Take a walk on the spirit side
But it’s not just Talon that can give the aliens gyp in spirit form. You can do the same, but without that messy ‘dying’ bit. When you need to, you can spirit walk, leaving your body and moving around in a ghostly shimmer. This is very handy for accessing switches that are unreachable behind forcefields in the real world, as your spirit can just pass straight through. You can still interact with the world in spirit form and, if you have the spirit energy, you can even let fly with your spirit bow and attack the bad guys.
Once you gain the spirit walking ability, each bad guy you kill leaves behind a little spirit energy, which you use to top up your own spiritual well. But be warned, though spirit walking is cool and let’s you get access to otherwise unreachable areas; your body is still vulnerable to attack… so whilst you’re off on a spooky baddie hunt, an alien could be making a kebab of your kidneys.
Click for larger imageSpeaking of dying, Prey handles that a bit differently too. See, you know this whole spirit thing? Well when you die you go to a sort of limbo where you’re gradually sucked up into a vortex and will be really dead dead. But you can avoid this and return to life by shooting down the circling vulture/bat things that circle the entrance to the afterlife, and depending on how many you kill and of what type, that’s how much health and spirit energy you return to the mortal world with… saves having to reload the damn level every time, eh?
The thought put into the level design and mechanics of the game becomes apparent with the spirit walking when you see some of the later levels. Not only are there barriers such as force fields that can be crossed, but there are also bridges and gangways that just aren’t there in the real world. For example, later on the ship starts talking to you, having recognized you as being something a bit different from its usual fodder. It then starts toying with you and testing you. You find yourself in a room with loads of levitating platforms and bridges and you must negotiate these to progress.
Go for a spirit walk and the gaping chasm before you now has the spirit of the bridge that used to be there, which your spirit can now cross to activate the switch to put the real, physical world bridge back in its place. This whole ‘alternate reality’ thing that Human Head have developed lends a superbly original puzzle element to Prey which, from what we’ve seen, lifts it way above a bog standard FPS.
Also thrown into the mix are the teleport portals that open up when you get near them. These are often gateways to the next part of the level and very often they are two-way, so you can come and go as you please. Now teleports are nothing new but Prey’s work slightly differently in that these are physical gateways to the next part, meaning that you can treat them as if they were just another doorway.
Click for larger imageWhat that means is that should you feel so inclined you can lob grenades through to clear out the room, or just pop in, take a quick shot at whoever’s lurking there then hop back out again… and slaughter the bad guys as they come in looking for you. In the multiplayer, these portals add a great new dimension to the play as you can actually snipe through the portal, taking off the heads of your opponents without them having a clue where the fire is coming from… Class!
But spirit walking and real-time portals aren’t the only tricks Prey has up its sleeve… we’ve not even mentioned the gravity yet!
