I'm neither affiliated with this developer/publisher, nor any competitor. This is my subjective opinion. Full disclosure: I worked in the gaming industry many years ago and had a chance encounter with a "Prey" producer (whom I found to be a complete and total pompous wanker.)

It's gotta suck being a first-person shooter developer. On the one hand, everyone wants you to "break new ground" and introduce fresh new ideas into the tired genre. On the other hand, the same crowd beats you up if you so much as *tweak* a genre that's a core foundation of gaming. ("Where's the rail gun?" "How come there aren't more bosses?" "Where's the BFG?" etc.)

Equal parts The Karate Kid, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Alien, and all the usual movie influences, "Prey" has some nice attention to detail: mirrored surfaces, puzzles, portals, character interaction, voiceovers, the "spirit walk," etc... It's nice to see level design that is this advanced.

Highs: Fun gravity effects, great level design, a wonderful help system intregrated into the game, nice interactions with talking 3D characters, plus some fun puzzles (when they're not frustrating you). I also like that they bought the rights to some fun music (Heart, Ted Nugent, Judas Priest, etc.) for the bar scene. Very fun.

Lows: Cliches abound: "Save the girl in peril." "The White man's world is evil." "Indian folklore/ancestry has all the answers." This game is still a regular shooter at heart (which isn't necessarily a ding), but the genre is beyond tired.

Overall: When I want entertainment, I still fire-up "Prey" on my MacBook Pro. That says a lot about its quality. (Did I mention I haven't had a single crash--yet?)

And even though the plot in "Prey" is rather cliche, it does what it's supposed to do: it drives the action. I've always found the "Quake" games boring in single-player cause you're just blasting baddies. There's no inherent plot to drive you do any shooting (other than the cooked-up plot du jour). You know, the thinly veiled plot that says that space-aliens-have-invaded-a-martian-colony-and-you-must-step-in-and-save-the-world type of stuff.

Although I've only played this for a few hours, I look forward to more entertainment from "Prey." Remember, games like this don't just "happen." It looks like it was an insane amount of work to createit. Stuff like this takes years to create (and tons of $$), so my hat is off to the folks behind "Prey." It's an extraordinary accomplishment.