I got
suckered into buying this one as it was listed as a purchase that rewarded a
lot of points on Microsoft Rewards – points I’ve never cashed in – but I am
apparently saving for a rainy day. Anyway, I initially didn’t want to buy A Way Out because despite its good
ratings, it’s a purely co-operative experience and I don’t have enough friends
to play with on a regular basis who have the staying power to see through even
a short game like this. Plus, they all play on Playstation now.
The game
follows the story of Vincent and Leo, two guys who have been arrested for
crimes they didn’t commit… well at least Vincent was. Leo was a thief and a
swindler. The story mainly focuses around the two characters as they plan a
revenge mission and a prison breakout and the interactions between the two characters
are the best parts of the game. The storyline and character arcs are both
brilliant and it’s just a shame, in my opinion, that it requires two players to
experience it or that they don’t appear to put the same amount of effort into
single player experiences.
Anyway, in
order to actually play it, I convinced the wife to play it with me. She hates
dual stick controls (one for movement, one for the camera) but likes puzzle
solving so the opening part of the game in the prison was great and she enjoyed
it. The later part of the game involves using guns to shoot at people though
and at this point, it turned in to her hiding at the back and me taking out all
the enemies. Thankfully, the game’s combat mechanics are quite forgiving and
this was quite easy.
It does have
a lot of obligatory driving sections though and these were the worst part of
the game. The driving mechanics are not the best but this isn’t surprising
considering how may different set pieces there are. There is also a decent bit
where you have to cooperatively canoe down a river and we were pleased with
ourselves that we did this, for the most part, without communicating (or
killing each other).
Looks and
music wise, it’s all very well done and they have really put the effort in to
the scenes with accompany suitable sound.
Achievements – 1,000 Points – 14
Achievements
Now I
mentioned earlier that a lot of friends have moved to Playstation now and one
such friend told me that he had made A
Way Out his first platinum trophy. As I know he doesn’t play for trophies,
this led me to believe that the all of the achievements were story based. What
I didn’t factor in is that he did it with my other friend who is a trophy
hunter so he most likely made him get all the trophies. I mention this because
it is possible to play through the game without picking up a single
achievement. None of them are story related and this actually caused me to miss
the first one, which is for doing 20 dips in the prison yard.
The rest of
the achievements are fairly easy to get and involve performing specific actions
at specific parts of the game, and normally only one of you needs to perform
the action. However, there is one achievement that does require you to play co-operatively
and involves playing two musical instruments together at the same time. It took
us a while to get the timings down for this and there was nearly an incident of
controller throwing rage from the wife before we took a small break, calmed down
and then made it look easy.
Downloadable Content – N/A
If you have
someone to play with, A Way Out is a
fun and rewarding completion that can be knocked out in under 6 hours, making
it a good weekend game. The one draw back is price which is currently £24.99
and feels a bit steep for something so short.
