Vector- Posted June 14, 2020 Share Posted June 14, 2020 Game Informations : Developer: Hazelight Studios Publishers: Electronic Arts Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Ps4, Xbox One Initial release date: March 23, 2018 A Way Out’s revenge-fueled plot is structured around flashbacks to how Vincent and his next-cell-neighbor Leo ended up in this predicament, until the story catches up to them aboard a plane and carries on from there. It ebbs and flows like a movie, and it somewhat feels like one too, despite a runtime about three times longer than your average theater experience. You will spend a lot of its roughly six hours with your controller down, watching cutscenes. But you’re also often free to walk around in many of those moments, with the screen frequently split to accommodate both players’ freedom to move and explore. As my co-op partner and I approached the climax of A Way Out, the cinematic, 1970’s-set prison-break adventure from the studio headed by filmmaker-turned-game-developer Josef Fares, I thought it had run out of gas. I’d been hooked for the first five hours, which do a magnificent job of blending drama with action and emotion with lightheartedness. In that time we’d rarely done the same style of of gameplay twice, and I had gotten to know and understand Vincent, the more diplomatic and reserved of the two playable convicts in this mandatory two-player story. But here we were, knee-deep in a cliched sequence I’d seen a million times before in both games and movies. I thought A Way Out had run out of tricks. Leo and Vincent each have believable motivations that become clear as the story unfolds. So, too, do the actors’ performances improve as the plot progresses, with most of the notably wooden dialogue delivery contained in the early scenes. It’s as if they had to get to know each other, just as we needed to get to know them. It’s interesting to talk to the same NPC with Leo and Vincent separately, one right after the other, because while the conversation will usually turn out the same way, the path of those chats will be completely different. Leo is more violent and action-first, while Vincent prefers to talk his way out of sticky situations. So when you’re given the choice to handle a tense moment with a curious police officer Leo’s way or Vincent’s way, Leo wants to knock him out, while Vincent fakes a highly contagious illness. A Way Out is laced with small cooperative moments outside of just dialogue, too, like having to tap X simultaneously to bust through a door, or one person splashing around in a pond to chase the fish toward the other player holding a spear. But even though it’s focused on its story sequences, A Way Out is decidedly not a “walking simulator”-style adventure – in fact, it’s more like a collection of largely enjoyable minigames. Sometimes you’re sneaking around in tall grass like Sam Fisher, choking out bad guys. Sometimes you’re punching people from a 2.5D side-scrolling camera like it’s a Double Dragon remake. Sometimes you’re driving a car, or throwing darts, or playing a banjo, or shooting hoops, or arm wrestling, or fishing, or...you get the idea. All of that variety is a double-edged sword: though this swath of activities often left me smiling, the trade-off is that none of them control and feel as good as games dedicated to those ideas. The baseball segment won’t be unseating MLB The Show 18, is what I’m saying, but even so it put a smile on my face. “Clunky” is probably the best description of the worst A Way Out’s minigames ever get, with the gunplay feeling particularly subpar in this, the age of spectacularly polished shooters. None of those is A Way Out’s specialty, though. Instead, it focuses primarily on its story and the intertwining cooperative gameplay with the characters of Leo and Vincent themselves, and in those key areas it largely succeeds. Does the timing on certain moments seem implausibly convenient? Yes. Do the two men end up escaping unscathed from seemingly impossible scenarios? Uh-huh. (Side note: A Way Out’s police officers make Star Wars’ Stormtroopers look like expert marksmen.) The prison-breaking pair definitely don’t always get along, though, and sometimes they even compete, just like real frienemies would, which creates some fun player-versus-player moments. Neither my co-op partner nor I would give in during our button-mashing arm-wrestling match, even though it had no bearing on the game or the story, and I took a completely unnecessary glee in beating him in Connect Four (twice). At times it felt like we really were inhabiting these characters. A Way Out’s finest moments come when it’s at its most cinematic. The brilliantly choreographed hospital escape scene, for example, maintains one unbroken “camera shot” even as controls are cleverly trading back and forth between Leo and Vincent, while the aforementioned ending blends cinematography and gameplay in clever ways. And a Splinter Cell-esque back-to-back climb up a tall maintenance shaft requires the utmost cooperation and communication and had us laughing at every misstep. It was the peak of the mandatory cooperative gameplay that’s enforced here. And commendably, you get a free download token to give to a friend, so you only have to buy one copy to play online. Verdict: If you go into A Way Out thinking its mandatory two-player co-op is a gimmick, you’ll likely come out of it realizing that it couldn’t have been done any other way. Vincent and Leo’s journey will have you and a friend performing tasks together both mundane and dramatic, and the result is a memorable, variety-packed cinematic adventure that feels like what Telltale’s games might’ve evolved into if they’d leaned into game mechanics instead of phasing them out. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- System Requirements Minimum: 720P 30 FPS AT LOW SETTINGS O/S: Windows 7 64-bit, 8.1 64-bit or Windows 10 64-bit CPU: Intel core i3-2100T @ 2.5GHz/AMD FX 6100, or better RAM: 8GB GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650Ti 2GB, AMD Radeon HD 7750 2GB DirectX: 11 Compatible video card or equivalent Hard Drive: 25GB Input: At least one Xbox-compatible/PlayStation-compatible controller Online connection requirements: 256KBPS or faster Internet connection Recommended: 1080P 60 FPS AT HIGH SETTINGS O/S: Windows 7 64-bit, 8.1 64-bit or Windows 10 64-bit RAM: 16GB CPU: Intel Core i5 3570K; AMD Ryzen 3 1300x or equivalent GPU: Nvidia GT 960; AMD R9 290 or equivalent DirectX: 11 Compatible video card or equivalent Hard Drive: 25GB Input: At least one Xbox-compatible/PlayStation-compatible controller Online connection requirements: 256KBPS or faster Internet connection Quote Official Trailer 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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