Besides having some really kick ass graphics, Prey is a game that is tough to digest at some point. The game is rated Mature because the language used by the characters is exactly the same sort of profanity that I would be spitting out if this experience happened to me. To this I will tell you that the aliens are not very nice to us humans, you will see some truly disturbing images while playing this title including seeing people being tortured to death and then turned into hamburger before your very eyes and in a really disturnbing scene a small child being killed by impalement.
Having two small children myself I was really horrified at this visual, but continued to play because I knew what the developers were doing. By showing us these horrible events taking place, this changes Tommy from a somewhat selfish guy who only wants to get his girlfriend and leave to an alien ass-kicking savior who knows that if he doesn’t do something about these damn aliens, nobody else is going to.
It’s these really shocking things that also show us that games are getting closer and closer to movies and how they can affect us emotionally. I personally couldn’t wait to start shooting the hell out of any alien that got in my way after seeing what happened to that little boy. And now we are breaking into a territory that most games couldn’t hope to get to, the emotional territory. But then you run into that school bus that was stolen and the children’s blood all over the place, ah hell.
But seriously, don’t have anyone who can’t handle the profanity and the gore in the room while playing. I was playing the other day with my 12 and 13 year old niece and nephew and asked them if they were OK, both said they were, and my niece even said that this game was cool. To be fair, at this point only some swear words were uttered and some aliens were shot full of holes. But when we saw the machine torturing humans, I knew it was time to turn the game off. I then learned the hard way that any and all children retain everything that you don’t want them to and will repeat such things to your wife while eating dinner, sh*t!
