Prey demo

[Twilo]

Primary Objective: Help the developers make money

Secondary Objective: There is no secondary objective

On the demo; yeah, I enjoyed it. I don't think I enjoyed it enough to play through the whole thing again but I liked being surprised by the level designs. The portals and changy gravity are at least on par with the gravity gun in HL2 for fun and games. The spirit stuff was a bit weak sometimes, but it was useful for low-health situtations; it also adds a bit of puzzle stuff that's more than "get the red key for the red door" and keeps things interesting. I doubt I'll get the Xbox360 version though, seeing as it runs really very nicely on my PC.

[miffy495]

Runs beautifully on my PC, but unfortunately gives me the same sound stutters that I get with Doom 3. Anyone know why this could be happening? I have a soundblaster X-Fi (the cheap one, Xtreme Music or whatever it's called) with the latest drivers so it should be great. It only seems to be this and Doom 3 that give me trouble, but I suspect if I ever tried Quake 4 I'd get a similar error. Damn engine.

I hate the way that people look in the Doom 3 engine. It was created to do so much with monsters that it even makes humans look like you should be scared of them and blowing their heads off. The hawk is cool though. Overall, I quite enjoyed that demo. I'll probably be getting it, but maybe in a month or so when I can find it used. I guess it all depends on how fat my next paycheque is, as I'm already planning on getting Oblivion with it. Prey comes second, but does look promising.

EDIT: Started downloading the Quake 4 demo. Let's see if I can confirm this suspicion.

EDIT EDIT: Yup, same sound problems. Fun little demo though. A bit generic, but if I can find the game on the cheap, could be fun.

[elmuerte]

Just played a bit of multiprey. Weapon balance is aweful and the speed is way to low. Didn't expect much of mutliprey anyway. It's like the MP feature of Tron 2.0.

Don't forget the 3rd objective of steam: screw customers

[n0wak]

Dudes (and dudettes)

Triton is the greatest thing invented since SpaceWar. It is the NEXT BIG THING. Scott Miller says as much so it must be true.

[SpiderMonkey]

Triton is the greatest thing invented since SpaceWar. It is the NEXT BIG THING. Scott Miller says as much so it must be true.

Call me when he writes an appraisal that sounds less like a press release for Triton. He's right to call Kotick on his statement - what planet has that guy been on since Nov 2004? - but call me when he puts down the pom-poms and stops throwing around the "it's next-gen!" vague-isms. I know he's a marketing man, but I thought blogs were supposed to be about opinionating, not sales pitches.

[elmuerte]

It doesn't even work. I'm still waiting for an activation email.

[Anonononomous]

Steam: Primary objective: Help the developers. Secondary objective: Make money.

Triton: Primary objective: Make money. Secondary objective: Help the developers.

I didn't say Valve weren't looking to make money. I simply said it wasn't their main objective. Read more closely next time?

And where exactly do you get this idea? They're a business; they're primary objective is to make money.

[SpiderMonkey]

And where exactly do you get this idea? They're a business; their primary objective is to make money.

False. The primary objective of a publicly traded business is to make money - that is required by law. A privately held business is welcome to pursue whatever objectives they wish, so long as they remain profitable (and legal) while doing so.

Just because I can (they're not precisely relevant), here's the Remoid refuting someone making pretty much the same assertion, except about their games instead of Steam, and here is an article about Craigslist discussing how, as a privately held business, they are choosing to put other objectives ahead of their bottom line.

EDIT: And anyway, this isn't about making money or not making money, it's about who is the priority in the money making - the guy who made the digital distribution software, or the guy who made the product it's distributing.

[Anonononomous]

I still don't see why you think Valve is such an altruistic company. Wasn't one of the main reasons for Steam the fact that they could cut out Vivendi and get more profit for themselves? It's not like they made it cheaper to pick up HL2 over Steam than in a box.

[SpiderMonkey]

Of course they created Steam out of self-interest. But if you look at their history of how they have used it in conjunction with other developers, it's clear that they are interested in using it to help other independent developers as well as themselves. They helped out the Ragdoll Kung Fu guys, they helped out Red Orchestra when they couldn't find any other publisher and were about to go under, they give 100% profit to Source licensees using Steam and a lot of the decisions in Steam revolve around helping out their customers as much as helping themselves.

To go back to my original point, I don't see this same "help other developers" attitude present in what Triton offers. They are on the bandwagon to earn a buck.

[loonyboi]

Of course they created Steam out of self-interest. But if you look at their history of how they have used it in conjunction with other developers, it's clear that they are interested in using it to help other independent developers as well as themselves.

Sure, but let's not forget the other side of that -- small developers were the only ones willing to give steam a try, so they had no choice but to seek out small developers.

When Steam was announced one of the first games that was going to use it was Relic's Impossible Creatures. Then they were bought by THQ. There went that deal.

[elmuerte]

and now this thread is about steam too?

[loonyboi]

and now this thread is about steam too?

ALL THREADS ARE ABOUT STEAM. STEAM IS LIFE.

[SpiderMonkey]

and now this thread is about steam too?

It was my thread to start with and I'll do what I want with it! *stamps foot*

[Duncan]

and now this thread is about steam too?

[steak-flavored gum]

First off, apologies for a lengthy reply which probably doesn't offer any new opinions you haven't already read concerning the demo.

I wasn't very excited by this.

The aesthetics weren't bad, but they weren't imaginitive enough for my tastes. Some of the sounds weren't as satisfying as they could be. I could probably come up with a few more minor points of contention if I felt like it, but more importantly, the portals didn't excite me.

I realize this is just the beginning of the game in demo format and it could get a lot more interesting from this point, but really, the portals are one of the (if not THE) main selling points (point) of the game, and they don't get used any more creatively than with the monster-knocking-over-the-crate and the miniaturization thing. Aside from these two things, this is all stuff that even I could have been doing (and was doing) back with Descent and the level editor that came with it.

There are also related issues with pacing, predictability, and linearity. Whenever I saw a space through which progression was inhibited (by a wall, locked door, whatever) I expected a portal. Regardless of whether they can be said to have been used in a gimmicky fashion or not, they felt gimmicky because of the way they were worked into the pacing and linearity of the experience.

Blah blah blah I mean I didn't have a bad time necessarily, it's just I really think we should be expecting much more of games. To mention the classic Descent games again, all the way back in Descent 2 I remember being genuinely impressed at the AI of a large group of robots working together. I felt that with this demo the AI didn't really make any impression or present any challenge at all. It was all about how many hits it took to down an enemy, how much their weapons hurt you and how hard they were to avoid. There was never more than a very small group to combat. I enjoy pretty, "immersive" graphics as much as the next person but it seems in games of this type the number-crunching power required for a single enemy is dumbing down the gameplay to an unacceptable extent, so that the nontrivial, nonsuperficial challenges seemingly foreshadowed by the exciting AI in ancient games can actually only be found in multiplay accompanied by a host of relevant problems.

After I had run through the demo I didn't feel that there was anything left for me to gain from it, so I uninstalled it immediately. If a game is going to be unabashedly linear, it can still reward replaying by making up for its linearity in the quality of its other components (although you may not agree, an example of this might be Half-Life 2). I wasn't feeling any of this in Prey.

[baconian]

Somebody said it reminded them of duke nukem 3d.

Totally.

Along with all the immature game design that goes with that. Well, it wasn't really immature then, but for some reason I felt like I was having the same experience as I had ten years or so ago with duke. 'Twas the first FPS I completed so I suppose I might pick up Prey out of nostalgia.

That in itself seems a bit odd to me though. Buying the newest, beefiest game out, for nostalgia.

[SpiderMonkey]

What exactly do you mean by "immature game design"? I can't tell if you mean "fun in an immature, kinda childish way", or "underdeveloped", or "retro", or what ...

[brkl]

I think he means outdated. Kind of like how Doom3 had monsters hiding in little useless secret rooms with secret doors that opened when you walked past.

[baconian]

What exactly do you mean by "immature game design"? I can't tell if you mean "fun in an immature, kinda childish way", or "underdeveloped", or "retro", or what ...

I suppose all three, really. It was hard to put my finger on it, initially I meant old-fashioned, but underdeveloped is really what I was getting at. I wasn't really surprised by anything. The intro was different though, in the bar. I would hope that they use that sort of gameplay situation later in the game.

[Jake]

But holy shit that intro level was cool.

Man I loved the jukebox and especially the song that started playing when things started happening.

Also Judas Priest!

Yeah Doom 3 tech is hit or miss, but blah. I had a lot of fun with the demo.

And yes, the atmosphere in that whole opening scene was so damn good. The jukebox callback at the end of the demo pretty much sealed the deal. I'll definitely be buying Prey.

[BaconIsGood4You]

Seemed to me like it was a B-Movie (uhh...game) trying to be an A. Story, art direction, imersion, etc. were not that great. Gameplay was alright, I wonder what they can do with it.

Strangely, however, I did enjoy the demo alot even though above reasons.

[Nick]

Hmm, I thought it was ok. But not great.

I'm not really feeling the whole Red Indian thing. The weapons seemed a bit meh, although there's a couple of good concepts in there like the gun that charges different ammo types from wall packs and the gass cloud shield thing.

Multiplayer was fun, but I got kind of annoyed at the way the mouse handles in the transition from one surface to another. And the whole time I wanted it to handle a bit more like a quake game, jumping around the wall a bit faster would've made things a bit more fun IMO.

All in all though it seems decent enough, but not amazing to me.

[SpiderMonkey]

I'm curious: do you (anyone) think it helps to be American rather than European, when it comes to "getting" the Native American/Red Indian/whatever storyline properly?

[loonyboi]

I'm curious: do you (anyone) think it helps to be American rather than European, when it comes to "getting" the Native American/Red Indian/whatever storyline properly?

Other than white man's guilt? Not really.