Amazon Prime Day is still a couple weeks away, but from now until July 12 you can begin picking up some extra free gaming perks for those already subscribed to the service. First up is Prey, the excellent 2017 immersive sim that Arkane Austin made before shipping the troubled Game Pass exclusive, Redfall.
Prey is a first-person sci-fi shooter where you play as scientist Morgan Yu aboard the Talso 1 in an alternate future where JFK wasn’t assassinated. The space ship is actually a prisoner transport for an alien species called the Typhon that are being experimented on but, lo and behold, breakout and nearly wipeout the crew. Memory loss, moody exploration, and harrowing immersive sim environmental hijinks ensue.
Normally $30 on PC, you can currently get a DRM-free version at no extra cost if you’re already a paying Prime subscriber. In the days and weeks ahead, Amazon is teasing additional free games including Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Shovel Knight Showdown, and Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition. There’s also a bunch of online multiplayer game perks, like free battle pass levels in Overwatch 2 and free in-game stuff for Pokémon GO and Diablo IV.
But it’s an especially good time to go back and revisit Prey or try it for the first time if you missed out five years ago. The game didn’t sell that well, probably in part because of the name, but has held up over time. It’s also a great reminder of what Arkane Austin is capable of, or at least was before the development process for live service vampire shooter Redfall reportedly led 70 percent of the staff that made Prey to leave the studio.
“The worst version of Prey is the game its ending thinks it is, an action-y game with stealth elements about humanity and moral choices,” former Kotaku editor Riley MacLeod wrote in his original review. “The best version of Prey is the game that happens in between, one where you ignore its plot completely, take your time to explore every cranny, and hide in a tree to look at the stars.”
