Brief Hands-On Report--Aspyr Media posted Demo of Prey

Prey is the latest first person shooter (FPS) for the Mac from Aspyr Media. It won a Macworld 2007 Best of Show Award as we noted in our Macworld report. Prey is officially shipping for $49.99 according to an Aspyr press release but Amazon.com shows an estimated ship date of 1/24-30/07 ($44.99 from Amazon.com).

Aspyr posted a demo that is available for download via MacUpdate.com (465MB) to try out. Here is the story line:

Tommy is a Cherokee garage mechanic, refuting his heritage and undecided about his next step in life. His world comes to a halt when an extraterrestrial crisis forces him to awaken spiritual powers from his long-forgotten birthright. Abducted with his people to a menacing mothership orbiting Earth, he sets out to save himself, his girlfriend, and eventually, the entire planet.

We played the game for some time Thursday morning at Macworld with little pressure from the small crowd. It's graphics are outstanding and the actions are fairly complex for a FPS. We liked it so much that we downloaded the demo. According to Aspyr,

This demo contains the first five levels of the first mission of the single player campaign and two multiplayer levels.

We played the first three single-player levels with no problem. The graphics are great but there is little action through the first part of the fourth level where, so far, we haven't been able to find a way forward.

The two levels of multi-player (Multiprey) action are reminiscent of the rooms in Quake 4 with one major difference. In Prey, one can run up the walls and on the ceilings for a truly 3D experience. [Bill Fox]