Prey

If you attended the last round of iChat Wars we hosted last week (Dave disappoints again!) then you know I promised a blog about the history of Prey but it looks like Apogee beat me to it. I remember first hearing about this game back in the late 90's from my Multimedia World magazine (now no longer being published).

Prey is the new soon to be released (7/11/2006) game developed by Human Head Studios (makers of the Blair Witch II: The Legend of Coffin Rock and Rune). What's interesting is that this game is being produced (basically they helped fund it, not develop it) by 3D Realms, yes the same 3D Realms hard at work developing the upcoming Duke Nukem Forever game.

The demo for Prey has been out for a while and I just completed it the other day. I have to say its very well done. Since it's using a modified Doom 3 engine the graphics are top notch and it was nice that they included some outdoor scenes in the demo. The sound effects are superb, especially when using OpenAl. I literally jumped in my seat a few times thinking that someone was in my office behind me since the sounds from my rear speakers were discrete. The only negative of the demo was the unnecessary cursing that the main character uses. In my opinion its not needed and it sounded very forced. Like with F.E.A.R, I hope this isn't a current trend with the latest crop of games. There is an option to turn it off but it didn't seem to have any effect in the demo. Despite this, I still think you should give it a try. It features some new effects never seen before in a first person shooter.