The Prey demo's mimics are freaking everybody out - here's why (and how you can play too)

The Prey demo is out now (mostly, more on that later) and you can easily join in on the fun on Talos-1. By "fun" I mean becoming deathly afraid of any object that might suddenly turn into a freakish alien mimic. They're really messing people up.

The Mimic fear is real

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Otherwise, the reactions are encouraging

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Though not everybody is eager to explore more of Talos-1.

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How to get it

The Prey demo is available for download on the PlayStation Store and Xbox Store in Europe. It's free, you don't need to pre-order or anything. The PS4 version is taking a bit longer to arrive in North America, though Xbox should be fine.

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It's not on PC

Prey is coming to PC, but the demo isn't. Arkane Studios hasn't said why this is the case. If I had to guess, I'd say it has something to do with preventing pre-release spoilers - it's a lot easier to datamine a game on PC. It could also be that Prey's PC performance isn't satisfactory yet. Arkane Studios' last game, Dishonored 2, had that problem when it launched on PC.

You can play for more than an hour

Arkane Studios is calling it an "opening hour" demo, but that's just to give you a rough idea of how much of the game it includes. You can take as long as you want to finish, then go back and play around with the GLOO gun some more after that.

Even if it's just the first hour-ish of Prey, you can still get up to plenty of mischief. Read about 8 things you should really do in the Prey demo and make sure you don't miss them. And check out why we think Prey's already a frontrunner for game of the year 2017.

Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.