You can play video games in proud solitude. But when you go through a story campaign with a friend, you get from this feeling a completely different character. Another thing is that cooperative games that you can go through together from beginning to end, in recent years, is getting less and less. Most often, developers offer us MMO-projects, which are played by thousands of users at the same time, and this is not quite what I had in mind when talking about the joint passage of the plot. Nevertheless, miracles happen. And I would very much like to tell you about one such miracle called A Way Out today.
Game: A Way Out
Platform: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows
Genre: Action, Adventure
Release date: March 23, 2018
Developer: Hazelight Studios
Publisher: Electronic Arts
I do not know about you, but I like movies like Escape from Shawshank, Prisoner of If's, The Law-abiding Citizen, Skala, and the TV show Escape. In other words, stories of carefully planned prisoner escapes from prisons. I think that in them I am attracted not by prison themes, but by how inventive and purposeful people can be cornered people. I would not like to associate myself with these characters. Still would! Who in their right mind wants to be in prison? But to play a video game, the action of which takes place in prison - why not?
Independent Swedish studio Hazelight Studios for all time of its existence managed to release only one game - Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Innovative cooperative gameplay, when two characters were controlled by one person, came to critics and gamers to taste. The head of the studio Yusef Fares realized that he had found a very promising mechanic and decided to develop it in his next game called A Way Out. The company EA was the publisher of the simulator of escape from prison. Producers liked the idea of the future game so much that they gave developers full creative freedom and even refused to share the profits from sales. The phenomenon for the gaming industry is incredibly rare.
The plot tells us about two characters who were imprisoned for various reasons. Vincent Moretti sat down for a murder he did not commit, and Leo Caruso was sent to prison during an unsuccessful robbery. After our heroes get acquainted, it turns out that in the correctional institution they were the fault of the same person - the criminal boss named Harvey. Heroes come to the only correct decision: to organize an escape from prison and take revenge on their offender. No sooner said than done. The player will have to go along with Vincent and Leo through the seven circles of hell before they can carry out their plans. Whether here only can?
The gameplay looks extremely unusual. You see on the screen at the same time both characters in split screen mode. Unlike the Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, you can control them all alone, so you will have to play along with your friend sitting on the same couch or on the Web. Surprisingly, EA allows you to play with a friend remotely, even if a copy of the game was purchased only by one of you. In other words, you start the purchased game, and the second player downloads to itself its demo version, after which it is possible to play together without any serious restrictions. Is that, the preservation of progress is stored only in the owner of the purchased version. But this is not such a problem, if you think hard.
Escape from prison is not an easy task, requiring the organizers to be fully organized and having a carefully verified plan. Completely simple at first glance, tasks, such as unscrewing the toilet wall mounted in the wall, turn into a fascinating quest. While you are working as a screwdriver, your friend should monitor the movement of warders along the corridors and warn them in advance of their dangerous proximity. If you suddenly need to get a wrench, you will have to show wonders of wit to distract the workers of the prison workshop, and then unnoticed to carry the instrument through a metal detector. Similar tasks for players arise with enviable constancy, and they have to be solved solely through joint efforts.
The game is constantly trying to please us with new and new mechanics. For example, if a hero needs to climb somewhere without a ladder, they have to stand with their backs to each other, grapple with their elbows and, pounding their feet against the walls, step by step to move upward. At some point you will have to hide in the laundry basket, which your partner will be driving past the guards. Do not think that the game is limited solely to prison blocks. No. After you still manage to escape, the heroes are waiting for new challenges. After all, they will start a real hunt. We will have to hide in the woods, get ourselves food, steal other people's houses to survive, and also to escape from the guards of the law.
A Way Out skillfully juggles game genres and unexpected plot twists, continually tossing you all the new mini-rides. Here you together with the comrade put out of action two policemen, after attacking them from behind, and after a second you shoot back from the cars that pursued you, while the comrade leads a hijacked pickup truck. Fights using QTE, mini-games in the style of Guitar Hero, but only with banjo and piano, cooperative fishing, car repair - all this and much more are very harmoniously intertwined in the plot and quite interestingly implemented by Swedish developers. You definitely will not have to miss.
Visually, the game does not have enough stars from the sky. Everything looks pretty good, but we can not say that the graphic component of A Way Out highlights it against the background of other modern projects. In places, the low detail of the environment is cast into the eye, and in some places you will note the insufficiently elaborated animation of the characters. On the other hand, the game with an enviable consistency will please you with spectacular camera angles, full of action scenes and beautifully delivered story clips. In general, to be distracted by graphic flaws you simply will not have time. So is this drawback so important to spoil your impression of the game? I do not think so.
To serious minuses of the project I would have attributed the built-in voice chat. Using it, my friend and I constantly faced many problems. Voices snapped, cracked, sounded like a barrel, and sometimes even completely disappeared for a while. I also do not know who is responsible for the quality of voice communication in the game, but my friend and I quickly decided to switch to the standard Voice chat of PlayStation called "Tusovka". In it, our voices sounded excellent, which solved the problem once and for all. Also in the game there are quite serious bugs. For example, at some point, it so happened that my friend and I simply could not move forward on the plot, so we had to start with the last save. Someone from the reviewers probably will carry a short duration of play to the minuses, but eight hours is very, very worthy, especially given the small budget of this indie project.
Pros:
- An interesting story, constantly encouraging unexpected turns.
- A variety of gameplay, not allowing you to get bored.
- You can go through the game with a friend, sitting on the same couch with him.
- Very competent and appropriate use of the split screen technology.
- You can play together using just one copy of the game.
- A huge number of all sorts of mini-games.
Minuses:
- Built-in voice chat is disgusting.
- The presence of serious bugs and glitches.
A Way Out is a wonderful example of the fact that even with a small budget, you can create a truly fascinating game. Of course, in many ways the project attracts players with its innovation, as well as the opportunity to play together with a friend, having only one purchased copy on hand. But otherwise the game is also wonderful: both the plot, and the gameplay, and the characters, and the visual series - all at a very decent level. If you have a worthy partner with whom you are ready to spend together an hour or 8-10, do not hesitate! Immediately acquire A Way Out without any doubt and get a lot of fun from it. I put the game 9 points out of 10 .
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