“Prey” could have been just another sci-fi first-person shooter, joining rank-and-file games such as “Doom” and “Quake.”

Thankfully, however, “Prey” is a solid shooter and it’s innovative and different enough to make for a new kind of experience.

“Prey” is the story of Tommy, a reluctant member of the Cherokee tribe. He’s been trying to talk his girlfriend, Jen, into leaving the reservation with him, but neither she nor his grandfather thinks he should go.

Before he can do anything, aliens suck the reservation up into their gigantic spaceship. Tommy manages to get free and has to rescue Jen and the rest of the world. Of course, he doesn’t really want to, and he frequently lets you know that (what a whiner).

The story is decent. Nothing fantastic, and in reality the game barely gets into it. But that’s no big deal because it’s a first-person shooter. It’s all about the action.

And the action is great. There are a number of things that make “Prey” different from your typical FPS.

To start, Tommy gets some special Cherokee powers, such as spirit walk, that allows you to send his spirit ahead and through obstacles to open doors for his corporeal body.

He also can’t really die. Upon his death, you’re taken to a spirit world. You have a few seconds to shoot at creatures flying around to fill up Tommy’s energy bars as much as you can — red for life, blue for spirit walking — and then you’re back in Tommy’s body again, right where you left off.

This makes the game feel a little easy, but it also keeps the flow of the game from being disrupted by death. Starting again where you left off also avoids redoing the loooong loading screen at the beginning of each level.

The levels themselves are full of mechanics that shake up things. First, there are portals. Enemies appear out of nowhere through the portals, and you can use them to jump from one room to another.

More interesting are wall walking and gravity puzzles. Across the spaceship are paths that, when activated, allow you to walk up walls and across ceilings. It’s incredibly cool the first time you enter a room and an enemy starts shooting at you upside down from the ceiling, then you follow the wall path up and over and discover it was really you who was on the ceiling.

Similarly, the gravity puzzles change the direction of gravity in a room. By shooting at the switches, Tommy can shift from wall to wall to floor to ceiling. Some rooms require you to do this many times until you’re on the correct side to reach a portal or door.

A warning: All this perspective shifting can make a sensitive person nauseated.

These gimmicks would fail miserably if they were poorly implemented, but they are very well done, as are the controls. Everything looks and runs smoothly.

Toss in some cool organic guns (some with tentacles attached that move as you shoot), and you have one heck of a game.

Multiplayer is limited to deathmatch and team deathmatch, but it continues the fun, different aspects of the single-player game. For some reason, though, there’s no two-player split-screen mode, which makes me sad.

“Prey” is the most fun I’ve had with FPS in a long, long time. I see no reason why any fan of the genre shouldn’t pick it up immediately.

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For those who like to go old school, Microsoft recently announced it would release classic arcade games for Xbox 360’s Live Arcade on Wednesdays this summer.

It’s nice to have a schedule, because most Live Arcade releases just kind of appear randomly.

By the time you read this, “Frogger” and “Cloning Clyde” will have been released. In the future, you can look forward to “Galaga” (July 26), “Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting” (Aug. 2) and “Pac-Man” (Aug. 9).

I spent the week playing “Frogger,” and it’s just as frustrating as I remember.

The Live Arcade version is faithful to the original. It looks simple — getting the frog through traffic, across the river and home — but still requires patience and timing. One wrong move and SPLAT.

There are two versions: the original graphics and upgraded graphics. However, the upgraded ones didn’t look a lot better than the original, leaving me a tad disappointed.

You can play by yourself, with a second player or online against others.

In the end, though, there’s no real new additions to a game that’s as simple as it gets. I always feel that a good re-release of a classic game should include, in addition to the original, some kind of substantial upgrade. This “Frogger” doesn’t do that.

Still, it’s easy to, pardon the pun, hop in and out of, and it only costs $5. Fans of the classic shouldn’t be disappointed.

Reach Aimee Green at 473-7326 or Aimee.Green@lee.net.