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2017's kind-of-sort-of reboot of Prey saw the game pivot from its original idea of being a first-person shooter/bounty hunter title on a galactic scale to becoming a chilling first-person immersive sim - the sub-genre that its final developers, Arkane Studios, are well-known for. Though there were suspicions on whether this was the right move for Arkane and the game's publisher, Bethesda, the Prey (2) we got turned out to be an amazing game in its own right. Featuring a focus on story and personalised progression, everyone expected its eventual expansion pack, Mooncrash, to follow suit. Thing is, it didn't. Not quite.
Prey: Mooncrash was an entirely different experience. Telling the stories of five unique characters as they make a run for it from Prey's Moon Base, Mooncrash turned the core gameplay experience up on its head by being a roguelite-ish sort of game. While the reception was mostly middling, Mooncrash does offer a unique take on the high-profile immersive sim experience that we all know and love. This alone makes it worth your time.
Prey: Mooncrash's feature list is substantially different from that of Prey. Without going into storyline and plot-spoiling details, you get to pick from five different characters, each of which has a unique skillset and starting equipment. Your most pressing task afterward is to make a mad dash for one of the numerous ways in which you can escape from TranStar's Moon facility (mostly) unscathed. Presented as a simulation which you can restart as many times as you like, Mooncrash's map and your starting loadout are really the only things that stay the same across every run you make.
In true roguelite fashion, Prey: Mooncrash randomises virtually everything on its map. Weapons, tools, resources, and even enemy encounters are all generated at random each time you restart the simulation. While the plot is rather light compared to core Prey experience, the fact of the matter is that all five of the characters are inevitably intertwined, with one's actions greatly affecting the other characters' attempts to escape. In practice, how this works is that, if you pick up that shiny chrome shotgun in the cafeteria, it won't be there for your run with the second character. Had you left it there instead, it would've been available for future runs in that particular instance of simulation.
This is a marvelously simple idea at its core, but it goes without saying that gameplay execution is problematic at best from a developer's perspective. It's only through the unique set-up and gameplay features that Arkane was able to pull it off as well as they did. While Mooncrash doesn't quite celebrate the same notions as the original Prey does, it's great in a whole lot of different ways to compensate!
Whereas it wasn't that difficult to unlock everything you wanted in Prey and create a mishmash of a character build from that (which is great in its own right, don't get us wrong), Mooncrash practically forces you to work with what you've got, depending on your choice of character. Whereas Riley Yu will have the chance to use Typhon-like abilities and the unreasonably cool Psychoscope interface, Joan Winslow will instead focus on summoning turrets, repairing systems all over the TranStar facility and control them. For fans of traditional FPS gameplay, Vijay Bhatia will come equipped with both a shotgun and the Artax Propulsion System. Andrius Alekna, on the other hand, will display formidable Psi-abilities across the board. Finally, Claire Whitten is a bit of a wildcard in most regards. This sort of variety comes into play quite nicely, and each character makes it clear how you, too, should approach the problems at hand.
Better yet, Mooncrash proves that there's room for heavy randomisation even in the immersive sim arena, where very few games stray from the core experience that fans know and love. Hopefully, a developer will catch up on what Arkane were attempting to do with Mooncrash and come up with a fully random immersive sim. Hell, maybe even Arkane themselves do this. If nothing else, it's bound to make for an incredibly replayable game, and that's a fair accomplishment alone.
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