At first glance Prey is just another first person shooter where some aliens abduct humans for food. Our hero is trying to find his way through the alien spacecraft to save his girlfriend. Start bashing monsters with your handy wrench and then pick up bigger weapons as you go along, yadda yadda yadda. Jump around from one area to another via “portals.” Been there done that…wtf?..just what the hell is that ugly monster doing walking on the ceiling?

And to me that’s just one of the things that makes Prey a bit different than the rest of the games you’ve already played. Gravity can be altered. First you have to figure out how to alter it, and then you have to figure out when to alter it.

Yes, there are puzzles in this game, and I freaking hate two things in my first person shooter, puzzles and jumping challenges. However, I’ve been playing for about three hours and I haven’t found anything that me and my trusty sidekick, the ghost of my childhood pet falcon, Talon, haven’t been able to figure out. The puzzles aren’t too annoying and it actually makes sense that you’d have to figure out how alien technology works. What’s the ghost of my childhood pet falcon doing on the alien’s spacecraft with me? That would be giving away some of the storyline, and there’s just not much there so I’ll let you find that out for yourself.

The hero, Tommy, is Cherokee. This makes a difference in the gameplay because Tommy is forced to accept the “spiritual mumbo jumbo bullshit” that his grandfather has been trying to teach him all his life in order to survive. Tommy’s spiritual side, can walk away from his body and manipulate some things. This comes in handy and is absolutely necessary to progress in the game. When you die in this game, you go to the spirit world and battle demons with your bow and arrow. If you kill enough of them, you return to your body and you return where you left it, not back at the beginning of the level. That is just sweet because the auto-saves seem few and far between in the game. Hit F5 often in case you really suck with a bow and arrow.

As in other FPCs many of the monsters die better and faster if you can nail a headshot. This game’s version of a BFG is rechargeable at various stations and the stations determine what the discharge will be. So far I’ve run into “Hot, Cold, and Lightning.” Depending on what monsters you’re facing the discharge does make a difference. And, as with all FPCs, learning how to shoot accurately while you move equals survival.

I didn’t think we were buying a game that was going to be this different, I was just tired of the FPCs that we already have. Both the ability to manipulate gravity and the spiritual plane make Prey different enough that I’ll be looking for expansion packs once I’ve beaten it.