A Way Out - Review
This review of A Way Out is spoiler-free!
THAT'S RIGHT! It's been like 5 months since I made the promise that gaming-based articles will be coming to The Open Theater. And I have an easy reason for that: I haven't completed any games since I made that bold claim. You see, being just one person it's nearly impossible to cover enough television, movies, and games that you feel confident evenly spreading them. Well, fortunately, I had the chance to get into one of the games that interested me most in throughout the past few months coming towards its release. A Way Out is made by Hazelight Studios and published by EA. Fortunately for this game though it is directed by Josef Fares, who has also directed the companion based game Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. While I haven't had the pleasure to jump into that game as well, I did finish this one and I can't wait to talk to you all about it!
Since I've never done a game review I'm not quite sure how I want to go about divvying up all the different pieces of this game. I guess we'll start with the story of A Way Out. We begin the game being introduced to our dual protagonists. The first of which being Vincent who is freshly incarcerated, and Leo who already was in the same prison. After Vincent helps Leo in a gang-related fight they strike up a friendship. The soon realize they both have a common grudge against someone and need to work together to escape the prison they've found themselves in. In general, A Way Out's story feels like a mish-mosh of all different properties from every media format. It doesn't feel all that original as the prison story has been told in so many different ways that throughout the games run I was constantly yelling out moments that perfectly matched up to things that happened in other properties. Along with this, any twists that come in the story could be easily foreseen. All in all, the story is very generic but enjoyable enough to keep you going.
I don't think I can really spend alot of time talking about these characters because it essentially fits into the story narrative. Everyone plays their part well, with Rob Yang voicing Vincent and Armando Riesco taking the role of Leo. My only complaint was that Leo's accent felt almost comical. Maybe Riesco actually sounds that way but it just felt overly forced and really threw me out of a few serious moments in the game. As a whole, the characters were essentially the narrative so they play well off each other but Leo really made me struggle at points to enjoy their conversations.
Visually, A Way Out isn't a stunner. It's a game that knows what the goal it is trying to achieve, excellent gameplay. But, to say the game looks poor is false, it just feels like it's a bit more like the usual console graphic. Being that it's not from the hugest of studios and it's a lower priced game it really doesn't surprise me that the graphics weren't the majority focus. Instead, Hazelight opted to focus on the best part of this game: it's gameplay. Taking the bold choice to force players to play with someone else in mandatory co-op could have been a risky choice, but they succeed by only requiring one person to own the game. Throughout the game, we see the viewpoints of each character side by side. At times the audio of one side will get louder than the other to focus on more important information, along with the screen getting larger for the more important event. This makes the game so unique and different, as you can see exactly what your partner is doing and enjoy moments where two entirely different sets of events are happening. It's this unique gameplay aspect that really makes A Way Out stand out from the crowd as a co-op game.
Sure, the story of A Way Out is a generic jailbreak style story that we've all seen before in some form or another, but that doesn't stop Hazelight Studios from creating an exciting game. For this game, in particular, it's all about the gameplay mechanics and just how the game is experienced. Having to work together with a partner throughout the entirety of the 6-hour story is exciting and presents some of the most thrilling moments I've faced in gaming recently. For the price of $30, I believe this is an adventure every friend group should undertake at some point. You'll build bonds and battle through it all together, and that's what makes A Way Out such a fun game.
