At a glance...

Prison Break: The Conspiracy review

If you have never seen the (mostly) popular television series Prison Break, I recommend you get some research in, and watch it before you play this somewhat recreation of said television show. Do it. Do it now. If not, I believe that you would be a little lost in the plot.

The first thing I noticed with this game is a bit of a lack of story coverage for people who have not seen the show at all. Basically, the premise of the game revolves around the first season of a very popular television show Prison Break, which follows Michael Schofield's incarceration in Fox River penitentiary and his endeavour to, obviously, escape, with his also incarcerated brother, Lincoln Burrows. The plot of the game, however, doesn't follow the television protagonist, it follows Tom Paxton, a brand new face to the Prison Break universe who works for 'the Company'. The Company are the group that are keeping an eye on Lincoln Burrows, to make sure he stays in prison for his crimes, and are very curious about why Michael is in the same prison as his brother and thus sent Tom in.

The player controls Tom as he strives to get to the bottom of Michael's plan, and comes across all of the various characters of the show, most of whom are voiced by the original cast, albeit unenthusiastically. The graphics and the visuals are par for the course of current generation video games, though somewhat lacking in lighting fidelity. Sometimes it can be far too bright or far too dark. The character models are pretty close to the real actors, except for the movements that can be a bit stiff. The rest of the visuals are pretty consistent and clear.

As Tom progresses through the game's plot, which was partly penned by some of the TV show's writers, he pretty much follows the footsteps of Schofield, trying to learn of his actions. The small missions in each of the nine chapters in the game lack direction or motive, except for the main objective, and are usually meant to be conducted sneakily. This means that you will be sneaking around off-limit sections of the prison, usually trying to get or see something. There are platforming elements such as climbing, but the main focus is avoiding detection of prison guards who happen to wander these derelict parts of the complex. These guards happen to walk and look around in a very obviously scripted manner, such as moving to the window to yawn, then walk to the filing cabinet, then back to the window, etc. This definitely chews chunks out of the realism, as do some of the wooden conversations that come out of the other characters. If you are seen at all, the game ends and the player is forced to restart. Luck has it that the checkpoints are frequent and thus restarting will not lose much progress. Tom has the ability to crouch and hide behind walls, along with diving across gaps to another wall. This does help avoid catching that cleaner's eye, which sometimes seems impossibly easy. A few times I was 'noticed' while backs were turned, or through walls. It's easy to notice this, because when Tom gets detected, the game ends and the view zooms into the detector. The sneaky side missions are quite bland, generally involving going to a destination, but just carrying out a different scenario. Finally there will be times where the player must guide Tom to quietly pick a lock, or unbolt a panel, by a movement combination or rotating the controller stick respectively. This must be done slowly to keep quiet, but even when done slowly I was still detected. I swear some of the guards had supersonic hearing and 6 senses.

Another aspect of the gameplay is fighting. There will be times where fisticuffs with another prison inmate, or even prison guards, will progress the story. Fighting is a one-on-one event and the player has three forms of combat; a small punch, a large punch, and blocking. Obviously the opponent has the same techniques. The fight is not very convincing, and the sound effects barely match the actions shown. While using the seemingly ineffective blocking, the player can push the punch button to execute a parry, but this is very difficult to achieve, as if the timing window for the button press is too small. As the game progresses, the opponents get tougher, which means they need more of a tougher beating before they fall. Luckily Tom is presented with the option to increase his fighting power by pushing weights, or fighting a punch bag. These are pretty menial and repetitive tasks, and the option to do them is actually only presented a couple of times throughout the entire game.

Overall, the game lacks a decent storyline. The narrative lacks presence, and it can be very difficult to understand for people unfamiliar with the television show. The sneaking missions lack the passion of a real stealth game, and the fighting is lacklustre in presentation. The save points in the game aren't frequent enough to dedicate a small chunk of your time to playing the game, so you need to play a large amount of storyline to hit that next checkpoint before you can turn it off. The replayability is very low unless you are really desperate for the trophies. It is a nice way to revisit Michael and co in Fox River prison, but if that doesn't mean anything to you, then it's best to catch up first.

Ratings

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