Who doesn’t love the thrill of a prison break? Erm, us.
What’s it about?Based on Fox Television’s drama series, Prison Break follows the story of the lead character Schofield who finds himself incarcerated at Fox River State Penitentiary where he attempts to free his brother who faces the death sentence for a crime he didn’t commit.
You play a brand new character called Tom Paxton hired by the “company” and tasked with investigating Schofield and finding out what he’s up to. Gameplay typically involves partaking in fetch quests for other prisoners and avoiding guards along the way as you infiltrate forbidden sections of the prison. You’ll also get involved in plenty of scraps and have the opportunity to improve the power and speed of your character by enhancing your reputation in organised tournaments and through training hard in the yard.
Review
Let's start off with some good news. The storyline focuses on the best season of Prison Break, Season One. Through well produced cut-scenes and superb voice acting, some of which is carried out by characters from the show, it’s entertaining to see the excellent storyline unfold as it did in the TV series. A lot of effort has obviously gone into creating the character models too, and the likes of Schofield, T-Bag and C-Note look suitably impressive. There’s also a fair amount of freedom to explore the prison which has designed in a way that encourages you to explore with plenty of areas to infiltrate and quest-giving NPCs to visit. It’s also particularly interesting to see the storyline unfold through a new set of eyes, something that fans of the show may appreciate.
As far as the gameplay goes though, it's very bland, repetitive and lacks the sort of dramatic action and tense atmosphere that the TV series produced. Fights lack any intensity due to the combat system being so basic. Just having a block move, along with a quick and slow punch at your disposal makes for some dreary fight scenes that are only ever made that little bit more exciting by a QTE that occasionally kicks in allowing you disarm a knife-weilding opponent or slam someone’s head against the wall. Your character feels slow and clumsy to control and there’s no incentive for you to want to fight any more than you have to. There should be more moves to unlock, or character skills to build upon. Training in the yard using a punch bag and weights to improve your power and skill is all you get, but these mini-games are so bland thatl the incentive of powering up won't be enough for you to want to play them more than once.
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