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It's pretty amazing that a game originally conceived of more than a decade ago could still have something relevant to contribute. Indeed, until Duke Nukem Forever gets a couple more years in the shop, Prey is the most delayed game of all time, crossing the finish line of its development cycle just shy of 10 years behind schedule. It's been a long and storied struggle, but thanks to the hard work of the team at Human Head, Prey is here, and I'm sure it will do everyone involved proud, including Tom Hall, Paul Schuytema, and the late William Scarboro, to whom the title is dedicated.
 Prey tells the story of a Cherokee named Tomasi Towadi (or Tommy for short), living on a reservation, and hungering for something more. He wants to get off the reservation, but his girlfriend, Jenny, is attatched to the land, her family, and her Cherokee people. Tommy's grandfather, an elderly wise man and cartoonish cliché tries to explain why his ancestral heritage is important, but his pleas fall on deaf ears.
Then everything goes to hell. Jenny, Tommy, and his Grandfather are abducted suddenly (with classic green tractor beams) by an alien menace the likes of which they cannot understand. They are brought aboard "The Sphere," a living, breathing, thinking biological version of a Dyson Sphere, a hollow world built around an artificial sun. A human rebel manages to free Tommy, but his loved ones are not so lucky. And thus Prey manages to the "rescue the girlfriend" cliché, and couples it with the "abducted by aliens" cliché and somehow creates something more.
Part of the way Prey is successful in doing this is by using an immersive first-person story telling style not unlike the one used in the Half-Life games. From the earliest moments of exposé, the player is in full control, able to look and move around freely as the story unfolds. This really helps to make the player feel more a part of his world, and there are no moments (after the first ten seconds of the game, anyway) where this control is taken away. Also like Half-Life, the story is often told in indirect ways as well as direct. For example, as he travels The Sphere, Tommy will find monitors intercepting broadcasts from Earth (in particular, those of Art Bell, a great little cameo). Unlike Half-Life's Gordon Freeman, however, Tommy is no mute. He speaks his mind throughout the game, both for dialogue, as well as bits of commentary and inner monologue throughout the game. This took a bit of getting used to, but it helped to lend a bit more personality to the main character –something often ignored in fist-person gaming.
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