Prey Review Disparity

Raymond Carver, a famous American short story writer (and arguably one of the best) used a short phrase in which to guide writers on how they go about developing their craft, and it was the term, "No tricks". What this essentially means is that if you need to use fancy tricks in order to capture the readers attention then the craft of your writing wasn't up to standard. Tricks are used as a means to distract the reader from sloppy writing. In this way Carver writes in a very sparse prose which is gritty and his characters through their actions and dialogue tell the story. Video Game developers could learn a lot about telling stories through their games if they actually paid some attention to those people who have made their lives and their livelihoods from telling stories. The video game industry is the poor distant cousin of any type of narrative, whether it be television, film, music or writing. However, the industry wants to ignore the lessons learnt from those other fields and forge ahead making all of the same mistakes over again. All of the other mediums have been established for many years whereas the video game industry is still in relative infancy. Until the gaming industry recognises that it delivers a legitimate means to convey narrative then gamers are going to have to continue to put up with the second rate crap that is being published at the moment. Of which, Prey is a prime example.

Not only is Prey's narrative extremely poor and hardly compelling. This is not to say that it didn't have potential being set within the realm of American Indian mythology and making use of the spirit world. Yet, these narrative ploys were only used for shits and giggles and not explored at all. The use of the spirit realm could have been an extremely effective device within the game but was only utitilized primarily as a gimmick.

To get to the point of the blog (that being review disparity) I want to highlight two completely different reviews of this game and how they scored. Firstly we have PC Powerplay which gave Prey the lofty score of 9 out of 10. Hardly a relevant score for a game which was supposedly in development for 10 years and completely missed the mark. The other score was by Atomic magazine (which I would not classify as a games review magazine, more a specialized hardware review mag) which gave Prey 5 out of 10. I understand that different people bring different perspectives to their game reviews, however, once again, these are two completely different scores for one of the major game releases of this year. How is it they can differ so much?

The Atomic review is straight to the point and really doesn't try to turn Prey in to a game that it is not (ie Game of the Year material). The PC Powerplay review mentions some of the short comings of the game but apparently overlooks them when it comes to actually giving the game a score. PC Powerplay even makes the mistake of saying that the combat is more intense with more enemies on screen than Doom 3. Did the reviewer actually play Doom 3? The combat in Prey was sparse and hardly atmospheric. They state that Prey is, "nothing less than a perfect example of a straight-up shooter". How can they justify this comment? It is nothing more than dribble. The combat in Prey is not even half as good as the combat in FEAR. Even though I don't like Half Life 2 the combat in Half Life 2 was better than Prey. PC Powerplay even lists one of the pros of the game as the "Decent characters and story". Did they actually play Prey? The story was one of the most cliched stories ever released in a video game. It was hardly compelling and no different than a dozen other shooters that are in the market place. The reviewer even writes in the review, "but something about the way the story is told makes it seem like it drags on and on". If the story was well told it would match and also carry the pace of the game rather than make the game seem longer and make it drag on.

The last paragraph of the Atomic review summarizes the game, "Some people may praise Prey's innovation and its 'outside the box' thinking, but I found it tiresome, devoid of action or excitement and just plain not fun."

With such conflicting reviews it makes me wonder who the magazines are serving? Their advertisers? However, this need to satisfy advertising demand is not limited to Gaming magazines and has been a trend in the media in general for a long time. As a consumer, I would not want to waste my money on the game Prey, and unfortunately did. After reading the PC Powerplay review (and playing the demo) I was expecting a game of high quality and instead received nothing more than a colourful coaster. This game is just a number of disappointing software releases which are overhyped and overrated prior to release. The video game money machine rumbles on and, unfortunately, there is no recourse for those people who have spent their well earned money on a game which is complete trash.

The gaming industry needs to grow up and treat gamers with some respect. I haven't been playing games for twenty odd years to be treated like an idiot when I play a game. I expect there to be some maturity. I would have hoped that as I had grown up so had the industry which I have supported. However, they keep releasing titles like Prey which treat me like an idiot and provide no real entertainment value at all. The sooner the gaming industry wakes up to its greatest dillema and grows out of the space invaders mentality and realises that games are more than just pixels on a screen but a form of narrative expression will we start to see games which treat our intelligence with some respect and satisfies our need for complicated and rewarding story telling. Hopefully then we will move from the one man (or woman) saves the world type plot.

As for PC Powerplay what more can I say?