50 Games like Prey on PC that you should try

Gordon Freeman became the most popular nameless and voiceless protagonist in gaming history. He is painted as the most famous scientist and a hero within the world of Half-Life, and for a good reason.

Time manipulation applied to objects rather than the whole world: you age a crate to dust or restore a collapsed staircase, and it is used cleverly in traversal and combat. A tight, short campaign. It borrows heavily and openly from BioShock and Half-Life 2, and the shooting itself is unremarkable once the time device stops surprising you.

The second game returns us to the city of Rapture, on the New Year’s Eve, but this time player takes control of Subject Delta, Big Daddy, that’s been separated from his little sister and has been forced to shoot himself 2 years before the events of the first game took place.

The 1996 shooter that made levels feel like places: working light switches, destructible scenery, shrink rays and jetpacks, with Duke's one-liners over the top of it all. It remains genuinely inventive level design. Note which release you are buying — this is the barebones Anthology version, and it lacks the controller support, extra episodes and multiplayer options the Megaton Edition carries at a similar price.

The reset that pulled the series back to survival horror: first-person, confined to a single decaying Louisiana estate, with scarce ammo and a family that hunts you through it. The Baker house section is among the best horror the series has produced. After you leave it the game becomes far more scripted and linear, and the boss design is the weakest part of the package.

Ricochet is a multiplayer Half-Life mod developed by Valve. Richochet is a deathmatch game that closely resembles platformers. The game field is made out of several floating platforms which the players can jump on by stepping on one of the arrows on the edge of the platform.

A first-person puzzle game structured like a metroidvania: a small sandbox where new tools retroactively open earlier areas, and almost every corner hides something. Puzzle design is genuinely clever. Combat is the weak part — enemies are simple damage sponges that interrupt the puzzling — and the art style is plain enough to look cheap.

The Legacy of Star Wars Dark Forces™ and Star Wars® Jedi Knight lives on in the intense first-person action of Jedi Outcast. As Kyle Katarn, agent of the New Republic, use your Lightsaber and the full power of the Force to combat a new evil plaguing the galaxy.

A conventional military shooter wearing Quake's skin: corridor combat with heavy weapons, at its best in the mid-game once the Strogg conversion sequence gives it a hook. Level design is repetitive metal hallways for long stretches, and the squadmates who accompany you do little beyond soaking damage and opening doors.

Its enemy AI is still the reference point twenty years on: soldiers flank, suppress and call out movements, so firefights unfold differently each time. Slow-motion makes that legible instead of trivial. The horror sections have not aged as well — the same office corridors repeat for hours, and the scares telegraph themselves long before they land.

An experimental game that tries to combine first-person shooters and tower defense genres. Players take control of the elite soldier Skye, who was sent to defend her hometown from a crowd of unknown alien-monsters.

Penguins Arena is a thrilling and innovative First Penguin Shooter with quick, hectic rounds and where the magic of reincarnation, combined with the supernatural ability to return to the game as a ghost, ensures that your character has every chance to change your tribe's fate, even in the afterlife.