A how to escape prison simulator, now available on Steam.

We previously mentioned that EA/Origin was moving a bunch of games over to Steam. Amidst the move, many EA games were on sale in the Steam store and it has brought many of these games back onto my radar.

I have been wanting to play A Way Out for a while now and this seemed like as good a time as any. The game is exclusively a 2 player co-op experience and it cannot be played without a friend. The main premise of the game is you reliving the tale of two inmates escaping prison. The main menu literally shows your two characters outside of prison talking back on the feat, so you know you successfully escaped already.

Game Play

The game is on the story telling side, rather than being challenging or having any advanced combat mechanics. I don’t think I even saw a difficulty setting. This is not a bad thing at all, the game accomplishes its goal very well. The coolest thing is that even if you are playing online, you are always seeing the game in split screen. You can see everything that your partner in crime is doing, which keeps you in the loop and creates a new sense of immersion into the game.

The acting is pretty good and they do portray the emotions of your characters and the NPCs pretty decently. I wouldn’t rave about the acting, but I’m not mad at it either. You can also interact with numerous items in the environment which adds to the experience. The puzzles are pretty straightforward, I don’t think anything will have you thinking too hard, but it’s enough to keep you entertained for a while.

Bugs

The game has been out for a while and it is clear that EA (Or Hazelight Studios) didn’t care enough to fix any common and very clearly reported bugs. I ran into 2 game breaking bugs the first 3 hours, which I had to google and found out happened to literally almost everyone. Game companies need to pay more attention and fix GAME BREAKING bugs. I ran into an infinite loading screen 3 times that required me to exit the game and reload. While another bug broke the environment and I could not advance in the story anymore.

I think the game is awesome and would recommend people to pick it up if they have a friend they can experience the game with, but it is disappointing to see some sloppiness from the developers. There are brief sections of the game that I felt were poorly developed, but I’ll avoid talking about those as they could include spoilers.

Check the game out on Steam.