Even though Prey is supposed to be a remake of the original Prey that came out in 2006, they have nothing in common except that they both take place in space and have aliens. Despite this, Prey (developed by Arkane Studios and published by Bethesda) may be a contender for one of the best games of 2017.

The game follows Morgan Yu who must survive his (or her, depending on which you choose) way through the space station of Talos-1, which suffered an outbreak of a mysterious alien life form called the Typhon. Now on the game’s surface, it’s a horror title that with some scary aliens that mimic objects to jump at the player, but if you look a little closer you can see that it’s more of a thriller. Talos-1 is full of mystery as the player reads the emails and listen to the audio logs of the scientists who worked here. You can simply get immersed in the world as you find more information about Typhon.  

One of the biggest mysteries of the game isn’t how the Typhon got loose or where they came from, it’s the main character. “Just who is Morgan Yu,” I asked myself every time I saw a glimpse of the name in an e-mail. In fact, I got even more intrigued when I found messages coming from Morgan himself.

Talos-1 is a surprisingly diverse space station. Even with the Typhon roaming around, the environments look and feel like they could have existed if they were actually built in real life. The music is on point, adding to the feeling that you’re isolated in this adventure and that danger may be around every corner. Even if you defeat every enemy within an area of the station, exploring the ship on its own is full of surprises.

The crafting system in the game also adds to the survival element here. While exploring, you’re able to store scrap equipment, food items, extra weapons, and Typhon material in your inventory, much like in Fallout 4. With these items, you’re able to put them in a Recycler machine that turns extra items into materials which you can use to create useful items in a Fabricator. This system works great as the misc items you grab don’t spawn again after you pick it up, meaning that the player would have to make the right choices of what to scrap and create at any time they’re near a Recycler station. Though this element can generally be avoided if the player kills the respawning enemies as they also drop some useful items.

Now the gameplay here is pretty solid. Most of the game is traveling to one area to another in order to another, but the best part about it is how the player goes about doing it. If you don’t have a keycard to get into a room, you can either go to a security station and track a crew member who would have that keycard, find a maintenance vent that leads into the room, explore some more, or just use that toy crossbow that you find to shoot a dart at the unlock button inside of the room. If you’re a fan of games like Deus Ex or Dishonored, then you will like level design here.

This leads up to the enemies of the game, the Typhon. At first you are met with the most basic enemy, the mimics. They are spider or headcrab-like creatures that are able to hide easily in the environment as they transform into whatever object is in front of them. This can lead to some really great moments where you are picking up materials around the room and right when you grab a piece of ammo, the mimic transforms and jumps right at you.

Phantoms are human corpses that have been infected by the Typhon that walk around, teleport, and shoot psychic blasts at you.  Phantoms are menace to the player as they deal a significant amount of damage to you but if you upgrade yourself enough, these enemies become trivial near the end of the game. Frankly, one of the better enemies in the game are called Telemancers, floating black masses that have the ability to mind control surviving crew members, causing them to become living land mines. Just the way you have to deal with them, trying to figure out how to keep away from the helpless crew while killing the Telemancer is one of the best gameplay experiences the game has to offer.

Even with the generic black-goo enemies, and some questionable gameplay elements, the story and the environment is fantastic. For $60 you get around sixteen hours of gameplay so if you take your time and soak everything in, you’ll have a blast.

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