Prey Review (PS4)

Imagine being trapped in a partly-knackered space station, totally alone apart from a mysterious voice in your ear and weird alien things that morph into everyday objects and only leap out at your when you reach to pick them up or dare to turn your back on them. Sounds like a pretty nice Sunday afternoon doesn’t it?

It’s not. It’s quite jumpy.

Prey is a great looking game and has a lot of brilliant ideas and well executed moments, but MY GOD does it make you jump. Imagine if Dead Space 2 shared some ideas with Pennywise the clown and you’re getting close. Mugs turn into huge black spider-like crawlers and launch themselves at you, and you get wander round a quiet corner to come face to face with a huge thing flinging fire at you. It’s pretty disconcerting.

The sound has a lot to do with this as well, with a hauntingly subtle soundtrack which ramps up to a fever whenever the action gets a bit chaotic. With some half decent headphones and some low light you’ll struggle to find a more atmospheric game, and the feeling of being alone and edging towards helpless is very impressive, more so when you venture outside the station to see the sheer scope of the place, and the emptiness of space around it. It’s very poignant.

It’s not for everyone; the jump scares will see to that, and very nature of it being survival based will worry others, but it’s a great game and nothing less than you’d expect from the minds of Bethesda.