DLCwolf Prey: Mooncrash Review

The Mooncrash DLC for Prey is set on a lunar base, offering a new setting compared to the original game’s Talos I. However, despite this change of environment, the visuals, level design, human characters, objects, weapons, and abilities are practically identical, with only a few minor and ultimately insignificant additions — such as the GLOO bomb, a simple variant of the already familiar GLOO Gun. Even the core plot remains the same: you find yourself in a base that has already been attacked by aliens, and you never encounter any other living humans — only corpses (the true hallmark of Prey!). The only real novelty introduced by Mooncrash is its roguelike structure. Essentially, you are forced to play multiple sessions within the same map, using five different characters in rotation, each with their own specific set of abilities. However, these abilities aren’t truly unique — they merely represent a different subset, each time, of the skills usually unlockable with Neuromods, thereby reducing the actual gameplay variety. One of the most controversial mechanics is the progressive increase in difficulty over time. The longer you take, the more enemies appear — and they become increasingly stronger. This design choice led me to abandon the game altogether: I would have much preferred to approach the experience like a traditional exploration mission, with a final objective of escaping the alien-infested base. Instead, the game enforces a tight and repetitive rhythm, forcing the player to adapt to the current character’s limitations and, most of all, to revisit the same environments repeatedly, with the added frustration of facing ever-tougher waves of enemies until, inevitably, you're overwhelmed. Worse still, there’s no narrative justification for the increased enemy spawns (such as new alien dropships landing); instead, a visible timer simply expires, and new enemies instantly appear across the map. The core issue is that this roguelike structure relies entirely on Prey’s existing mechanics, without addressing its known flaws. The combat system isn’t particularly polished: the weapon selection is limited and poorly balanced, and during a standard run, you’ll rely almost exclusively on the shotgun — the only truly effective weapon — or, at best, the pistol. Enemy variety is also lacking, both in design and behavior. All these limitations, which were more tolerable in the base game thanks to the strong narrative and sense of freedom, become far more burdensome in a context that requires constant repetition and steadily increasing difficulty dictated by a countdown. For these reasons, my overall opinion of Mooncrash is clearly lower than that of the main game — by at least one full point. I repeat: if it had at least been possible to choose a more traditional gameplay mode, focused on exploration and achieving a coherent objective (like escaping the base), I might have appreciated this DLC as much as Prey. But in its current form, I feel compelled to warn anyone considering it: be aware that you’ll be repeating the same map multiple times, dying over and over again. And yes, it can become genuinely frustrating.