THE ESCAPISTS Breaks Out on PS4
With E3 right around the corner, a proverbial flood of gaming articles are almost here. But to kick off the last week before all that, I'd like to talk about an awesome little indie title that just came out on the PS4. Now I was asked to review The Escapists and the new Alcatraz DLC for the site, and normally I don't like to write reviews that game makers request. It often feels like cheating, and if I don't like it, I feel like I'm throwing it right back in their faces. But once I played this title, I couldn't NOT write about it. I'm absolutely hooked!
For those not familiar or who didn't play the game on Xbox One or Steam, much like myself, The Escapists is a puzzle RPG where you play an inmate planning an escape from a maximum security prison. It's a non-linear game where you pass each day doing favors for other inmates, performing your job to earn a little extra cash, and trying not to get shivved in the shower by the guy some other guy paid you to beat up with a bar of soap in a sock. The atmosphere is so weirdly charming that you sometimes forget you're actually playing a hardened criminal trying to survive incarceration.
The learning curve can be a little steep at first, but once you get the hang of it you feel like you're on the writing staff of The Shawshank Redemption, plotting all the ways you could bust out of prison. This mixed with the simplistic 16-bit SNES style graphics make it fairly hard to put down. And when you get that first successful breakout, you're so pumped full of adrenaline you pretty much go immediately into the next prison to see if you can get out even faster. It hits me with a feeling somewhat similar to back when I played Rollercoaster Tycoon all the time — having fun dicking around in an open-world environment while still keeping one eye on the overall goal. I lost hours just leveling up my character's ass-kicking abilities, simply because my first play-through I made the mistake of picking fights with everybody in the joint. (Pro-tip: Find the weakest guy and make him your target for pummeling. Somebody will be bound to offer you a job to beat the crap out of him, and it helps if he's easy to take down. And that is officially the scariest thing I've ever said in an article.)
To sum it up, I had an incredible time playing through The Escapists and the incredibly challenging Alcatraz DLC. This game's a great way to kick off the last week before E3 and is a definite must-own on the PS4! Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go have my boy Punchy tattoo a new tear drop on me with a sewing needle and a ballpoint pen.