Gravity Games

I recently completed Prey, a six year old FPS from developer 3D Realms. The most noteworthy feature of the game is its interesting take on perspective. Perspective is vital in Prey, where most of the gameplay involves navigating an alien spaceship filled with expansive, twisting rooms and corridors. What appears simple at first is quickly complicated by the aliens’ gravity-altering technology. Some rooms are wrapped with “gravity belts” so Tommy can walk right up a wall and onto the ceiling. Other rooms contain gravity panels which, when activated, flip gravity around (kind of like turning the room on its side). All of these devices must be used in order to progress through the game.

I’ll admit to finding this rather disorienting at first, but it quickly became an enjoyable twist to the otherwise rote nature of most shooters. Some of the more elaborate spinning rooms kept a grin on my face as I shook my head and forged on, regardless of vertigo and a sense of uncertainty. Some of these rooms are so convoluted for the player that I cannot imagine the mind of the game designer himself.

Some high points include a puzzle that traps Tommy inside a massive cube which he must rotate using gravity panels until he can escape and the floating planetoid objects on which Tommy must land and circumnavigate to solve puzzles. It’s really satisfying to moonwalk around (literally) a tiny planet whose curvature you can actively experience (a la King Kai’s planet in Dragon Ball Z).

How the player solves this all comes down to a matter of perspective. Is the ceiling on which Tommy stands really a ceiling, or is it now a floor since he’s standing on it? What about that enemy Tommy’s shooting at, the one who appears to be standing on the wall - is he on the floor or is Tommy? Any time I encountered this situation in the game I thought of Ender Wiggin from Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card: “The direction of the enemy is always down.” When fighting in a zero-gravity environment or, indeed, a variable-gravity environment, it seems prudent to consider your target or your goal to be down. After all, it’s easier to go downhill than up.