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This liberated design philosophy helps Human Head's level designers maintain some of the best pacing I've ever seen in the genre. We all remember those great "Oh shit" moments in our favorite first-person shooters: looking at Half Life 2's Citadel for the first time, crossing over into the bowels of Hell in Doom 3, or taking down your first Shambler in Quake. But what Human Head has effectively attempted here is to make an entire game of these jaw-dropping moments. It never fails to surprise, nor to create new or interesting scenarios to play. It's not an especially long (nor disappointingly short) journey, but it's an exceptionally memorable one.
 The shooting action itself feels like a slight step back from recent genre offerings like FEAR. The alien weaponry feels mostly familiar, but offers a few nifty features; your basic blaster offers secondary sniper-rifle functionality, there's a gun that can sap elemental powers to freeze, burn, or electrocute baddies, and a shotgun that blasts acid instead of pellets. But the enemy AI is unexceptional, often leaving itself wide-open and never demonstrating any interesting squad tactics. Don't get me wrong; a lot of these guys are fun to fight, but not because they demonstrate much intelligence. What Prey does do well is toss you into intense situations with a bunch of vicious bad guys, and the combat at its best is fast and intense the way that early 3D first-person shooters like Quake were, and the way I wished Doom 3 would have been.
Once the main game has been completed, there's an admittedly barebones smattering of multiplayer modes available. Offering just standard-issue deathmatch and team deathmatch modes for up to eight players, it would seem that multiplayer wasn't a big focus for Human Head. Yet this deathmatching turned out to be some of the most fun I've had with a FPS online in a while. Again there's a bit of an old school vibe to the online fragging, with a bit of a Quake feel to the fast-paced action. But again, it's the level design that steals the show, with maps that exploit Prey's unique features, but don't overwhelm. They are exceptionally well balanced for the small numbers of players it supports, as well, which is a refreshing change of pace from the too-large 16 or 32 player maps that are so popular these days. Modders will likely bring more modes to Prey, but for now some fast and fun deathmatch action gets the job done better than you might think.
Prey is one of the real stand-out first-person shooters of the last few years. It delivers an experience which is both refreshingly original and curiously old school at the same time. Expect to spend an equal amount of time exploring some truly mind-bending environments full of clever puzzles and blowing away waves of mean (if dumb) alien monsters. If it did a better job of getting me emotionally invested in the characters, and offered some more intelligent enemies, I'd be completely satisfied, but perhaps that will be left for the sequel so tackily made immanent by the game's ending. As it stands, Prey is really a testament to great design above all else. Was it worth waiting a decade for? Well, it may be long past due, but it's hard not to be glad that someone saw it through.
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