The other day, my colleagues Kirk and Riley were having a discussion about how miraculously well Prey runs on their gaming PCs. “Good optimisation?” I thought. “In a big-budget game with console versions? Obviously, I have to put this to the test.”
I travel a lot, so what I wanted to know wasn’t whether Prey would perform like butter in a sizzling pan on a beefy rig. Rather, I was wondering if it could achieve baseline functionality on my humble Microsoft Surface Pro 4, with its pithy 4GB of RAM and integrated Intel graphics card. Now, my Surface isn’t a horrible machine by any means, but it’s definitely not made to run brand new triple-A games. I wasn’t expecting much. And yet:
It works! It’s playable! I can make phantoms go boom!
Generally speaking, I tend to get 40 FPS in enclosed areas, 30 in most places, and 20-25 in large areas with enemies and complex lighting. There’s some occasional stuttering, but it hasn’t impacted my experience much so far.
Ideal? Hell no. Bearable? Totally.
Granted, Prey isn’t all that graphically complex of a game, something enabled by its stark, sterile art style. Still, I dig its look, and I’m all for more games I can play from hotel rooms and friends’ couches. Speaking of, protip: If there’s a mouse loose in your friend’s apartment, and it starts thumping around once every 30 minutes or so after 1AM, Prey becomes a thousand times scarier — especially if one of your greatest fears is a mouse shitting all over your clothes.
Here are my current graphics settings, if you want to give it a try on your own Surface (or roughly equivalent non-gaming PC):
Comments
5 responses to “Prey Runs Remarkably Well On My Wimpy Microsoft Surface Tablet”
‘I had a save issue. 4/10’ – IGN reviews
They don’t release the game so it can be reviewed and then the game is so fucking broken that it can’t be finished in a week.
They get the shitty review they deserve. If they’d sent him a copy two weeks ago and put an embargo on the review he could have finished it in his own time and they could have patched the issue at launch.
Ew… Would be great if people could see how much they don’t know before they commit themselves to an underdeveloped assumption.
Good response. Really interesting counter points.
the video reviewed is stupidly short and can be summed up by your comment but I read the review they had the PC version and frankly speaking it seems fair.
I mean we applied the same principle to ME:A recently. I mean if you asked me how Arkham Knight was on launch week I’ll give it a 1/10, if you ask me how it is now it would be either a 7 or 8.