#legacy medkit weapon

[kerosnes]

My nicely rendered things! ><

I’m eepy so this is queued (to post when I’m sleepin 😂)

(ignore uhh time taken.. I reuse old canvases… but i definitely didn’t spend a whole day on the last one)

[firestormmaidenanddragon]

Continued from HERE, moved because no more Legacy Editor for reblogs.

@team-vlts

"I'm just treating this like a proper situation where Grimm would be a factor, they're not here now, but we have to act like they are."

That was Darren's reasoning for it, his idea was to have one of them act as a lookout for Grimm, while the other tracked the emergency signal with their MedKit, which is how he imagined a proper emergency situation.

"I have a strong weapon that can shoot energy-arrows, it's why I was going to be look out, if that works for you."

[untilteddocument]

After-Action Archive Phoenix Point 2nd Gig - Hack the Planet, Part 1

Note: Being that this is an ending-related entry, unmarked spoilers ahead!

Welcome back, one and all, to my After-Action Archive! This post, the last I'll be doing for my second playthrough of Phoenix Point, will be detailing the final mission of the game, this time aligning with the Disciples of Anu! I've been helping them throughout this campaign, which in a gameplay sense has mostly been the same as my first playthrough. The story, however...well, we've found out the Exalted's secret, after fending off a coup attempt from her scheming yes-being (bonus points if you get the joke), the Synod of Yearning.

It's kind of refreshing to see a faction so rooted in Freaky Meat Time revealed as genuinely heroic like they've been claiming all along, though this is also the funniest way they could have done it. The usual trope has the middle management operating in good faith and being deceived by their messiah-figure, and this holds true here, but it's the declared foundations of their faith itself that are dangerous, and the messiah's long con is on behalf of the rank-and-file faithful. I love it.

Anyways, so with the briefing, we were brought fully on board with the Exalted's plan, and we had only to do our homework while waiting for the Yuggothian Entity to get to its endgame...so we, in turn, could get to ours.

Upon completing the final research, the Pandoran Palace appears, and we're able to take a team of our best and show the Dead God how we do things downtown. Speaking of teams...

Roll Call

My absolute first recruit (and the redheaded lady on the title screen), Sophia Brown has gone through a bit different journey than she did the first time around. This time, she's putting her Assault skills to work in combination with the stealth bonuses of the Infiltrator class. Coupling Sneak Attack's absurd damage boost with her Shard Gun (some top-tier equipment I can thank the Legacy of the Ancients DLC for) means she's capable of some quick kills, and her Echo bionic head means she'll be able to do it without them even knowing where the hit came from.

For distance work, I've got her outfitted with a Crystal Crossbow, and for scouting and extra targets for enemies to hit, she's packing an Arachni spider drone launcher plus reload. A spare medkit wouldn't go to waste either.

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Somewhat less recent an addition to my team is Milas Johnston, who is here showing off the interaction between the Berserker class and non-Berserker weapons. Turns out, Armor Break and Adrenaline Rush work even better when all your Action Points can be used for attacking instead of movement, so coupled with sniper rifles (proficiency thanks to the Sniperist personal skill) doing loads of damage but not shredding any armor, it's an excellent weapon choice if available.

The combination of the Scorpion sniper rifle (another Legacy of Ancients special), the damage boost of Sniperist, and the damage boost of Sneak Attack means that he can do some real numbers when hidden, but his crappy stealth score means he has to be far away to do it, or else patch it with Vanish. Still, having the option of Vanish means it can work, and with an Athena paralyzing sniper rifle and a Destiny back-mounted laser cannon with plenty of reloads to round out his arsenal, he's loaded for bear, or Lovecraftian god.

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Being that most of this crew was on a squad with a vehicle, it's only reasonable to include a few specialists in that line. Asia Howard is one of them. Assault/Technician is a pretty common combo (Dash + any other class is almost never a wrong choice), and while there aren't any utterly broken interactions here (Rapid Clearance plus the Self-Defense Specialist personal skill and a Gorgon Eye PDW wouldn't be bad, but that's not why she's on the team), her main niche is of working with whatever robo-buddies we have deployed on the mission. Whether her Watcher and Rattlesnake turrets or Sophia's spider drones or any vehicle we have on site, she can compound their effectiveness with Remote Control.

Outside of that, she's also an effective medic, what with her high mobility and Tech Arms. For this mission, I packed a couple of reloads, spare medkits, and a Purifier incendiary grenade. I had a feeling that I'd be needing some of those.

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Next up is the next Assault/Technician on the team, Ruth Manda, who joined up with me when I saved her (New-Jericho-aligned) haven from Pandoran attack. The funny thing is, I was experimenting with her build shortly before this mission, and her being the second technician on the team was actually very recent. Instead of the Neural bionic torso like I had with Ms. Howard, I had her using the Juggernaut bionic torso with an eye towards using her as a frontliner. She worked well enough in that role, but for this mission, I thought a second combat medic wouldn't be uncalled-for.

Aside from her Shard Gun (its high burst of 15 plays very well with her Biochemist personal skill, which adds 1 Virus damage for every projectile), I also have her equipped with a Synedrion-standard Deimos laser assault rifle, in case longer range is needed. No turrets, but two Purifier grenades. As I said, thinking I'll need those.

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Another joiner, this time from a Disciples of Anu haven, Pauline El-Haddad also started with a much different build compared to now. Whereas she was a pure Berserker with a Tentacle torso mutation, I figured the team needed some support in a different area.

Cross-training her as a Priest, I figured the team could use some assistance with how willpower-intensive their styles were, so I outfitted her with a Synod head mutation, which comes with the Radiant Hope aura that restores two Willpower Points to everyone inside it every round. In addition to the obvious Gorgon Eye PDW for defense (and Biochemist for Virus damage, which synergizes with her Priest abilities), she has the Priest standard stuff, most prominently Mind Control and Induce Panic. The latter especially has proven extremely useful on previous missions, giving me a crucial long-range safety valve to neutralize any given enemy for a turn. Aside from plenty of reloads for the PDW, she's packing a Subjugator virus sniper rifle, some medkits, and...another Purifier grenade. I think I'll be needing some of those.

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Normally, this would be where I showcase the vehicle they roll with, but given this mission, I wanted three extra soldiers more than a vehicle. To that end, I brought on a trio of fixers from a different squad. First off is the table-setter, Louise Brahim. Packing a Scorpion sniper rifle, Piranha piercing assault rifle, and Enforcer piercing PDW, she does good damage over various ranges.

Her main draw here, however, lies (as it often does) in the Priest's access to unique abilities. In this case, her Judgement head mutation gives her a massive boost to Willpower and gives her access to the Instill Frenzy skill, which bestows the Frenzy buff on all allies within twenty spaces of her upon use. Not only does it give those allies immunity to Panic as long as it lasts, it ups their movement speed by a whopping 50%. While it doesn't affect the user, as a Sniper/Priest, she's well-equipped to compensate with range, and her Agile leg mutation means she's not exactly slow either.

So why is Instill Frenzy so important? Well...

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Say hello to the first of my hammers, Micaela Jammeh. This saultry binch was one of my earliest recruits, and she is a classic example of the infamous Terminator build. By exploiting the synergy between the Assault class's Rapid Clearance, the Berserker class's Adrenaline Rush, the Strongman personal skill which grants proficiency with - among other things - a fully-loaded New Jericho Deceptor machine gun, plenty of mobility, and an Armored head mutation to soak up the next-round Daze she'd otherwise get, she is well-set to run all around the map clearing it in one massive kill chain.

This can stall out against groups of tougher enemies that take more than one burst to bring down, but this isn't a character action game, so that's fine. Aside from a full brace of reloads, I also gave her a Shard Gun juuust in case she runs out. Shard Gun isn't exactly bad for damage output either.

Neither is...

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...one of our Ms. Brown's earliest compatriots, Omar Ashour. Similar yet distinct from Ms. Jammeh, Mr. Ashour here is an ideal example of what I call the Jedi build. See, Rapid Clearance is, overall, the most broken skill in the game if you can cheat the Action Point cost of whatever massively-damaging weapon you're using. The Terminator does so with Adrenaline Rush, which is Willpower-intensive, but works great anyway. The Jedi build, meantime, does it with a Vengeance bionic torso, which reduces melee attacks' Action Point cost by 1. This, in turn, synergizes with the Scyther, another Legacy of Ancients special and everyone's favorite Pokemon, I'm told.

The only two-handed melee weapon in the game, the Scyther is outlandishly powerful. Already, it's got the highest single-hit damage in the game (300, though the Deceptor can manage 420 on an armorless opponent if all shots hit), and on top of that, it shreds 30 armor and it doesn't strike just a single enemy, but rather attacks in a short-range cone. This not only allows for a bit of fudging for barely-insufficient mobility, it also allows multiple kills with a single attack. Combine this with the Close Quarters Specialist's 20% damage bonus to melee weapons and the Heavy class's Brawler skill adding 50%, and you've got a brutally-effective weapon that can put the fear of it into anything from Scyllas on down. Its only real weakness is the on-death explosions from Venomous and Acid Myrmidons, but Self-Defense Specialist plus a Gorgon Eye PDW means he has some recourse for distance work.

To round out his kit, I included a Legacy of Ancients Rebuke grenade launcher, some reloads for the Gorgon Eye, and a Neurazer paralyzer.

Okay, so that's all settled. Let's go birth a god.

My aircraft of choice for this outing, as shown in the screenshot above and implied by the size of my squad, is the Devilfish, a Masked Manticore and the very same aircraft that I deployed to take down the Pandoran Behemoth on both playthroughs. My squad deployed as usual and rendezvous'd with our special guest.

That's right, the Exalted herself is key to the plan, and necessity means she's not gonna Galadriel this from the shadows. Best part is, she's definitely not dead weight either.

While she lacks direct offensive capability other than Mind Crush, she's basically a dream support. Not only is she Lady Dimitrescu-sized with tentacles, she has a laundry list of Priest skills, some juiced up, like Mind Controlled (the extra "led" stands for Limitations Easily Destroyed, I guess) costing no Action Points. She's not a bad tank either.

With our team assembled, we took to the first corner, stacked up there, and then the squad Frenzied up (unfortunately, large entities like vehicles, Mutogs, and the Exalted do not gain benefits from Frenzy either) and I sent Omar out to get eyes on what we had waiting for us at the gate.

Well, then! There's our welcoming party. Six Arthrons, two Tritons, two Chirons, a Siren, an Acheron, and a Scylla. Notably, two of those Arthrons have the reason I'm bringing Purifier grenades, namely the Tar Shadow ability. Quick refresher, the ability means that if they die by almost anything (notable exception: fire, hence the grenades), an Arthron Umbra will rise from their corpse and get at least one turn of crab-hammering in before we even get to attack it outside of overwatch shots.

Interestingly, last time replaced the Acheron with an extra Chiron and added a Scylla, so maybe I lucked out, or maybe they adjusted the distribution. Either way, they're certainly baring their teeth at us, so how is this going to go?

Yeah. Jedi build is not to be fucked with. All that damage except for anything aimed at the Scylla and some good shots at the Acheron was all thanks to Mr. Ashour's deft scythe-play. He could have probably taken everything out except the Scylla (starting where I put him, I think getting to the Acheron would have been tricky if he had gone for the bottom two Arthrons instead, though) but due to Tar Shadow and those other two Arthrons panicking, I did what work I could with the rest of my team.

Asia Howard leaped up to one of the high ledges to throw out one of her turrets, which put some work in on softening the Scylla up. Milas Johnston did some work on the Acheron, everyone else aimed at the Scylla with whatever they had on hand, and the Scylla's willpower was low enough thanks to Omar's incredibly-demoralizing rampage that the Exalted could force it to Panic as well. That meant a free round where I could finish everyone off.

First order of business, those Tar Shadow Arthrons. They had fled the fire and holed up behind the Chiron corpses, so I threw down a second grenade and popped them with just enough damage to ensure they die in a fire next turn. The other two Arthrons were pretty easy. They just fled behind the pillars where my folks were ready to take them apart. As for the Scylla...

Cake.

That was just the opener, though. Beyond the gate were two Sirens, two Chirons - and unlike the two at the gate, these were explosive mortar types - and our main target: the Yuggothian Receptacle.

Nothing changed from last time. Still a damage sponge, still a ticking clock thanks to Mark of the Void. We had to run the gauntlet and then play whack-a-mole, trying to shoot it from whichever of those shields fails to come up. All the while, reinforcements would be periodically coming up from the pits scattered around. There'll be lots of camping, but it's not a picnic.

This is getting a bit long and I'm running out of attachments for this post, so I'll split this into two parts. Part 2 is here.

[ryqoshay]

How did u think of the username ryqoshay?

The tl;dr version is that I was tired of Ricochet typically being taken in the games I was playing years ago and decided to rework it into something a bit more unique. And she grew into something more.

The full story will be under the cut as my trips down nostalgia lane tend to run long.

Ricochet started off as a character I created for a story I was writing years ago based on games I played as a child. The games were not electronic, rather based around physical toys and the characters and events were made up on the spot by my friend and I.

While our games generally focused on battles and conflict between two established groups, the story I decided to write focused more on the characters of the protagonist group and their interactions. Worth mentioning here that the focus group was a crew of mercenaries as it will come into play later. I realized that the current cast was comprised mainly of front line fighters and wanted to flesh out the team with some back line and support members; medical, recon, intel, etc.

Enter Ricochet. I liked the idea of taking a stereotypical stoic and battle-hardened sniper character and turning it on its head by making a hyperactive, adorable little girl. A character whose slightly warped idea of cute included heavy weaponry and thus treated her gun like a teddy bear, even going so far as bringing it to bed with her.

The name itself had a dual meaning as it referred both to how she was always “bouncing off the walls” and an intentionally ironic reference to a typically undesirable outcome for a sniper. Her given name at the time was Rebecca; Becky is fine, but don’t call her Becca or Reba.

I don’t recall if I addressed her parents in this iteration, but Rico entered the team under the care of Tackleberry. Yes, that Tackleberry; he was my friend’s favorite character from Police Academy, though I believe what I’ve turned him into maintains only the name and obsession with weapons. I already had him as the former legal guardian of another character, so I figured giving him someone new to oversee would be fine.

Then I stopped writing that story. And it remains on indefinite hiatus to this day.

City of Heroes was released and a friend convinced me to join. I was drawing a blank in character development when I stumbled across the Assault Rifle/Devices build and Rico jumped up out of my memories. The name Ricochet was taken so I tacked on -chan to the end as I was quite addicted to anime by this point in my life. This also gave me the excuse to weeb out and insert random Japanese words into her speech patterns as her linage was now half Japanese and half U.S. born Caucasian.

I designed a diminutive, blonde girl sporting high twintails and a dark purple flak jacket  outfit with black accents. Her short backstory described a her as having two heroes for parents and wanting to live up to her family legacy. And as said parents were still around, Tack dropped out of the picture.

I liked Rico so much I started translating her over to other games as well as using her name in my overall online presence, as small as it was then. Ricochet itself was pretty much always taken, so I often had to modify the name in some way, be it by adding -chan or shortening it to Rico or whatever.

Then came the game changer; City of Villains. It came as no surprise that Ricochet was taken, but I was getting tired of using -chan and my other methods, so I decided to create something new. This would be the first time I used Ryqoshay, an intentional misspelling of Ricochet for a character.

Since CoV allowed a short backstory like its predecessor, I knew I had to come up with an in-universe reason for the name change; I also still fancied myself a writer, even though I hadn’t really written much in a while. I figured a villain might do well with a more tragic backstory than a hero, so I offed her parents. The character limit didn’t allow for specifics on the where, when, why and how, but I made sure to mention that she took the first letter of their names - Yuri and Quentin - to rename herself Ryqoshay.

It was at this point, Ryqo also finally received a family name, Bouteillevoix, and with it, a change in linage to half Japanese and half French. I don’t recall the specifics of how I settled on Bouteillevoix iteself, but I do remember liking the dissonance of an outspoken character bearing a name meaning “bottle voice” as if it were to be contained in some way.

For her aestetic design, I swapped out the black for white in her outfit to use the Dark Is Not Evil and Light Is Not Good tropes; dark purple remained, however. This also meant her hair went from blonde to black. And her twintails went from high to low in an attempt to appear a bit more mature, though she maintained her high energy personality.

Also, while not mentioned in her in-game bio, Tack was able to reenter the picture as a Commando, the highest level Summon of Ryqo’s Mastermind power set.

While I wasn’t actively writing stories about her, I was certainly fleshing her out as a character with notes and whatnot. Quentin and Yuri also got some attention as I ended up designing alternate dimension versions of them for me to play. And as the alt-oholic I am in MMORPGs, I also came up with some alternate dimension versions of Ryqo herself; Ryqoshot, a lonewolf gunslinger using the Corrupter’s Assault Rifle power set and Ryqoaraignée, an Arachnos Crab Spider build who was more closely aligned with Arachnos than her other versions.

With all of the alts I was creating, I decided to use the game’s guild mechanics to pass stuff among them. Thus, Ryqo’s Roughnecks was born, named after Rico’s Roughnecks of Starship Troopers fame. Joining members included L4t3ncy_0, a mechanical Mastermind; Recipere, -  Rx for short - a thug Mastermind who kept her crew alive with healing powers; Yozakura, a ninja Stalker serving as Ryqo’s bodyguard and Vivian Sexon, a dual-wielding Brute and villainous translation of a dual-wielding Scrapper from my CoH days.

Not long after, a friend invited me to join a game of D&D. The team needed a door kicker so I brought in Vivian as a brutish barbarian with a split personality, Sanguine, taking control when she raged. My intended two paragraph introduction quickly turned into two pages, which eventually turned into twenty and started translating over other Roughnecks; Ryqo included.

Ryqo dropped her sniper rifles in favor of a more theme appropriate bow and arrow. L4t3ncy_0′s call sign was changed to Nullsiver Luna and she became an artificer who struggled against the world’s tech limits. Recipere, not surprisingly, took on the role of a cleric. Yozakura kept her ninja trappings, but started playing by the Bodyguard Crush trope as I was deep into yuri shipping at that point thanks to the likes of Lucky Star and others.

Even after the game stalled out, I continued to work with the DM to build their world in which all of their games took place. The Roughnecks gained a permanent place in the timeline, extending both before and after Ryqo’s time as their leader, as well as a permanent base of operations, which eventually grows into a full fledged township later at the behest of Ryqo (spoilers should I ever get around to posting these stories.)

My online presence was growing and with it, Ryqo. She became my main when I returned to WoW, a Blood Elf Hunter running around with a giant Devilsaur as a pet; yes, she would think it was cute. (She was changed to Human when I followed by guild to another server that needed more Alliance players.) My Demon Hunter main in Diablo 3 was named Ryqoshay, as a surprise to absolutely none of my friends at the time.

Aion was a strange exception insofar as I wasn’t fond of the Ranger class for my primarily solo playstyle. I still made said ranger and of course named her Ryqoshay, but my main in that game was a Chanter known as Ameliorator, a more fanciful version of MedKit, the character for whom Tack was a legal guardian in the story mentioned above. However, I still played out the Ryqo persona on the forums because I enjoyed it and I’d long forgotten Med/Ame’s personality from that old story.

When Love Live started to take over my life and I found Sukutomo, I went with Ryqoshay as my screen name for reasons I don’t fully recall. I started this tumblr account as a way to post some “Idolsona” stuff where I translated Ryqo into a LL style idol, along with Yoza, Luna and a newer Roughneck, Flash Pyre. And when I started writing my fics, it was easy to use the account I already had here and then keep the name when I went over to AO3.

Hindsight being 20/20, I probably should have chosen Nico as my primary icon, as her appearance is closer to Ryqo’s than Maki’s, even if she wears her twintails high like Rico instead of Ryqo’s low tails. Neither Nico nor Maki have grey eyes as I’ve given Ryqo, so that wouldn’t fit, but none of the LL characters do thus far. That said, Maki prefers purple more than Nico and Ryqo isn’t much a fan of pink, so maybe that played into things? Perhaps someday I will commission one of my favorite artists to draw Ryqo as I envision her and start using her as my avatar, someday… maybe.

Also worth mentioning that NicoMaki has had a heavy influence on how I envision Ryqo and Yoza, and vice versa. Heck I’ve directly translated some NicoMaki doujin into scenes for my D&D story and sprinkled some RyqoYoza stuff into HtHaN. With HtHaM being a more D&D’ish setting, I may very well steal some stuff from my D&D story for it. Perhaps Luna or Vivian might make an appearance? I’ve already referenced Ryqo when Maki remembers hearing stories of an 11 year old girl taking over a mercenary guild. As always, I shall follow where my µ’s muse leads.

In conclusion, while Maki - with Nico very close behind - may hold a position as my favorite fictional character not created by me, Ryqo easily tops that position as my favorite overall; yes, the fact that I created her absolutely factors into this bias. There are reasons I don’t bring her up often - beyond using her as a screen name, posting through her persona on a few forums and the Idolsona thing - not the least of which include a fear of her being labeled a self-insert or Mary Sue or whatever, as I’ve seen some decidedly distasteful reactions to such characters online. But there is also the fact that the bulk of her development has been within a world not designed by me, but by one of my DMs, and I would want to ensure they would be fine with me posting stuff about said world; I’m sure they would be fine, but I haven’t gotten around to asking. Perhaps someday, I might post more about Ryqo. Perhaps writing more of HtHaM will inspire me to take my D&D story off hiatus, dust it off and have a talk with my DM about posting it. In the meantime, I will continue to use her namesake for my online and in-game presence because she is a character I hold very dear.

If you’ve read this far, thank you for joining me in my journey through nostalgia. And I hope this sufficiently addresses Anon’s question.

[neongravesrp]

you are a...killjoy you range...25-35 you work as a(n)...utp you are mirrored after...richard harmon, lakeith stanfield, daniel sharman

retrieving file...MOTOR_BABY.exe

You were raised among the Renegade legacy. Their war was your birthright and you threw yourself into the gang, rising among the ranks. You were passionate, you were wild, you were reckless. Too many bad calls on a job left half your crew in Blackwell tower and the other half dead.    It wasn’t even put up to a vote. You and your name was tossed out onto the streets. Instead you sold your secrets to the Killjoys, biding your time for vengeance.

match found...

Clandestine (Rival): Because of them you had an express trip to Blackwell Tower. Charged with bringing weapons into the city. Now it’s a game of cat and mouse between you.

Medkit (Former Friend): They used to quietly sew up your wounds as you recounted your tales of glory. Soft smiles and disapproving looks. Now it’s a knife to the throat if you ever see them again. Crew obligation.

this skeleton is open

[comiconverse]

Game Review: Prey

Prey is a sci-fi “immersive sim” by Arkane Studios – and a spiritual successor to System Shock 2. Available on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One (PlayStation 4 version reviewed). Alan Stock bashes everything in sight with his wrench in case it’s a Mimic, whilst bringing you this review for ComiConverse.

Game Review: Prey

Prey is a game built on the back of giants. First, a gaming history lesson for anyone interested in the origins of this title (skip down a few paragraphs if you want to get to the actual review). To understand Prey’s influences and the long legacy which it builds on, we need to look at the “immersive sim”. These are games which focus on immersion, usually from a first person perspective. In this genre, open-ended gameplay allows you to tackle problems in various creative ways, with multiple ways to build your character. You can often make choices during the game which change the outcome of the story.

Welcome to Talos 1. Credit: Arkane Studios

It all began with Looking Glass Studios in the 1990’s – who pioneered the genre with the influential and critically acclaimed sci-fi horror System Shock and the dark fantasy Thief series. When Looking Glass reached the end of its life in 2000, many of its staff had moved on to other studios like Irrational Games and Ion Storm but continued to produce brilliant immersive sims inspired by those classics. Irrational Games made System Shock 2 – considered to be one of the best sci-fi games of all time, and years later they produced the Bioshock series, the spiritual sequels to System Shock 2 (under their new name of 2K Games).

Meanwhile came the defining cyberpunk title Deux Ex from Ion Storm, many of its developers having come from Looking Glass as well. Years later, Deus Ex got a successful series reboot by Eidos. Those early Looking Glass games were so influential that their presence is still found in many other games to this day too – and they are what Arkane Studios took their inspiration from with their Dishonored games and now, Prey. Arkane even has staff from those old companies. To me, it’s fascinating that one development studio almost 30 years ago created a genre – but even after its death, its staff continued the Looking Glass legacy in multiple new companies by using that gaming DNA.

The views of space are awesome from the station. A great touch is that as Talos 1 orbits the Earth, the sunlight dynamically moves through the rooms – changing the mood of each location with windows over time. Credit: Arkane Studios

For Prey, a sci-fi adventure game set on a failing space station overrun by hostile aliens, Arkane has openly said this is another spiritual successor to System Shock 2. Although Bioshock was the first game to take that crown, Prey is definitely the most System Shock game that we’ve had to date – and it’s not shy in acknowledging it. The 3D video technology used in Prey’s universe is even called “Looking Glass”. So, Prey takes its ideas and concept from the whole immersive sim backlog, as well as a host of other sci-fi horror games and movies. It has all the generic tropes you would expect from titles like Alien or Dead Space. But strangely, although Prey takes its brand name from an average 2006 sci-fi game, there’s almost nothing in common between the two – aside from shooting and a lone protagonist trying to survive an alien threat.

On paper, Prey reads like a checklist of sci-fi horror game cliches. Ill-advised secret research on corporate space station Talos 1 has ended in disaster. The aliens – known as the Typhon – have escaped confinement and killed most of the crew. You play as co-station boss Morgan Yu – but of course, an experiment has caused you to lose your recent memories. You fight or avoid the Typhon invaders using guns or abilities, both human and alien. You can customise your character and weapons as you wish using skill trees and upgrades.

Credit: Arkane Studios

You scour the environment as you go, rummaging in cupboards and boxes for crucial supplies and ammo, which you then have to manage in your grid-based inventory. Dead crew are everywhere, you uncover their backstories and learn more about the station by reading their emails and picking up audio logs helpfully strewn around the environment. Predictably, many of these messages contain passwords and keycodes to locked doors and safes. You are free to wander Talos 1 as you see fit, and approach encounters and obstacles using the approach that you want. That might be using stealth, all-out combat, hacking, secret shortcuts, using the environment to your advantage or maybe a special ability to problem-solve in a creative way. The few survivors on board give you orders and requests by radio and you don’t really know which of them to trust. Pretty original, right?

Loot everything. Thankfully, some smart refinements of looting mechanics in Prey make it quick and easy to clear out areas, removing a lot of the looting tedium found in older sims like Bioshock. Credit: Arkane Studios.

Fortunately Prey does have some of its own ideas. The most memorable of these is probably the Mimic, a spider-like Typhon which can take the form of a normal inanimate object. It will hide itself as something innocent looking, like a box or a cup – and when you least expect it’ll  suddenly reveal itself and jump at your face. It’s an idea that’s been used before, RPG treasure chest monsters and popular Garry’s Mod creation “Prop Hunt” spring to mind – but Mimics aren’t just passive traps. If you shoot a Mimic but don’t kill it, it will scurry away and try to hide and transform again. If you’re quick, you can even see them morphing into objects. It’s a great idea that keeps you on edge when exploring and makes for some great and unscripted jump scares. When your character is weak in the early stages of the game Mimics induce real paranoia. Was that box there when you were last in this room? You’ll start bashing everything with your wrench and shooting suspicious chairs – just to be sure….

Ensnaring a Mimic with the Gloo Gun. Credit: Arkane Studios

Prey’s roster of weapons and abilities have their share of originality too. The Gloo Gun, which you find early on, allows you to slow and trap enemies with blobs of Gloo, allowing you to smash them at your leisure. Gloo can also be used to put out fires and even make makeshift pathways on walls, allowing you to climb to higher levels. As you progress through Talos 1, you gain access to Typhon abilities for yourself, with uses for both combat and puzzle solving. These include the Mimic’s ability to morph into an object, clumsily rolling past enemies disguised as a cleaning sign, for example – or you could use it to fit through small gaps. Then there’s the Lift Field, an ethereal column which pushes yourself or enemies into the air – which can be used with traps or maybe as a way to get to higher floors. Or the rather evil Phantom Genesis ability which summons an alien ally – by sacrificing a nearby human corpse.

Your brother Alex – is he a friend or a foe? Credit: Arkane Studios.

The ability skill tree is explained in the game’s lore, through technology called Neuromods. Just shove a massive needle into your eye (ouch) and they will imbue you with new skills. Neuromods are nicely tied into the storyline in a similar way to Bioshock’s ADAM. Acquire too many Typhon abilities and the station’s turrets will consider you alien – shooting at you on sight. It’s possible to do a “purity” run relying on human abilities alone, but the alien powers are too fun to pass up on. You quickly realise that Neuromods are a Very Good Thing and you want to find, or create as many as possible.

Just part of the large skill tree – you have to be selective about the path you want to take as Neuromods are in short supply. Credit: Arkane Studios

Which leads us to fabrication, another of Prey’s good ideas. Recycling machines around Talos 1 allow you to turn any junk or item that you pick up into their base components. This wonderful machine takes your unwanted nik naks and satisfyingly plops out cubes and spheres of matter in return, with compelling clinky-clunky sounds as they fall into the Recycler’s metal dispenser. You can then use this base matter to construct items at similar Fabricator machines. Once you find a Fabricator blueprint for an item, you can make that item as many times as you want at a Fabricator (if you have enough matter).

In gameplay terms, it’s a great solution to the genre’s problem of inventory junk and clutter. It allows you to reforge items you don’t need into something more useful, and as resources are usually low, difficult choices must be made. What’s more important to you right now – a medkit or shotgun ammo, or maybe risk it and just make a new Neuromod instead? Recycling also encourages you to scour the environment for items – for once you’re happy to pick up useless junk and banana peels, because you know you can turn it into sweet, sweet matter. There’s even an awesome weapon- the Recycler grenade – which blasts enemies, objects and you, if you’re not careful, into those wonderful little cubes and spheres.

At the start of the game you can choose the sex of your hero – Morgan Yu. It only affects the voice acting but it’s a nice touch to have. Credit: Arkane Studios.

Prey’s combat is a mixed bag. Although the weaponry feels meaty enough, many of the enemies aren’t particularly satisfying to fight. Most Typhon are made up of the wispy black alien smoke you see on the game’s cover and have the ability to teleport around, moving and attacking very quickly once alerted. This makes most combat frantic and enemies cause a lot of damage too. There’s little time for tactics and plans go out the window once shots are fired due to the combat’s pace and your low survivability – although fortunately the item/weapon wheel does pause time – allowing you to switch to an appropriate tool for the job.

The horrors of the Neuromod. Thankfully you only have to watch the eye-stabbing animation the first time you use it, with future uses being instantaneous. I hate to picture the reality though, of my Morgan stabbing himself in the eye about 50 times with Neuromods during my playthrough. Small mercies. Credit: Arkane Studios.

There are various types of enemy in Prey that do require different tactics and are fun to fight. But combat against the Phantoms and Mimics which you’ll encounter most the often just devolves into fast and chaotic battles. This goes against the more deliberate approach that the rest of the game tries to achieve – and their rapid movement makes the use of terrain and cover pretty meaningless. Still, getting the drop on unaware enemies is fun, and the game makes good use of combos similar to Dishonored, where one item or weapon followed up by another can bring creative destructive results. It’s just a shame that most of the amorphous black blobs that are the Typhon lack any kind of character. Aside from the Mimics they are mostly unmemorable – there’s nothing like the iconic Big Daddies of Bioshock or the creepy mutants of System Shock here.

Scanning the Typhon lets you unlock lore, tactical information and new abilities – providing a good incentive to stay stealthy or at least survive whilst your scan completes. Credit: Arkane Studios.

Although initially Prey comes across as a sci-fi horror title, the fear factor soon fades once you have discovered each of the different enemy types. There aren’t any that manage to disturb or unsettle once the initial encounters have been had. Although Prey does have a few creepy moments and the Mimics provide good jump scares, this isn’t a scary game overall. But the game doesn’t need scares to succeed – the atmosphere on Talos 1 is still excellent, just in more of a mysterious sci-fi vibe than a horror one. To be honest, I found it refreshing for once to enjoy wandering an abandoned space station populated by monsters without being terrified half the time.

Ah, the joys of Mimicking a coffee cup. Some objects like big boxes are awful to move around as – too many flat sides. Cups though, they can roll, baby! Credit: Arkane Studios.

It’s in Talos 1 that Prey’s biggest strength lies. The huge station is a thing of glory, with wonderful architectural design – a far cry from the generic sci-fi interiors we’ve come to expect from these games. Staff common areas look more like a luxurious hotel than a space station, but more familiar industrial sections like the Reactor and Hardware still have their own distinct look and feel. But cosmetics aside, it’s navigating and exploring Talos 1 that provides the real draw here. The station is massive and the open structure of the game allows you to explore much of it at your own leisure – with the main story and side quests providing direction when you need it. Although many sections are locked off initially, as you progress you will frequently be revisiting areas and unlocking new ones. Once you get the ability to go outside the station into space and explore the exterior in zero-g – the scale is awesome. Brilliantly you can see the various sections of the station you’ve been to from the outside and jump into airlocks you’ve unlocked from the inside, as a form of quickly getting around. Talos 1 feels more real and cohesive than any sci-fi setting in a game yet.

It’s awesome to fly around in Zero-G outside the station and it’s easy to control. Other sections have Zero-G too but it’s a shame there aren’t more gameplay and puzzle implications. Credit: Arkane Studios.

The environment design rewards thorough exploration with countless shortcuts and secrets to discover. Many of these have multiple avenues of access by using your items and abilities cleverly. Unfortunately, new enemies regularly appear when revisiting areas, and long load times between station segments (at least on console) makes getting around a bit of a drag towards the end of the game – when the story and side quests have you constantly running from one end of the station to the other. The area and plot pacing with the large amount of backtracking could have used a little work.

Uncovering the stories of the inhabitants of Talos 1 through the many side objectives and the emails and transcribes scattered through the station is a compelling reason to explore. The crew’s backstories, although short, paint snapshots of their life aboard. There’s lots of little sub-plots to discover – often told as much through the environment and nice details as the messages they leave behind. A nice feature is that you can hunt for staff via security terminals using their tracking bracelets to discover bodies and survivors, allowing you to find eventually find anyone you may have missed.

Another highly secure space station where everyone loves to send each other door codes via open emails. Credit: Arkane Studios.

The main storyline, although familiar to anyone who’s played the System Shock or Bioshock games, is still intriguing enough to enjoy – with plenty of mysteries and mistrust making you eager to uncover the truth. Prey begins with a great introduction – although anyone who’s played the demo will have already seen it. In true immersive sim fashion – there are a number of game endings based on the choices you make throughout, with a great finale not to miss after the credits have rolled. Fortunately, the story choices that you make don’t drastically affect the gameplay experience, so you won’t be missing out on any crucial content whatever you choose to do.

The hacking mini game is actually quite tough sometimes, and is decent as far as these go if you can accept that guiding a blob through a maze is a fair approximation of a hacker’s skills. Credit: Arkane Studios.

Prey won’t be for everyone – immersive sims just aren’t some people’s cup of tea. But for anyone who likes this kind of game, who likes adventure, who likes sci-fi, it’s a real winner. Prey is very polished and although yes, it borrows many concepts and tropes that we’ve seen before, it also refines and improves upon them, whilst adding its own innovations. There’s a significant amount of depth here and the difficulty’s a welcome challenge too – forcing you to think tactically and scavenge for resources (I recommend playing on Hard or higher). The game’s not perfect – the combat is a bit messy, the later stages of the game could have used more depth and less backtracking, and there are some technical issues. But, as an immersive sci-fi experience and a worthy homage to System Shock 2 – it’s fantastic. We’ve mostly seen it all before, but Arkane has just executed it so well. Talos 1 is an amazing setting that you’ll want to explore every inch of, to discover its secrets and the fates of the inhabitants. Long live the immersive sim.

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