s but they are grafted together in new ways. Which, IMHO, is a mark of good writing.

Unfortunately, no amount of good writing can help the multiplayer component of Prey.

I have a pretty good internet connection, and multiplayer in Prey was pretty horrible. The weapons seem interesting enough. The alternate gravities keep you on your toes. But the framerates and latency were HORRIBLE. I swear the framerate must’ve dropped to less than 10 fps in some of the bigger firefights. On a next-gen uber-system like the Xbox 360, that sort of performance is inexcusable. Whether this was causing or caused the horrible lag, I’ll never know, but after several attempts at trying to have fun in Prey multiplayer, I had to just give up on it. Perhaps the final game will improve all of this… then again, I think I’d rather play Quake 4 multiplayer. Take that for what it’s worth.

In the end, I’m not totally sure I would buy this game, but it will definitely be worth a rent. The single-player looks like it will deliver (despite rock-stupid AI), and a renting will allow me to check out the final multiplayer product. If the multiplayer component is super-fantastic, then I’ll definitely buy it.