Review | Prison Break: The Conspiracy

Format: PS3/Xbox 360/PC | Genre: Action adventure | Publisher: Deep Silver | Developer: Zootfly | Release date: 26/03/10 | RRP: £39.99

Fresh from enjoying the TV series, Jennifer Allen delves into Prison Break’s sinister world of conspiracy – and emerges less than impressed…

Well-made stealth games provide some brilliantly tense experiences. Prison Break: The Conspiracy isn’t a well-made stealth game. Instead, it demonstrates exactly how not make a stealth game, and makes you cringe a bit in the process. Pity really, as for the first couple of hours it pushes towards enjoyable – though even at that stage, it’s clearly a very guilty pleasure.

It’s set around the events of the first season of Prison Break, but rather than playing the show’s main character Michael Scofield, you hop into the boots of Agent Tom Paxton, sent to Fox River prison undercover by The Company – which is behind the conspiracy of the TV series. Paxton is there initially to oversee the execution of one Lincoln Burrows, and ensure that  Scofield doesn’t escape. As expected, though, things go rather awry.

At first it’s vaguely interesting. I enjoyed the first season of Prison Break, so seeing it from an entirely new perspective was interesting. The problem came about when, within not much more than an hour of playing, I realised I’d seen everything that Prison Break: The Conspiracy had to offer.

Everything is decidedly simple here, from the solutions to problems to the intelligence level of the prison guards. For the most part, action is of the stealthy variety. Most objectives involve talking to a prisoner, being sent to fetch something from an off-limits area, then creeping your way back again. More often than not the prisoner then sends you on yet another fetching errand before you can finally move on with the story. There’s no real need to think anything through, though, as a tap of the Focus button clearly points you in the right direction with a handy and obvious yellow X on the map, making sure you can’t miss a thing. And routes to and from your objective are quite obvious, with doorways that aren’t relevant locked off.

SNEAKY, SNEAKY
Sneaking around at first is reasonably entertaining, until it becomes apparent that the guards and maintenance workers you must avoid are beyond stupid, not to mention completely deaf. Far too often I found myself being able to crouch clearly in their view, yet inexplicably they didn’t notice me. The same was true of the many times where I could run across a room, supposedly causing increased levels of noise, yet I still wasn’t caught. I tried on all the available difficulty levels, but every time it was a similar tale, with the only noticeable difference being that guards moved more quickly on the higher settings.

If you are eventually caught after ducking and diving around the dim-witted guards, there’s no real punishment. Instead, once spotted, you’re returned to a slightly earlier part of the level. Which is only usually a matter of seconds beforehand. [Continues]

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