So you’ve watched the Starfield Direct and are feeling super hyped for Starfield. And you’ve taken my advice to watch Prospect for some Starfield-style sci-fi movie vibes. Now you might be thinking what’s next? Easy: download Prey as it's currently free.
As a perk of Prime Gaming — Amazon’s gaming hub that awards people with Amazon Prime memberships with exclusive game discounts and in-game items, while offering a rotating selection of free games each month — Arkane Studio’s 2017 sci-fi immersive sim Prey is available to download and keep. You'll need a compatible gaming PC and you need to grab the free download before July 24.
Prey is both a reimagining of 2006’s Prey, and a form of spiritual successor to games like System Shock and Bioshock. There’s a Starfield link, too, in that Bethesda owns Arkane, which is also the studio behind the excellent Deathloop.
Taking place on a pseudo-retro sci-fi space station where future tech meets art deco design, Prey is a first-person game that’s all about using a variety of tools and abilities to navigate your way through the Talos I station and figure out why the heck it's packed with monsters that can mimic mundane real-world objects.
As this is an immersive sim — think Deus Ex Human Revolution and Dishonored as reference points — you can choose to be stealthy, go all guns blazing or use hacking and neural mods to manipulate the station’s systems and wreak havoc on enemies. You’ll also want to pay attention to your surroundings, as the Mimic enemies can jump out from all manner of places transforming from the likes of a normal-looking coffee mug into a tentacled monster.
When it launched in 2017, Prey earned generally positive reviews. But over time it’s evolved into a bit of a cult classic, helped by the Mooncrash expansion and a slow-burn appreciation for the setting and Prey’s systems.
Granted, Prey lacks the massive scope of Starfield, which is more about exploration than immersive sim elements. But there’s enough connective tissue here and sci-fi flavor to make Prey a game well worth trying out to tide you over until Starfield arrives on September 6.
If you aren’t an Amazon Prime member or don’t game on PCs, then you’re in luck as Prey is also available on Xbox Game Pass. That means if you have an Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S or Xbox One, you can give Prey a spin. And if it doesn’t suck you in, then there’s Mass Effect Legendary Edition on Game Pass as well.
