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After nearly 12 years, the highly anticipated first-person-shooter game Prey will finally hit stores next week, and Prey's developer, Human Head Studios, gave SCI FI Wire an exclusive preview of the full PC version of the game. Tommy, a Cherokee Indian, has to fight an alien race that is strip-mining the Earth of humans. The game is a corridor-crawler set in a living alien ship where the walls vomit body parts and a variety of baddies await around almost every turn. Timothy Gerritsen, president and chief executive of Human Head, gave SCI FI Wire the scoop on all things Prey, from the long and winding road of development to the game's unique environments and gameplay. "Honestly, Prey had been completely shelved back in 1998 by 3D Realms," Gerritsen said in an interview. "When 3D Realms gave the project to us, they really gave us the ability to start over from scratch. We ended up collaborating with 3DR closely on the story, and since we were already excited about making the story revolve around a Native American protagonist, we kept that element, but chose to make the story much more personal to the protagonist and set it in a very modern setting." There are a number of never-before-seen features in Prey, such as real-time portals and walking on walls and ceilings. Players can look and fire through the seamless portals without any lag and might get dizzy learning to walk on walls and ceilings. "Using portals well was a challenge," Gerritsen said. "You see the obvious portals in the demo, the big rings of fire, but there are also the subtle ones that you don't even know are there. Once our level designers did get a handle on how they worked and their limitations, they started to create some really amazing stuff." Another feature is the spirit-walk, which enables Tommy to literally leave his physical body and walk as a spirit to sneak up on enemies or to solve logic puzzles. There are plans for eight multiplayer levels that include Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch modes. Prey will be available July 11 for the PC and Xbox 360. |