Last year, Bethesda ruffled many feathers by announcing that reviewers will no longer get early access to new games. So…<\/b>
\nLast year, Bethesda ruffled many feathers by announcing that reviewers will no longer get early access to new games. So with this week\u2019s release of Prey, the reboot of the tumultuous franchise of the same name, Bethesda can\u2019 t rely on pre-release reviews to help move copies. Their solution? Bring back the good ol\u2019 days of the pre-release demo!
If you\u2019 re curious about how well Prey looks and plays on consoles, you can see for yourself with the \u201cOpening Hour\u201d demo on both PS4 and Xbox One. We\u2019 ve spent some time with the demo running on the PS4, and found it to be entertaining if a bit hammy at times.
Dan Stapleton, writing on our sister site IGN, likes this solution so much that he calls it a \u201cmodel for the future of demos.\u201d That\u2019s high praise \u2014 especially when you consider the long history of hostility between developers and the press over this title.
While you\u2019 d expect a new game coming out of Arkane Studios to be running on either the id Tech engine or its derivative Void engine, Prey is developed on the CryEngine instead. And in spite of the checkered history with console performance on CryTek\u2019s platform, there\u2019s not much to complain about in terms of frame rate.
The Digital Foundry team analyzed footage from the demo on both consoles, and found that the game is optimized well to run at a solid 30fps. The PS4 sees only the tiniest dips around save points, and the Xbox One isn\u2019 t far behind. There\u2019s only a single problematic area in the demo that causes a noticeable drop on the Microsoft side.
While this demo doesn\u2019 t take advantage of the PS4 Pro \u2018s extra horsepower, it does look a bit better on Sony\u2019s hardware. The PS4 renders natively at 1080p, and the Xbox One is stuck at 900p. However, the PS4 suffers from some slight input lag, so some of us will prefer the Xbox One experience. However, the developer is aware of the issue, and it should be smoothed out in the full release.
The anti-aliasing solution on consoles is sub-par, and the visuals are far from cutting-edge, but Arkane Studios has effectively sold their product by letting regular people actually play the game for themselves. After playing the demo, it\u2019s easy to tell exactly what kind of game this is.
But regardless of the minor technical issues on the console releases, we have a much bigger bone to pick. If you\u2019 re a PC gamer, you simply don\u2019 t have access to the demo. That stands out as particularly worrisome because Arkane\u2019s last game, Dishonored 2, had significant issues on the PC. It\u2019s a different team on a different engine this time around, but you might want to hold off on your purchase until the reviews hit.<\/p>\n

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Similarity rank: 1.1<\/div>\n

Sentiment rank: 0.8<\/div>\n

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