Prey: Mooncrash

2025-12-08
Mooncrash’s roguelite nature is its biggest draw and its biggest problem. It’s incredible that Arkane was able to create another space similar to Talos I that you can slowly unpick and discover. And it's heightened by the fact that it's split across multiple characters across multiple runs. Each run is a chance to discover more of the map, and repeated runs burn in your mind the geometry and secrets of each space so that you can leverage them on future runs. In addition, the asymmetric nature of the character’s abilities means to progress at all you need to figure out how to leapfrog characters so an engineer repairs a door first on run-one so a hacker can get into the computer behind it on run-two. And by virtue of this you get a chance to experiment with a ton of different powers. For myself I had never touched Typhon abilities in my first run of Prey proper so it was incredible to try out playing a mage spewing psychic fuckery.

And for the first 10 or so hours of Mooncrash, the process of doing runs, eking out progress, discovering more of the Transtar Moonbase, I entered a familiar rhythm from the Prey. Explore every nook and cranny, read every email, kill everything, hoard everything, and eventually smelt it all down in Neuromods to apotheosize each character into The Typhon Slayer. Only, resetting these things run after run made this process become incredibly repetitive. Sure, Neuromods persist so your characters do generally get stronger and stronger. But in every loop I’d still need to kill a ton of Typhon just to be able to move through the map. So every single loop would start with a two hour full map clear.

Could I have played differently? Smarter, more efficient, less uh strip-miner-y? Sure but, fuck, that’s the whole thing I adored about Prey. Strip mining Talos I is still one of my favorite gaming experiences. And the Moonbase has all the requisite gubbins to make that experience fun all over again. But it’s broken up with just enough repetition to make it drag. By the end, once I knew what I needed to do to finish the game but still have several loops in front of me, this whole process felt like work.

I had a good time but it overstayed its welcome. I honestly would have just preferred none of the roguelite stuff. Just have me play as these characters and complete their objectives with no time pressure. Because I actually like the lore. But with a clock running you can't even read emails. And really that’s why I play video games: to read some fuckin’ emails.