Run for your life! Review

Run for your life!

There’s a reason why Seven

Samurai, Citizen

Kane and Casablanca

are always found near the top of any decent ‘Best Of’ list: you just can’t argue

with brilliant directing, great acting and solid storytelling, even if at times

the technology of older films seems primitive.

And though I like The

Shawshank Redemption as much as the next TNT addict, there might not

be a better escape movie in the annals of film history than The Great Escape.

With a cast of unbelievably cool all-stars including Charles

Bronson, James Garner,

James Coburn and of course

the so-cool-he-makes-you-uncool Steve

McQueen, this is the ultimate in cool prison flicks.

The film is 40 years old, though, and it seems nothing short of flabbergasting

that someone, just now, decided to make it into a game. This instantly raises

the Red Flag question: Does the Curse of the Game Based On A Movie

have an expiration date?

Apparently

not. While The Great Escape is a great movie, it is not a great

game. It isn’t even a good game. In fact, it’s barely a game at all, just a

series of item hunts limply tied together with smidgens of plot from the film.

If you haven’t seen the movie, do yourself a favor and stop reading this review, turn off your computer, put on some pants, go to your local video store and pick up a copy. Then, if you’re so inclined, come on back and find out why the game sucks, though you might just want to forget about the whole thing and pretend it never happened. Lord knows that’s what I’ve been trying to do.

In case you’re still here, a recap is in order. A bunch of escape artists are captured in Nazi Germany and are thrown into a breakout-proof camp. Sure enough, they devise an insanely complex plan to break out, involving extreme tunneling, plenty of diversions and more sneaking than a Nike factory.

You play as four different captives – Virgil “The Cooler King” Hilts, Bob

“The Scrounger” Hendley, Louis “The Manufacturer” Sedgwick and Andy “No Nickname”

MacDonald. You alternate play as each POW from mission to mission, jumping in

and out of the plot like a senile

grandpa. Each guy has some sort of specialty (lock-picking, pick pocketing,

etc.) but it’s all useless, because no matter who you are you’ll be sneaking,

sneaking, and sneaking.

You sneak in and out of camp huts. You sneak in and out of big scary nazi buildings. You sneak through woods, across bases, over hill and dale, all while desperately trying to remember why freedom was so important in the first place.

Like the film, the game is linear. You’re given some specific item to retrieve from another inmate, so off you go, sneaking like a cat burglar, only to discover that once you find the item, you have to go sneak somewhere else to find something else. Then you bring it all back to the first guy, after which you use the newly constructed special item to aid you in the final leg of your sneaking. Then you save, then on to more sneaking.

You’d figure all this sneaking would require a brilliant mechanism to help

you out. You’d be wrong. You just press the sneak trigger and wander around

trying to avoid the guards. You don’t get a line of sight indicator like Metal

Gear. You don’t get a light meter like Splinter

Cell. You get nothing aside from a compass pointing you to the next objective,

a crappy map and some very mysterious rules that, when broken, tell the guards

you’re five feet to their left.

If you’re spotted, you’re pretty much done for. Unfortunately, the AI is as

bright as a moonless night. They patrol in very strict patterns, so much of

the game comes down to rote memorization. Half of the time, guards will just

stare blankly as you sneak right under their noses and often they will get stuck

in doorways while chasing you. The other half of the time, guards will suddenly

see or hear you even though you’re miles away. Getting caught or getting shot

lead to the same restart, however; no time in the cooler for you unless it’s

part of the rigid script…which only happens once during a cut scene.

The

Great Escape tries to save itself by tossing in some action elements,

but they only wind up illuminating the game’s control problems. At certain times

you’ll wield a machine gun or sniper rifle, but shooting is made difficult thanks

to an awkward auto-aim or a sluggish manual aim. Even hand to hand fighting

with guards is done poorly since you have only one lame punch that simply stuns

them or a strangle move that only works if you sneak up behind them. You’ll

steal a few vehicles as well, including a tank and a truck, but the action here

is equally disappointing thanks to the bad AI and control.

I suppose this works with the theme of the movie – you’re a captive, after

all, and shouldn’t really have access to guns or anything – but the incessant

item retrieval and badly constructed action elements lead to weak gameplay.

The graphics are a little brighter. The environments are true to the film,

the framerate is solid and the lighting is good. Beyond that, though, things

get rough. Character animations are terribly jerky; it actually hurts

a little watching your guy run. The faces are reminiscent of the movie, but

bland texturing and blank stares make everyone look like a mannequin. Clipping

problems are common. The best looking thing in the game is the rag-doll death

animation, though even that gets screwy as the camera tends to drive itself

into the floorboards while trying to capture the flailing limbs.

The sound is admirable at least, with the lighthearted score from the film

tossed in for atmosphere. You can’t blame the cheesy German accents on bad voice-acting

choices since that’s how they do it in the movie. While most of the character

voice-acting is new, they took some lines directly from the movie to give the

late Steve McQueen a voice. Nice try, but the quality is noticeably different

from the rest, sounding like someone played the movie and hit “Record” on a

walkman.

And speaking of the beloved McQueen, it’s somewhat insulting that marketing pushes his image so hard, only to make you play as the other three guys for most of the game. He’s no stronger or more useful than the other guys, despite claims in his game manual ‘bio’ that he’s the toughest guy ever.

Which he was, at least according to his awesome movies. He’s the brains of

Thomas Crowne,

the face of Papillon,

the driver of Bullitt.

McQueen truly is “The Cooler King” in more ways than one, which only makes his

half-assed showing in this half-assed game a full-fledged bummer. Skip this

disaster and rent The

Towering Inferno instead.