It’s been a long time since I played the original Prey from Human Head Studios, but I still vividly remember so much of it thanks to how groundbreaking the gravity-defying, portal-hopping gameplay was at the time. There were so many mind-blowing moments as you followed protagonist Tommy Tawodi on the search for his girlfriend Jen through the gigantic and often very goopy interior of an alien space craft. The way the game played with the very concept of 3D space and even your sense of scale was epic to say the least, but how does this all transfer to VR? How does it feel to jump through portals and walk up walls when you’re fully immersed in the experience?
Well, that’s what I’m investigating in this week’s episode of VR Corner, as I finally take Prey’s flat screen to VR mod for a spin on the Quest 3. This standalone mod, which was created by a modder named Luboš who utilised some of Team Beef’s VR code for Doom3Quest has been available to download on Sidequest for over a year now. Handily, it includes a free demo of the first 90 minutes of the game with the download. This means you can try it out to see if your stomach can handle all the gravity flipping action, even if you don’t own the full game.
Featuring full VR controller aiming and roomscale, Prey VR runs fairly well as a standalone app on the Quest 3. As you’ll see in the video however, there are a few perfomance issues here and there. Whilst rare, lower framerates are sometimes noticable when looking through large portals that appear in big rooms and, for some reason, especially when Tommy is in spirit form during the spirit-walking tutorial. Other than that there’s a few minor graphical hiccups surrounding the portals themselves but it’s all forgiveable when you’re confronted by the majesty of the rest of the experience.
