Something to hold you over

Meet Tommy, the most stereotypical and borderline offensive video game character since Mario. He's a Cherokee who lives on a reservation, hates the old ways of his ancestors and spends his day at a bar playing video poker.\nBut one night his routine of getting hammered and blowing his paycheck gets interrupted when aliens abduct him, his girlfriend and apparently half of Texas.\nThis puts Tommy on a course save the world and rediscover his heritage while kicking approximately 32 different kinds of alien ass (at least I think these things have asses).\nThe storyline is a little stereotypical too, but so few games do anything with Native American mythology that it's pretty refreshing here, and leads to some fun new gameplay mechanics like walking around out of body and returning to life right away by traveling to the land of the dead and shooting a few spirits to regain health.\n"Prey" is based off of the jaw dropping "Doom 3" engine, so the graphics and lighting are about as realistic as you're going to find nowadays.\nFor better or worse that also the means the gameplay is restricted to the claustrophobic cheap thrills of "Doom" as well.\nBut "Prey" is much more than another "Doom" clone. This feels like a true evolution to the engine with rooms that demand you defy gravity by fighting on walls and ceilings, and portals that will send you all over the massive, organic alien ship.\nThe "Sphere" the game takes place in is a wonderfully confusing little drug trip of a place, filled with deranged and mutated humans, creative architecture, and the occasional acid-spitting alien vagina. Adding to this atmosphere is a moody soundtrack that takes a lot of its cues from the best parts of the old N64 Turok games, and spices things up with occasional clips from paranoid late night talk show host Art Bell conversing with callers about the UFOs spotted over Texas. Major kudos to 3D Realms for that little Easter Egg.\nThere's an online deathmatch mode here too that's pretty revolutionary… for 1999. The "Doom 3" engine just doesn't hold up in multiplayer nearly as well as other first person shooters out there. I felt like I was playing "Quake III" on Dreamcast, but "Prey" has been in and out development hell since 1998, so it's somewhat understandable.\nIn fact, considering its long development time, "Prey" turned out a unique and reasonably long first person shooting experience that should tide over 360 owners until the real big guns hit the system this fall.