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.