Is this a Shadow of the Colossus clone? A Breath of the Wild clone? Maybe even derivations of survival games would make it seem underwhelming in some case?
That question can simply be answered by saying maybe. Yes, maybe is the word. Prey or Praey For The Gods is a survival game that requires the player to simply arm and prepare before they take down mythical giants.
Am not a fan of people calling something a spiritual successor if they haven't created or worked on the original, to begin with. Praey is a heavy SotC inspired title that pits you against giant titans, and no you don't face them by swashbuckling.
What kept me going is the thick atmosphere and how hard the game tries to stay true to that. Even if this feels like am playing a high-def version of a 2013 release title. Mechanically, it feels kind of broken and obtuse at times, but it honestly felt like a game that was trying to be interesting in an artistic sense and when it comes to creating immersion.
I played this at Hard difficulty with Boost modifier, wanted the genuine survival experience and with the options given, I was set and ready to go. The game has been in early access for 6 years, the version I am playing is 1.0 release.
Praey has a story, but it's not the kind that has a narrator nor a guide to tell you its tale straightforward. You get hints and details to pick up ideas about what's going on. There are no characters that talk, so no dialogue, not even from the protagonist character.
All I had to do was follow the trail of breadcrumbs, read the guidance on the how-to-play, and then the rest followed. The game doesn't hold your hand but expects you to figure out the rest and I feel like that's where kind of the magic is. Playing as the no-named protagonist, you take her on a perilous journey, against all kinds of unknown inhabitants, to simply fulfill a prophecy...of sorts.
You're pit against the frozen tundras of some nordic-like island where mystical forces in play are absolutely brutal against outsiders, like human travelers landing on the island. You'll come across journals that tell of their struggles within the island before they meet their tragic faiths.
There are three important factors in this game: Survival, resource management, and problem-solving. Survival mechanics involve eating, getting sleep, and having warmth, that part because you're constantly with the freezing weather. Most of the time things are calm, that's before a blizzard comes by. So I had to make sure that her sleep, consumption, and body temperature are filled before she'll become exhausted and lose stamina easily, as well as freeze to death.
Scavenging for resources, crafting items, and using some of them to enhance gears too. As I've mentioned before that it derives from Zelda, so weapons durability is a thing, managing them was pretty fickle, and I had to scavenge for items to upgrade clothing that increase stats.
And finally problem-solving. Yeah, this game needs logical thinking for a number of things. Including finding these small totems that will increase either my Stamina or Health. Again being a Zelda thing. But this also factors into battling the giants, since you'll need to find their weak points and interact with them to shut them down. That also meant that I had to climb over these monstrosities.
This is a terrifying game to play, using the difficulty option to play leisurely is available. But the true experience I've received was playing it at hard difficulty. I had to watch my characters needs, surviving crazy blizzards, fighting against undead soldiers, and warding off wraiths with fire. You have to be good at managing resources and preparing yourself for the worse.
As the player, it was upto me to figure out how to survive here. I've died several times because of how brutal and unfair the world around it is. The atmosphere it sets up is thick because of the isolation. There's only one human character, which is her and the rest are corpses to loot, or undead to fight against. What remains of human civilization is overshadowed by the beings that live in this place.
There's no quick travel, so I had to use the grapple gun to reach locations much faster. This works at a certain distance, and it had durability, so I used it whenever I needed it. You have to watch your stamina as well while you climb mountains or large concrete towers.
Your character needs sleep, but you can't craft the bed, even the bedsheets you find are pretty limited. So there are caves scattered around the map with fire camps and bedsheets to use whenever. I had to take a good grasp of how limited everything is, including resources.
Praey For The Gods isn't a long game, well long as you want it to be. There are 8 giants to defeat and I kind of beat like 3 of them in 2 and half hours tops. But I did invest more time into the survival mechanism, which is what really drew me.
The biggest hurdle I've faced is that the controls are kind of bad. The animation is stiff, the character's movement isn't fluid nor is the control much responsive. There is a good kind of jank, that will get on your nerves if you aren't playing this game right. Which I did, especially around the giant fights. There's no option to even adjust dead-zones for analog controls, default is non-existent.
I really dig this game, I got past the crappy controls, so it wasn't that hard to find something to really enjoy. The mysticism, eerie and thick atmosphere, and very little hand-holding it does, makes it really intriguing.
I don't think a lot of people who played Zelda BOTW and Shadow of the Colossus will like this game better than those. It's lower than B tier, but it does the job right.