Prey 2: The Game That Can’t Possibly Live Up To Its Trailer

Human Head’s Prey was a decent enough shooter with some cool gimmicks. It had portals that pre-dated Portal and gravity tricks that allowed you to walk up walls and might cause a room to play out three or four different ways depending on where the “floor” was. Sadly, it also had some pretty bland combat and an uninspired story, so when its multiplayer failed to catch on, it was forgotten just months after its release.

So now, with E3 2011 upon us, here’s a where-the-hell-did-this-come-from trailer for Prey 2, which has absolutely no hope of being as good as the trailer would suggest. Not that the trailer’s going to win any Oscars, but it’s pretty slick, and paints a picture of a game probably too good for anyone to make right now, let alone the studio that made Prey. Set in an alien world where you play some kind of sheriff/bounty hunter (props for using Johnny Cash’s cover of “Rusty Cage”), it seems doubtful that you’ll be engaging in action even half as exciting as this trailer suggests. Here’s the official trailer, via YouTube:

To be fair, there’s a kernel of a pretty interesting game idea here. Prey 2 is being billed as “open-world,” so if you can imagine STALKER set in a sprawling alien metropolis where you’re taking on various missions as part of some larger story arc, consider me interested. But in Prey 2 is anywhere near as good as this trailer contends it’ll be, I’ll eat the box it comes in.