I have always been a fan of first-person shooters on the PC, so I am naturally intrigued at all attempts to reproduce this genre of gaming for the iPhone. Along comes Prey Invasion from Hands On Mobile, who also brought the Guitar Hero series to the App Store, and I just had to have a look . The Prey series was a popular game for the PC and XBox, although its important to note the publishers specify that this isn ‘t a port, but a new adventure. Having never played Prey Invasion (or other Prey games) on any platforms, I am reviewing this from a completely fresh iPhone perspective.
The storyline (from the developers) :
Based on the hit Xbox 360 and PC title, the game follows the story of Tommy, a Cherokee garage mechanic refuting his heritage and unsure about his next step in life. His world comes to a halt when an extraterrestrial crisis forces him to awaken spiritual powers from his long-forgotten birthright. Abducted with his people to a menacing mother ship orbiting Earth, he sets out to save himself, his girlfriend and eventually, the entire planet. Prey has a serious, dark story based on authentic Cherokee mythology. The game dives into emotional territory rarely explored by similar games as themes of tremendous sacrifice and responsibility surface throughout the story.
The game begins in what appears to be an ancient world, with large, muscular, alien-looking creatures of different shapes and sizes attacking you. Each is easily extinguished with a swing of your wrench, or a shot or two from your hunters rifle “ your two starting weapons. It ‘s not long before the world becomes more futuristic, the creatures more abundant, requiring more (but not a lot of) effort to eliminate. The graphics for the creatures are impressive for a game on this platform, with a fair amount of detail to boot (think: early Quake). The different environments you explore throughout the game are equally as impressive with colourful, detailed textures and quite intricate detail on each weapon. I also found the performance quick and the controls were very responsive both running, firing and multi-tapping the screen to shoot whilst moving.
Interaction with the game is done via transparent controls appearing initially across the sides and bottom of the screen. There are two types of controls, analogue and digital. Digital controls consists of 2 sets of horizontal dials for side-stepping left/right and looking left and right and another 2 sets of vertical dials for moving forward/back and looking up and down. The analogue controls emulate circular buttons from older console game pads which take some getting used to but eventually are far more robust. Both sets of controls make use of a tap-to-fire mechanism along with extra buttons to throw exploding crawlers, that you pick up along the way. A second button switches you briefly to a spirit walk mode, which is useful for completing some of your tasks. When your health gets really low, you are transported to a trance-induced world in which you have to shoot flying creatures to regain health (the red figure in the top left) and further spiritual ability (the blue figure).
You can pause the game at any time and switch between analogue and digital controls and both have the added benefit of being completely configurable. I didn ‘t find the default setup ideal, tapping anywhere near your gun opens the switch weapon dialog, which you find yourself doing a lot when trying to target creatures standing right in front of you. Fortunately, as you are able to customize all the controls, you are able to move this to another area of your screen. Once this is done, the game is a lot more playable and switching the transparency up, means you have a full, uncluttered screen in which to target nasty enemies.
Aiming and firing at creatures is a bit too simplistic, and once creatures are within a certain proximity, it ‘s almost impossible to miss. Fortunately, as the game progresses they require more hits before they die adding a small degree of difficulty.
The good
What the game does right is provide an aesthetically pleasing, gung-ho, first-person shooter, which is an addictive time-killer. The no 1 feature is definitely its graphics, the developers definitely spent a fair amount of time getting this right. The configurability of the controls is perfect for every type of gamer, old school or new, left-handed or right. The gameplay is excellent (once the controls are mastered) and you are able to make use of other objects in the world, such as gun turrets adding an extra dimension to the game.
There are a great variety of creatures and levels, all with unique weapons and movement and the storyline keeps you interested.
The bad
I managed to complete the majority of the game in about 30 minutes, which makes it fairly short but I hope future updates will include additional levels, creatures and weapons. The overall AI is fairly poor, but not terrible, although I didn ‘t manage to die once and never had to use a saved game. Simply side-stepping and firing in the creature ‘s general area will eliminate almost all the enemies fairly quickly and its worth noting that you usually don ‘t encounter more than 2 in one area.
The verdict
Although thoroughly enjoyable and visually excellent, I wouldn ‘t consider this a complete, polished iPhone game for its genre, but it comes in at a reasonable price point especially when compared to similar FPS ‘s such as Doom Resurrection.
At $2.99 / £1.79, I would recommend this game for any fan of this genre.
More screenshots :
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TAGS: FPS
