A Way Out

The gaming industry shift towards games as a never ending service of multiplayer madness has been all too common over the last few years. Never-ending games like ‘Destiny’ and ‘The Division’ are nothing new, MMORPGs have existed for years; mainstream adoption is something that has seen considerable growth in the last few years. That’s why titles like ‘A Way Out’ are a breath of fresh air. There is no online multiplayer element to the game, it cannot be played in single player and it incorporates the old split-screen couch co-op system that I personally have missed a great deal. Don’t get me wrong there are examples of couch co-op games coming out relatively regularly, but it used to be a much more common feature, and I like it.

‘A Way Out’ sparks memories of titles with a similar focus on co-op play, mainly ‘Army of Two’ and the infamous ‘Kane & Lynch’ series of games; co-op play is heavily encouraged and the game is designed as such. Unlike ‘Army of Two’, ‘A Way Out’ has an inherent requirement for co-op play; in fact you can’t actually play the game alone, at all, a bold move no doubt. As one of my closest friends put it “We will see how that does on the market (scoff)”, well I cannot speak for the market but for me it was an absolute pleasure to play, so without further waffle.

It was a Thursday morning in late March and ‘A Way Out’ had been released while I was away with work; as usual I had added it to my ever growing backlog of games I “intend” to play, but this was different. My closest friend and I haven’t spent as much time together of late, mainly due to me completing my PhD and moving to a different city about an hour away, we had scheduled some game time that day, well, all day to be exact. So I appeared at his domus and we installed ‘A Way Out’, quite a painless install given the way new games tend to have MASSIVE updates on day one, but that’s another story.

History

‘A Way Out’ was developed by Hazelight Studios and published by EA, the devil incarnate. However, don’t let that put you off. ‘A Way Out’ is directed by Josef Fares who also plays one of the protagonists in both voice and likeness. Production began in the second half of 2014 and unlike other titles published by EA, Fares and his team was given complete creative control. This being the first game developed by Hazelight Studios there are few points of reference other than Fares; Fares and some of the team members at Hazelight were responsible for ‘Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons’, a very popular and acclaimed title (92/100).

So development continued with the desire to create a unique and interesting game, as is always the goal, until the game was unveiled at E3 2017 by EA. Unfortunately E3 2017 was the first E3 I had missed in 5 years, but I’m sure it would have been an exciting reveal, the trailer certainly was. I remember thinking that would be an excellent co-op experience to have, given the drought of couch co-op I had my hopes up and they were not disappointed.

The Game

‘A Way Out’ opens in a Tarantino style flash forward with our protagonists Vincent and Leo, initially we were confused but that only lasted a few moments and we realised what was happening, remember it was early. Immediately after being injected into the game we realised that this was a different co-op experience, we were not together initially and were following two separate paths. This was a little hard to follow due to the two separate audio streams; this is overcome through subtitles but can be a little distracting at first, especially when the audio volumes are different but I can forgive this as there isn’t really a good way to overcome this while experiencing the game in couch co-op mode.

After some of my characters appendages where displayed to the audience and I had received a nice cold hosing by the prison staff we began our prison break. I don’t use the term for comedic effect, the game continually reminded both of us of the ‘Prison Break’ TV show as I’m sure it would remind anyone familiar with the show, it definitely influences the game heavily, as does ‘The Shawshank Redemption’.

The game resumes in the prison yard, this is where you experience one of the base elements of the game, exploration. The game encourages world interaction in familiar ways, dialogue with NPCs that have absolutely no purpose in the story but draw you into the world and to be perfectly honest it hooked us both, we wanted to escape and experience the entire story. Throughout the story there are several points that provide players with a choice, these choices have to be agreed by both players and I felt this was an excellent touch.

Essentially, without providing any spoilers, the game is separated into Chapters, each of these in turn progresses the story, a story of betrayal and revenge, standard stuff and once again I drew parallels with ‘Prison Break’. Through each of the chapters there are different tasks to perform such as finding a screwdriver in early chapters, to armed robbery in later ones. The game progresses at a reasonable rate and thanks to the couch co-op element it never felt boring, in fact we were compelled to chase down all the achievements, but I will get to that in a moment.

The crescendo of the game was predictable in hind sight, there were a few tiny hints at it throughout but we were that engrossed that it came as a surprise at that moment. It also changes up the gameplay in a very interesting way, in our case it create hilarious arguments and accusations. Also worthy of note is a moment taken straight out of 'Scarface', it made us laugh.

The Achievements

There are 14 achievements in ‘A Way Out’ and not one of them is achieved through completing the story in any way, they are all achieved through obscure interactions with people and things throughout the story. They are all achievable for an average gamer and I got all 14 on my first play through with a little direction from the internet, they also do not reveal any plot points about the story.

The Review

The truth is that for £20 ‘A Way Out’ is entirely worth the money, it provides an excellent couch co-op experience for 6 or 7 hours and feels like a big budget title with a low price. Many of the laughs that were had were because we were discussing each other’s part in the game; truly couch co-op is the best way to make a mediocre game great, even Earth Defence Force 2025. I feel the negativity surrounding this game could be attributed to the online based co-op experience because I and my side kick enjoyed it entirely and the reviews are not bad either (8/10).

The game has a few different gameplay elements in it, ranging from puzzle solving, to guitar hero and then back to 'Army of Two', all in all it is a good experience and I never felt like I couldn't wait for the game to end.

Would I play this game again, yes, there are apparently multiple endings so it would be interesting to experience these in full. I think a second run through would be less exciting as the story will not substantially change, however there are several choices made in the game that will results in different routes through situations, this provides some replay value.

In conclusion it is a decent game for the price and should definitely be experienced while the second player is in the same room. I would give the title a solid 4 stars.

So that's it, my first official review. Hopefully my writing style improves over the course of time and I hope whomever reads this has enjoyed it and taken something from it.