For a long time now, there has been one game that has always rested on the edge of my lips – Prey. While others were talking about how "so-and-so" would be the next big game, I kept waiting for Prey. Perhaps it was the story or the premise that sealed the deal for me, but for some reason I wanted no other game more than Prey. With Prey coming out soon, I can only hope the finished version is spectacular. If the demo is any indicator, I'm in for a treat, cause nothing is cooler than being abducted by aliens while Blue Oyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" blares from the jukebox. Nothing.

In Prey, players play as Tommy, a Cherokee, as he stares at himself in some dive of a bar's bathroom mirror, wondering why he can't tell his bartender girlfriend, Jen, that he loves her. Tommy hates his heritage and thinks the reservation is a cage, but Jen loves her culture and doesn't want to leave. After having another argument over the matter of leaving with his girlfriend, Tommy defends his girlfriend's honor by taking out two thugs with a wrench (the first weapon of the game – a default melee weapon players will always have to fallback on). As soon as that happens, the lights go haywire, the news reports lights in the sky, and suddenly the bar around Tommy is being abducted into the night sky, along with his grandfather and girlfriend.

The beginning of the preview really draws you in. The music, voice acting, and pacing are all top notch and instantly have you invested in these characters. As soon as Tommy voiced his frustration over being unable to tell Jen he loves her, I instantly felt for the guy. It usually takes me hours to care about a character, but Tommy had me hooked from the beginning. Once players head out to the bar, they can interact with a ton of objects. Jukeboxes can be changed to other plays, you can play a Pac-Man rip-off, do some gambling, spin barstools, change television stations, etc.

Once Tommy finally gets abducted, what begins next is a long rollercoaster ride as players get a sense of scope to their current situation and get an idea of the hierarchy and goings on of this massive spaceship that has kidnapped Tommy and his loved ones. After an act of sabotage, Tommy finds himself free and on the move…all in the pursuit of the woman he loves.

Story is prevalent from beginning to end of the demo. The little moments of Tommy talking to himself really make the player feel as if they are this character instead of some voiceless do-gooder. The sheer fact that Tommy says what the player is thinking helps bridge that wall between player and game time and time again.

As players continue on the demo, they'll run across little blue platforms on the ground (recover health), discover the portal doorways that rest flat in the world, but as soon as Tommy steps through them he is in a whole new place completely, and get accustomed to the alien enemies.

For the most part, there wasn't a single enemy I ran across that really gave me any problems. The half dog like animals that hatch from eggs can easily be taken down with a wrench, while the more elite soldiers are taken down with some easy going combat. I'm sure there will be more varied enemies in the final version, which get more difficult as the game progresses, but for the purposes of this early demo level they just aren't there.

Though the weaponry is very alien, they are basically just redid versions of the weapons you'll find in any number of first person shooters. The first weapon you run across is this machine gun type weapon, which though glowing with red bullets, is still a machine gun at its core. The three-legged aliens running around on the floor can be used as throwable explosives, which means in other words grenades. And the combo weapon can either be like an advanced machine gun (like a chaingun in other words) or a flamethrower that uses cooling ice like ammo rather than flames and heat. This isn't a critique, but rather simply pointing out the fact, because it is nice to have some familiarity with the weapons even though they look daunting at first.

Another cool thing about the weapons is that they have secondary firing modes that you activate with the left trigger. The machine gun switches to almost a sniper rifle of sorts, which I found myself using a great deal. I loved running into a room, seeing an enemy appear in a portal before me, and then quickly zooming in and taking them down with two good shots and then instantly going back out to normal to continue on. The combo weapon's secondary mode isn't so much an extra firing mode, but rather a leach beam that can zap the various red and blue energies around, which depending on the type of color, will either give you the chaingun effect (red) or the cold flamethrower (blue). The blue was nice, though a bit impractical, so I tended to try and find the red essences when I could.

The game has a few really cool moments, like walking on the walls for the first time, seeing a box spill over which contains a portal and one of the dog type creatures come crawling out, and my absolute favorite moment is when you enter this room, see an exhibit case with what looks like a tiny planet, going into a nearby portal, finding yourself now miniaturized on said planet, and watching as an enemy enters the room, a giant compared to you now, notices you, and heads into their own portal to come to the planet and get you.

After one point in the game you'll die. Sorry, it will happen, you can't change fate. Here you learn about your heritage and how you'll have to use it to survive the alien attack, and here players will learn to spirit walk and receive their spirit bow. The spirit walk was very interesting, as it was used for some interesting puzzles, though to begin with it is used only to walk through a force field so that players can flip a switch. However, at one point in the game, there is an intriguing puzzle where you have to walk on the ceiling to a specified point, remain stationed up there, and then go into spirit walk right side up, and then trigger a switch that will make the panel Tommy is standing on float to another area of the level. It took me quite a few times to figure out what the developers were wanting from me, but after I got it I felt extremely satisfied.

If I have any complaints about the game it is that the demo ended. I mean, it is quite a long demo, so there was plenty of play time (not to mention I've already played it through several times), but I just wanted more. Sadly, I didn't get the chance to experience the multiplayer, because the game for one reason or another wouldn't establish an internet connection. Oh well, maybe I'll be able to connect to a game soon and I'll be able to provide some thoughts and impressions on the multiplayer then.