Prey

Availability: Windows (Steam Deck OK), Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5

I always felt Bethesda games had a touch of the immersive sim to them. While firmly open-world RPGs, the way that certain encounters always had that gentle level of unpredictability, particularly when you consider how unpredictable character builds can get, was something I enjoyed quite a bit. If you share that enthusiasm, why not check out 2017’s reboot of Prey?

Firmly an immersive sim, Prey is also an excellent space-based science-fiction game and story. It features your usual meditations on what happens when corporate-invested science goes maybe a few steps too far, but Prey imagines a different path for the space race, one in which humanity just kept at it, developing and producing more and more industrial solutions to our seemingly desperate need to get out there and explore.

And explore you will, as Prey’s Talos I space station offers both epic scale and plenty of starry vistas to gaze out on. Just be wary, as its meticulously rendered science labs play host to some of the biggest jump-scares this side of Dead Space. While Prey’s action is fast and brutal, the fantasy of space-age technology amped up to extreme degrees is almost always front and center.