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Meet Mr ESC. He's the star of the game EXIT, released earlier this year for the PSP by Ubisoft. Until earlier this though I'd not paid much attention to the game, but when it dropped through my letterbox I thought I'd give it a go.
For those who've not seen nor heard anything about the game, in a nutshell it's a puzzle game. You take the role of Mr ESC (which is short for 'Escape'), and your goal in the game is to escape from each building you find yourself in. To make things a little more difficult, each building (or level) has a number of obstacles, as well as a number of different goals, usually around saving people trapped in the building.
For the most part the puzzles are easily solved, mostly revolving around collecting keys and unlock doors, putting out fires and leading the trapped people to safety. As you progress however each level becomes more difficult, often requiring giving directions to the very people you are trying to save, eliciting their help in opening doors, moving boxes and so on.
EXIT is also a very stylish game, with the backgrounds and objects rendered in a cartoon style, but with the main characters rendered as stylised characters in black and white, whilst the character of Mr ESC also features a flying red scarf and a yellow trilby. Each of the people you need to rescue also have different skills and abilities, and often these will play a factor in the solution to the level. For example, Adults can move boxes larger than Mr ESC can, however they cannot climb large boxes without assitance. Children can crawl through low spaces that Mr ESC cannot fit through. On top of this, some of the later levels also introduce additional difficulties such as darkness, taking away the ability to check around the level that is so helpful in earlier levels.
The game does suffer from some problems though, with the gameplay at times being incredibly slow, especially when Mr Esc enters into a pre-set animation, such as climbing ladders or stairs. There are also some control problems, with controls slow to respond, something especially problematic as you also only get one life in each level, so if you are running towards a gap that needs to be jumped and you mistime pressing the correct button, Mr ESC will fall, and you will have to restart the level.
The speed of gameplay and pre-set movement animations also means that levels can take 5 or more minutes to complete, and falling because the jump button was unresponsive at the end of a level can be very frustrating. The saving grace of this slow gameplay though is that one you have completed the 10 training levels, all bar the last 30 levels are unlocked, and you can attempt them in any order you like from the level select screen.
Overall, EXIT is an enjoyable puzzle game which will keep you entertained for a long time.
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