Bethesda Studios Prey is as if Resident Evil, Silent Hill and Aliens had a threesome and gave birth to another video game. Survival horror, skill upgrades, crafting, suspense and free roam exploration pit you, Morgan Lu, against aliens who have taken over the Talos I space station.

In the brief demo you encounter the alien threat but the circumstances behind everything remain a mystery. In the onset you start off as a regular person- but that changes very quickly as the Talos I is taken over by aliens who can camouflage themselves by morphing into practically anything– I mean ANYTHING — so that pencil that you were just looking at? possible alien that can gut you.. that chair you just sat on? yup that can kill you too.. so again, I mean ANYTHING.

What sets this game apart is the character development. You have a skill tree that you can use to customize your abilities. The abilities allow you to do do various things like move faster, repair stuff, hack computers– and with this the ability to play a character that it tailored to your own play style. Hopefully you pick skills that allow you to confront the alien menace and maybe get some answers about what is going on.

The controls are solid and the game play is intense to say the least. There is now respite from the tension as you seem to just almost instinctively turn paranoid after the first few encounters. There are weapons, but they can only go so far. Limited resources force you to gather and recycle stuff for you to be able to use other objects.

Having played the demo, It seems prey would be a perfect fit for people who love creative play. There is no linear approach since the customization of the character changes the dynamics of the game drastically enough to feel like a different game depending on your acquired skills.

As expected from Bethesda games, the world is well designed. In interviews the developers said that they learned a lot from their recent title Dishonored 2 and from what we have seen so far the attention to detail has really paid off.

Let’s hope the full release is just as mind blowing as the demo!