I’ll going to be straight with you, reader, as I generally am. I have never watched the show Prison Break. I thought the premise interesting, but missed the first season, and then when there happened to be a subsequent season I couldn’t help but think, “they broke out, they either need to change the name or quit.” So it was with some skepticism, but still an open mind that I sat down in a dimly lit but comfortable room and watched Tigresa of Spawn Kill play some Prison Break on the Xbox 360. I managed to gather quite a few conclusions about what has the potential to be an interesting… prison break.

Prison Break, thankfully to some, follows the events from the first season of the show. What might jar people is that players don’t take control of seasonal protagonist Michael Scofield, but rather a new character created specifically for the game whose events will parallel those of the show. In retrospect, this makes sense. Sure, Deep Silver could have given players Scofield directly, but it’s much more difficult to manipulate a gaming experience in the confines of an already scripted narrative. By creating a new character and dropping him in this familiar world, they’ve left themselves room to be creative and create a better game. Whether it will be as lively as the show remains to be seen. The bits we saw weren’t anything jaw dropping or plot twisting, but they did set up a fine framework for a game with some potential.

Players are thrust straight into the prison setting under the guise of an undercover Company agent named Tom Paxton. His objective is to contact Scofield somehow, and in order to do that he needs to play the political prison game. This is where players will come into contact with some of the show regulars as Paxton seeks out favors and performs tasks for a few familiar faces. During our quick look at the game, a shady fellow tasked Paxton with poisoning an inmate’s medication so that he could take his place as Scofield’s cellmate.

The first thing we were forced to learn was how to move around undetected. Given the broad daylight setting and the fact that players are in a high security prison, this seems tougher than perhaps a game could allow. Indeed, within the first few minutes, I watched Paxton get discovered several times by no one more important than a janitor. Player skill aside, it’s clear that some care needs to be taken when making one’s way around the corridors of the prison. Certain areas are fine. They are designated as prisoner areas and stealth is unnecessary. But when one crosses a line, suddenly its high alert and if discovered, players are sent directly back to the last checkpoint. There is no option to fight the guards or janitors or anyone but fellow prisoners. Rationally, this makes sense. Guards have guns and they can swarm like nobody’s business, but it’s also extremely frustrating not to at least be able to go down without a fight. Then again, say Paxton kills a guard. His Company agent status not withstanding, he’d have to cover it up pretty good in order to stay un-shanked by an angry friend of said guard.

The objective areas are easy to follow as the path is literally lined with yellow markers. If Paxton needs to jump a ledge, that ledge will have yellow coloring. If he needs to pop open a grate, that grate is yellow. Deep Silver takes an interesting approach to the stealth genre, and while none of it is ever particularly innovative, some of it does feel new. For instance, if Paxton is attempting to open a grate while there is a guard and/or janitor just a few feet away, sound will play a factor. Performing an action more slowly results in less sound and no detection. The same can be said for the lockpicking system, which will remind players of a simplified Oblivion. Sneaking is the same function seen in other games, and Paxton at least keeps his footfalls silent enough that simply walking rarely seems to reveal him. He also manages to roll around fairly non-obtrusively, something we found necessary during at least one point in the adventure.

Combat is a different game altogether, and isn’t nearly as fluid or tight as players might want. I don’t want to call it sloppy, and I’m certainly not asking for Fight Night: Prison Break, but for a game where it’s a vital portion of the playtime and even has an underground Fight Club associated with it, it left much to be desired.

It didn’t take long for our silent protagonist to procure some rat poison, fight a crazy dude, and sneak around, and what I saw did certainly make me curious to see how the game played out. Not having seen the series itself, I find myself mostly worried about the story. The voice acting was fairly awful. The visuals are nothing to write home about, but they don’t deter from the gameplay too much. I get the feeling the protagonist won’t be too popular. It feels like they were going for “badass,” but somewhere along the process dropped the “bad” part. I do think that anyone who really likes the show will enjoy the game. What we saw showed that it isn’t a half-cocked attempt at porting over a television series. Deep Silver has at the very least crafted a full-fledged game, and as someone who both plays games and watches television, I appreciate the effort.

You can check out the game itself now as it was released on March 31st. Be sure to swing by and let us know if it’s worthy!

Tags: Deep Silver, PAX East 2010, Preview, Prison Break

This entry was posted on Friday, April 9th, 2010 at 3:31 pm and is filed under PAX East, Previews, Xbox 360. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.