Prey

I just finished playing through Doom 3 Prey, a heroic story about alien abduction and a Native American named Tommy who likes to say the f-word a lot. Visually speaking, it does look a lot like Doom, but that's to be expected as it uses the same engine. There are plenty of bloody metal grates and organic blobs to be found, not to mention some of the monster designs look ripped straight out of a John Carmack creation. The game is unique, however, due to its trippy use of gravity --- you'll frequently be walking on a wall or ceiling, and have to stop and think what way is up. It's disorienting, but it's really well-done. Gunplay is particularly satisfying when you're walking on the ceiling and your enemy falls straight up after you frag him. The guns are all awesome, which makes such a difference when the game is trying to convince you that you're on a space ship. For once, you have a starting weapon that isn't a piece of crap -- this alien rifle can do decent damage, ammo is plentiful, and it doubles as a sniper. Other weapons include a "leech" gun which can accept several types of ammo, and foreign, alien versions of standard FPS weapons: shotgun, rifle, grenade launcher, and rocket launcher. Prey's story of aliens harvesting humans for food and Tommy trying to rescue his annoying girlfriend isn't exactly Oscar-worthy, but it's paced well and adds to the atmosphere of the game.

The most unique part of Prey, however, is your ability to leave your body and walk around as a spirit. No, not like in Geist. Here, you can't posses anything, but you'll use it quite frequently to solve puzzles and find hidden crannies in the space station. The game re-uses the same puzzles over and over -- I lost count of how many times I walked through a force field as a spirit to press a switch on the other side to disable it. When you die in Prey, instead of re-spawning at a checkpoint, you leave your body and must shoot some bird-like creatures with your spirit arrow to regain life. Once you do that, you land right back where you were, with no consequence. This makes the game much easier than it should be. For example, some of the bigger enemies take a lot of firepower to bring down and do a fair deal of damage. With this life system, you can stand right in its face unloading your weapon as you get clawed to death, respawn with the enemy at half health and finish the deed. It takes the element of stress out of the game, though, which is usually a good thing. I had a really fun time playing through Prey without getting overly frustrated. After all, why should a game piss me off? Prey is solid; it has enough uniqueness to differentiate it from the sea of FPSs. My only qualms: the game is too short to be $60 (I probably beat the game in around six or seven hours), and the multiplayer mode is l a g ridden. By the way, the rest of the game is much better than the boring intro that happens to be the bit they used for the demo on the marketplace. And even though the human character models are blocky, flat jaggy messes, the rest of the game does look pretty damn good.

Tekken: Dark Resurrection

It's not often I buy PSP games; I'm not a fan of poorly ported PS2 games with horrible, crippling control schemes. I do, however, love Tekken very much. I am pleased to say that Tekken: Dark Resurrection is, in fact, the Messiah in UMD form. I have never seen so much content jam-packed into a portable game that looks and plays this well. 30+ characters, tons of costumes and stages, character customizations, the return of Tekken Bowling, beautiful CG endings, and more game modes than you can shake an Iron Fist at. Fights run at an incredibly smooth 60fps, and the game is gorgeous. Slight jaggies are my only (minor) visual complaint in an otherwise beautiful package.

At its core, Dark Resurrection is about as perfect as Tekken can get. I've been playing the series since its inception and it's at a point of complete refinement. The core gameplay from all Tekken games is virtually identical (let's just forget about Tekken 4), so if you weren't a fan of those games you won't like this one, either, but to be able to play such a deep, complex fighting game anywhere is really awesome. Sadly, I've come to the conclusion that I absolutely lost all Tekken-related skill that I may have had. I used to know a few characters very well, and now I've got the AI kicking my ass even on normal difficulty. Fortunately, this supports game sharing, so I can bring my PSP over to a friends house and play with one copy of the game -- this is very welcome and almost (but not quite) makes up for the lack of a true online mode (you can share ghost data and place on leader-boards, but not actually fight).

You may be wondering how Tekken holds up on the PSP controller and the answer is surprisingly well. The d-pad makes it a little awkward to hit diagonals, especially in succession, but I was doing Dragon punches in no time. Hitting O and square at the same time, though, proves to be more difficult as you have to change your entire position. Honestly, we've dealt with so much crap concerning terrible controls on PSP (mostly 3D games that require camera control, such as Splinter Cell) that this is a godsend. The controls are completely responsive, and while you may have some initial trouble performing certain moves, it's almost a non-issue. I can pick up my PSP and have a completely competent match of Tekken, and that's all that matters.

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