mysakbm on 26/6/2017 at 09:02
I have to admit that playing Prey with Typhn abilities is completely different. I feel much more powerful.
How do you guys have it?
Gryzemuis on 3/8/2017 at 13:57
Very clever game. Very good.
But I didn't enjoy playing it.
It's the combat. I just don't like shooters. I played on easy mode. But the game didn't feel easy. Respawning enemies, while the player has limited ammo is a dumb idea, imho. Or at least an idea I didn't enjoy. I made it to Alex's office to upload some data. And then I got ambushed by 4 military operators. I didn't enjoy that. I then try to read on the net how to deal with the situation in the simplest way. Turns out the damn things keep respawning (unless you know exactly what to do). And the last part of the game is mainly running from objective to objective, fighting all the time, no more quiet exploring. I also by mistake read a spoiler about the ending(s). That is when I decided to stop playing. I don't think I will enjoy the last chapters of the game very much. Too bad.
Maybe it's time to finish Dishonored 2. Or finish GTAV. Not that I have much time to play these days. Most likely I'll do a NG+++ run in DS3. :) Or play DS1 again, as Renzatic's revisit looks cool. Or I go finally kill the Fume Knight.
Gryzemuis on 3/8/2017 at 16:57
Yes, of course I mean respawning enemies, while the player has limited ammo. Yes, I've not really ran out, but I did feel the need to always worry about my ammo usage. As I said, I don't care much for shooter combat anymore. So I see all combat as an irritating obstacle to continue with the game. :) Now if I could just keep blasting with my shotgun, it would be ok, maybe. But if I have to make sure every shot counts, I will more often irritated than enjoying the game.
I also didn't like the movement in zero-gravity. Too awkward, I didn't feel I was in control. Especially when you were indoor with zero-gravity. Later when I had a few chips it became better. Banging into walls isn't fun, even less when it hurts.
When I played SS2, I had edited some number in a config or save-file. Enemies respawned, but very very rarely. I would go back to areas that I had cleared out, and they would be empty (like I prefer). Then once in every 10-20 visits of such an area, there would suddenly be a respawned enemy. I liked that. With Prey it was obvious, every time you make progress in the main story, and then go back to another area, it would be filled with enemies again. I didn't like that. It was not a surprise, it was just another chore. Also, fuck Nightmare typhons.
I shouldn't be complaining.
I guess Prey just wasn't my game. Too much of a shooter, even though the story was ok. I don't mind RPG-elements in games (I spent 10k hours playing WoW). But in short games (like ~40 hours to finish), I just can't be bothered by investigating in game mechanics. Just let me blast everything with a shotgun. Don't make life hard on me if I didn't upgrade the correct weapon for a particular enemy, or put my talent-points in the wrong skill. Ask me anything about the rogue talent-tree in Wow 2005-2010, and I can answer all your questions. I know that shit. But ask me what the stun-gun in Prey does, and I don't have a clue. I tried it once, it didn't impress me, I went back to the shotgun. I was playing on Easy, after all.
I wanted to play Dark Souls. Because of how it looked. But Dark Souls has a few game mechanics that really piss me off. But the game lets you circumvent those. (E.g. you can save and copy back save-games to make the game less punishing. You can play offline to prevent invasions). I didn't feel the easy-mode in Prey made the game that much easier. If I hadn't been able to tweak Dark Souls to my liking, I wouldn't have played it, and I would have missed 3 great games.
I wonder if I still would be able to enjoy HL1, if I had to play it for the first time. I think my gaming preferences have changed a lot over the last 20 years. (HL1 was the first modern computer game I played). I think it is about time for the successor of Skyrim.
Twist on 3/8/2017 at 20:07
Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
icemann loved the hacking minigame; I hated it.
Gryz hated the controls in zero gravity; I loved them. I loved being able to drift around the entire space station and have the scale and position of every part of the station look and feel accurate, while my time spent exploring out there rewarded me with some subtle yet satisfying exploration and discovery. I also think the zero gravity segments function as a fun reference to the original System Shock's cyberspace sequences.
Gryz, you can avoid combat through large swaths of the game. Prey is far more stealth-friendly than its direct predecessors, and the level design is rich with alternate paths. But maybe you're not a stealth fan. You can also deal with most enemies in most situations through indirect measures; use the environment, or be creative in combining different abilities. When you combine stealth with indirect measures, you can pretty much avoid all shooter aspects (well, almost).
However, the game suffers a bit from something that plagued BioShock: sometimes the more fun methods of combat require deliberately avoiding the most obvious and efficient ways to kill.
As for respawning... in many areas you can lure and trap the enemies. They stay trapped and by not killing them, they won't respawn. This was my method for permanently "clearing" several areas. But the areas that repopulated whenever you triggered progress in the main story were predictable and annoying.
Prey's a strange game. On one hand, it looks, feels and plays more like a great LookingGlass legacy game than anything we've seen since Deus Ex. And on the whole, I really love it. But on the other hand, it is clearly a flawed masterpiece. Instead of turning me into an obsessive fanboy, it too often leaves me reflecting on its problems and annoyances.
For example, when in the history of first-person gaming has the strength of a great game been fighting small, fidgety and fast knee-high enemies and why did nobody at Arkane raise this concern early in its development? It's apparent Arkane see it as a problem now; in a big patch released just this morning, they made significant behavior changes to mimics, with those changes clearly targeted at making them less annoying.
And here's where I randomly stop writing and hit submit reply. :thumb:
Vivian on 3/8/2017 at 20:12
Yeah got it recently in a sale, there's a hell of a lot to like here. I was put off initially because Dishonorororored 2, while possessing some charming level design and some great systems, did nothing to make me feel like I wasn't wasting my time playing it. Sort of weirdly flat, empty experience. This feels a lot more substantial, but i'm also going in not expecting much, and expectation is a bitch etc.
Jason Moyer on 3/8/2017 at 20:21
I didn't really notice many respawning enemies outside of the times that the game was re-populated due to game progression, which is different than the respawn-ecology of SS2.
Gryzemuis on 5/8/2017 at 12:10
Quote Posted by Twist
icemann loved the hacking minigame; I hated it.
Me too. But that was probably because of my input-devices (a joystick). The joystick allows very easy and relaxed movement. But the one thing it is not good at is stopping quickly (unless I tinker with the deadzone, which I sometimes do for some games). And another thing: the game shows you which button to press when you reached your destination. I have all actions mapped to keyboard-keys, and I have those keyboard-keys mapped to buttons on my joystick. So I know: press this button to equip the shotgun. But after a while I have no idea what keyboard-key is being simulated to press. So all of that is my problem.
The other thing is: I'm a computer programmer. When I see the hacking mini-game, I have absolutely no idea what that game has to do with hacking. :)
Quote:
I loved being able to drift around the entire space station
Yep, that was a very good game element. As I wrote, Prey is a clever game. Unfortunately I hardly ever used this option to move between sections of the space-station. The (global) map tells you how the sections are connected. But for some reason, I never got that map in my head. So I never thought: "hey, I'm close to section X, less go there via the outdoors area". I'm usually pretty good at remembering maps and finding the quickest way to get somewhere. But not in this game.
Quote:
But maybe you're not a stealth fan.
Mmmm, we're here on the Thief forums. :) And, as I told you, I've played 10k+ hours of WoW, mostly playing my rogue (the stealth class in WoW). My most precious possession in the Dark Souls games is my Slumbering Dragoncrest Ring (make no noise). Yes, I always play slow, try to be a bit stealthy. But when you come out of an elevator, and there are mobs in front of you that you can not avoid, I start running. Also fuck Nightmare typhons. Also stealth doesn't help much with those little mimic fuckers. I guess rather quickly I gave up on trying to be stealthy. The only stealthy thing I did was when I saw a typhon before it saw me, I tried to (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OnJt98B6Oc&t=39s) shoot it in the back.
Quote:
As for respawning... in many areas you can lure and trap the enemies. They stay trapped and by not killing them, they won't respawn.
That's an unintuitive game-mechanic. You need to read about that. Or otherwise it's at least a cheesy way of playing. I don't like that in games. Also, when you used the gloo-gun to stun enemies, don't they break out after a while ? I think my enemies did. That's why I decided to always just kill them. Or run.
Quote:
Instead of turning me into an obsessive fanboy, it too often leaves me reflecting on its problems and annoyances.
Same here. I wanted to like the game. I love the space-station itself. (For me the game world and the exploration are the most important aspects of a game. I guess that's why I loved WoW at the time. And the Elder Scroll games. And why I like the Dark Souls games so much now). But for some reason, there are so many moments when I thought "fuck that, I'm gonna stop playing now". I've had my fair share of frustration in the Dark Souls games. But I always wanted to continue, never stop.
Another factor might have been the fact that you play as Morgan Yu. I don't like that. I like games where I am playing as an anonymous nobody. Elder Scroll games. World of Warcraft. Dark Souls. And many other games. When I am role-playing as somebody someone else has chosen for me, I feel a lot less attached to the character.
The Dishonored games share some of the same issues. I've finished DS1, but not its addons. I want to, but for some reason I still haven't. Maybe because I have to play as Daud (yet another character that is not me, and I need time to adjust to that). I bought DS2 last Christmas, played as Corvo, got halfway through the game, but then stopped. It's weird. I like the Dishonored games, I want to play them. But when I do, I often feel no urge to continue playing. Totally opposite of WoW. I really do *not* want to play that game, but when I do, I will not stop for the next 12 hours. It's not only the Skinner-box property of MMOs, there must be something else as well.
Twist on 6/8/2017 at 23:06
Quote Posted by Gryzemuis
Quote Posted by Twist
Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
icemann loved the hacking minigame; I hated it.
Me too... The other thing is: I'm a computer programmer. When I see the hacking mini-game, I have absolutely no idea what that game has to do with hacking. :)
Yeah, that's one of the elements I hated about it. It has nothing to do with computer hacking or with the game world and the over-arching narrative. Even BioShock's hacking mini-game could be rationalized as taking cues from its game world, whereas this was just some random, abstract twitch-oriented arcade game you were forced to play if you wanted to "hack" a digital device.
For anyone reading who hasn't played yet, here's a hacking tip: the hacking minigame plays
much better with a gamepad's analog stick; it was clearly designed with gamepads in mind. I played Prey with mouse and keyboard, but I grabbed my gamepad for all the hacking minigames. The hacking still sucks, but the gamepad makes it moderately more tolerable (for me, at least). Or don't use the hacking skill at all; the game usually provides alternative options.
Quote Posted by Gryzemuis
Yes, I always play slow, try to be a bit stealthy. But when you come out of an elevator, and there are mobs in front of you that you can not avoid, I start running.
But you're contradicting yourself here. The elevator doors are clear. You can see the mobs before you step out -- or if you've already stepped out you can jump back in, close the doors and leave.
As a software engineer who "always plays slow," I would think that you might have seen those situations and thought to yourself, "Hmm, there's gotta be a more efficient way to approach this problem."
In the case of the mobs spawning in the lobby outside of the elevator: leave and approach the lobby from another direction!
This was one reason I trapped
the phantoms in the
Hardware Labs. I used the airlock in the machine room as my repeat approach to the Lobby. (Even if you don't trap them, there are ample alternate routes for stealthing passed them as you go between the Lobby and that particular airlock.)
Yeah, the airlock in
Shuttle Bay is closer to the Lobby, but if you emerge from
Hardware Labs, you emerge several levels above the mobs (and the Nightmare). You can then use a combination of steps and ledges you create with the Gloo Gun and those huge hanging art pieces to stay above and beyond the mobs and the Nightmare as you crisscross the Lobby.
(Regarding the Nightmare:
You know you don't need to fight them, right? You can just hide from it for a couple minutes and it will go away (even if you leave and re-enter the area). In the
Mixed Signals sidequest, you even get a tool for
near-instantly banishing them if you need.
Quote Posted by Gryzemuis
Also stealth doesn't help much with those little mimic fuckers.
But it does! If you enter a room slowly and carefully examine the environment, you can often identify the mimics and attack them before they turn, which gives you a 50% sneak attack bonus (or higher, depending on your character build). Also,
once you get the psychoscope, just enable it with the mimic detect chip installed and examine a room before you enter it. It will identify and tag all mimics for you. Mind you, mimics are still annoying, but taking a patient, stealthy approach makes them easier to handle... and ever-so-slightly less rage-inducing. :thumb:
Quote Posted by Gryzemuis
Quote Posted by Twist
As for respawning... in many areas you can lure and trap the enemies. They stay trapped and by not killing them, they won't respawn.
That's an unintuitive game-mechanic. You need to read about that. Or otherwise it's at least a cheesy way of playing. I don't like that in games. Also, when you used the gloo-gun to stun enemies, don't they break out after a while ? I think my enemies did. That's why I decided to always just kill them. Or run.
Er... they give you an item called a Typhon Lure and even the loading screen tips inform you that trapping enemies is a legitimate way of handling them. Just toss the lure into a storage closet, and as soon as they enter close the door behind them and lock it.
To me, that seems like an intuitive gameplay mechanic in an immersive sim encouraging the player to creatively use the game systems for emergent gameplay moments.
By trapping them, I wasn't referring to the Gloo Gun, btw. As you pointed out, that's just temporary. I'm talking about thoughtfully using the environment against the enemies, which is a key concept Prey seems to be designed around.
Zerker on 6/8/2017 at 23:48
The enemies also aren't very good at chasing you in some scenarios. In the elevator situation you mentioned (which I got into last night), I just jumped over the railing onto the glass floor thing and hid where they couldn't reach me. Then I snuck over to my office. When it was time to return to the Arboretum, I had to just book it and close the door, but it worked.
I also use the Gloo gun as essentially my default weapon, and spray basic mimics and phantoms a bit before even attempting to do damage. Makes the mimics way more managable, and the standard phantoms die quickly with a few pistol shots in that state.
Now granted, you can't Gloo all enemies, but for those that I can't, I have the psionic blast which often knocks them down. Or use grenades. Or run and hide.
I can understand if the game doesn't click though. I was THIS close to requesting a Steam refund just prior to the two hour mark, but decided to stick with it. Now I'm more used to the idea that the enemies are rather threatening, but with sufficient approaches to handle them.
PS: The stun gun's fire button needs to be held for a bit to charge; it confused me at first too.
Jason Moyer on 7/8/2017 at 02:47
I think there are a lot of creative ways of approaching problems in Prey, but being a sissy I just tended to go with the stun gun for basically everything. Except for the areas where there are large spaces, where I tended to keep my distance and use that uh...gun that makes things explode. During the mid-game before I was overpowered (with human mods, mind) I basically fought everything but the robot-dudes by using the pistol to crit/lure them around a corner while I charged up the stun gun which I then hit them with before taking them out with the shotgun.
I definitely found a different way into the lobby the first time I arrived in the elevator and there was massive brawling going on outside. The way every area of the station loops back into itself there's really no reason to ever stumble into an ambush.
