Game Reviews

Prey Day: Survival review – "A routine survival sim that offers diminishing returns"

Star onStar onStar onStar offStar off
|
iOS
| Prey Day: Survival
Get
Prey Day: Survival review – "A routine survival sim that offers diminishing returns"
|
iOS
| Prey Day: Survival

If you'd have asked me 6 years ago if I thought we'd still be getting dozens upon dozens of zombie games in 2018, I probably would have replied with a resounding "no".

And while it's easy to decry market saturation in cases like this, zombies have now well and truly passed the point of being a flavour of the month. And so enters Prey Day: Survival, the latest in a long line of zombie-filled survival sims.

The basics

This time around, you'll be looting and shooting from an isometric perspective. The controls are mostly intuitive, and zipping around the game's myriad menus is a skill that can be picked up in no time.

With it being a survival sim, you can expect to spend a good deal of your time rummaging through bins, desperately hunting for someone's month-old leftovers.

It's also an MMO of sorts, with hub areas where players can run around, chat, and collect new quests. You'll also get access to a base of operations that can be upgraded and rebuilt into one's own personal fortress.

GAAAAINS!

As my character continued to level up, I began to wish that the plentiful zombie bashing was a little more involved. Swings lack a sense of weight and hits always result in the same little puff of blood – it's not exactly riveting stuff.

Gunplay fares a little better as, shockingly, zombies have a tendency to go down quicker when shot in the head.

Stealth, or rather the avoidance of zombies, is a valid tactic in most scenarios. Early on, I found the larger enemy variants would flat-out destroy me in head-to-head combat, so being sneaky was almost a necessity until I got better equipment.

Thankfully, the game is very clear about what you will and won't be able to tackle at your current level. That being said, actually getting to the point where you can take on those trickier encounters can often feel like too much of a grind.

This isn't helped by the fact that the environments lack character, and the plain zombie designs aren't likely to haunt anyone's dreams.

For those who want a rest from actually playing the game, you can go right ahead and hit the auto-play button. This feature is handy for quickly scouring the larger areas, and it all works well enough.

That is until your character decides to prioritise a passing deer, at which point they'll hunt the animal down with the intense drive of a particularly bloodthirsty Michael Myers.

Prey for a purpose

Outside of combat, most of your time will be spent mothering your character, making sure they've had a drink and carrying a healthy supply of bandages in case they scrape their knee or, you know, have it chewed off by a rabid zombie.

But the real challenge here is just figuring out what exactly you should be prioritizing.

After my house had a nice new set of walls, and I had learned how to build a baseball bat and some clothes, I did indeed feel a slight burst of accomplishment. However, that was soon lost to a sudden and pervasive sense of aimlessness.

Maybe it's a lack of imagination, but, after a while, I struggled to find a sufficient reason to keep playing as any narrative potential continued to remain untapped, and the threadbare combat certainly wasn't giving me any joy.

So perhaps this is a survival sim in the sense that it'll really make you feel the lack of purpose or drive that would surely come with being one of the few remaining residents of Earth.

Come for the zombie killing, stay for the friendship

After spending some time in the game's chat, I grew rather fond of seeing how much certain items were selling for – items that I could never afford.

One player tried his luck, demanding thousands for a piece of gear that clearly wasn't worth a fraction of that amount, and I figured he was in for a firm telling off.

However, much to my surprise, those who replied were doing so respectably and often in a way that was downright pleasant. 

The game's community in general looks to be pretty supportive and personable, offering frequent advice to newbies like myself.

It's for this reason that I'd be more inclined to recommend Prey Day if you're happy to buddy up with other players.

Ultimately, it might not be particularly novel, and those set on going it alone aren't in for a great time, but there's still enough decent stuff here to make it a passable effort overall.

Prey Day: Survival review – "A routine survival sim that offers diminishing returns"

Prey Day: Survival never quite presents its players with a sufficient reason to keep on keeping on, but that's not to say that it's incapable of offering up some moments of satisfaction
Score
Cameron Bald
Cameron Bald
Cameron started out as an intern here in late 2018, then went on to join us as our News Editor in July 2019. He brings with him an encyclopedic knowledge of decade-old GamesMaster review scores and plenty of stinking takes on games, movies, and proper pizza etiquette.