Last year's Prey was a creepy shooter and role-playing game set on a spaceship riddled with black, shimmering aliens. The so-called'immersive sim' was praised for its science fiction story, which let you shape the main character and the fate of the hostile research station. The gameplay, though, was seen by many as a retread of BioShock, System Shock and other genre classics. Despite its wild Neuromod abilities, which let you become an expert hacker, fighter or shape-shifting alien, the rebooted Prey failed to catch the public's attention. The title is far from finished, though.

Talos I is a beautiful nightmare. The privately-owned research facility, suspended in space above the Earth, offers a captivating blend of science and art-deco design. Its offices are filled with tall, geometric art prints, red leather sofas and mahogany desks laced with gold. The station's lobby, large and extravagant, features two winged-lion statues carved from bronze and a huge set of windows overlooking the Moon. It's gorgeous, but there's a problem -- the vessel is overrun with black, wispy aliens that can hide in everyday objects and kill you in a couple of seconds. Welcome to Prey, the latest video game from Arkane Studios.

An artificial intelligence informs them that aliens on board have transformed the crew into monstrosities. It's up to them to destroy the threat, using an arsenal of conventional weapons and psychic powers. But a seemingly simple quest sends the protagonist trekking across the entire facility, caught between conflicting ideological agendas. This setup may sound familiar to players of 1999 survival horror System Shock 2, and you'll find echoes of it in a whole mini-genre of spiritual sequels, like BioShock and Dead Space. But few have followed the formula as closely as Prey, a new game from Dishonored studio Arkane. Some of Arkane's founding members worked at System Shock 2 studio Looking Glass, and the studio hasn't been shy about its intention to re-create the qualities that made the games and its studio great.