The PC demo was great. It has gads of new and unique gameplay -- that works! The death system is more than novell and keeps the pacing well and the graphics are decent enough and it runs well on older machines.

If games were rated highly on gameplay Prey would have to get very high marks for the very reason it takes an old, worn, and proven genre and play machanics and adds a half dozen new gameplay/mechanics to the genre. Very few games add anything to the genre, let alone that many. Typically it is just more of the same, better, and prettier. Prey steps outside that box.

TeamXbox's review is kind of lame; they cannot even get basic facts right:

http://reviews.teamxbox.com/xbox-360/1191/Prey/p4/The game was originally being made by 3D Realms (I believe, it has been a long time) and then scrapped. It got picked up a couple years ago through contract by Human Head who has worked on it for a couple years. The games are TOTALLY unrelated outside some of the core concepts--and some of those did not even make it (e.g. destructible worlds; the other big one was Prey was originally slated to be kinf of 1 on 1 tournament with suped up AI, etc).

I am also dissappointed about how their bottomline notes how the gameplay separates it from the pack and that it is hard to do (most definately) yet gameplay gets a mere 8 and innovation cannot even crack 9. To contrast they gave Half-Life 2 a 9.9 and 8.8 in those categories, respectively and Halo 2 9.9 and 9.8 for gameplay and innovation.

Where I would fault Prey is it is too short and the graphics are only above average and the MP, while solid and unique, it appeals mainly to Death Match which lost its hold on gamers in 2000ish.

I am all for story telling and new cutting edge graphics, but at the end of the day we are still playing a lot of games that their seminal design has not changed much in a decade. Prey has faults, but I think the reviews are exposing the industry some: New and honestly unique twists and innovation are not as appealing as tied, true, re-used, and overdone stories, franchises, and just general polish. If you toss in a new shiny engine it is like an RPG: you get +1 across the board.

Reviewing games is hard and ultimately scores are irrelevant. That said, when "ranking" the final game is the most relevant aspect so I won't disagree with the final scores. But when things like "gameplay" or specifically "innovation" gets pooped on and "name brand" sequals with little new get uber high scores it makes me shake my head.

Personally I want to see both LotR BFME2 and Prey sell well to encourage developers, especially console developers, to experiement and branch out more. I love FPS, but lets try some new things with gameplay and design. If holy grails like destructable worlds and totally unified and destroyable lights are not possible then try something else: Massive worlds with hundreds of characters on screen or do what Prey did.

I think Gamespots rankings are usually pretty fair--and 7.5 on their scale isn't bad at all. 9.0 is rather inflated, imo..the game is good--but that's just it--it's good.

Not great.