For the last 15 minutes, I stood there stunned. Not because the game was exceptionally good, mind you. But after playing through the roughly 7 hour campaign that A Way Out delivers, I felt the feeling of true betrayal. And it felt so real that I suddenly hated my co-op player, Dan, and was blaming him for everything from stealing my character’s dignity to double crossing me right at the very moment when I should have felt like we had achieved greatness.
Welcome to EA’s A Way Out co-op game. Where you (1)have to play with another player and (2) your decisions determine the ending of the game. Our ending meant the end of me, with Dan standing gloriously over my crumpled, shot ridden body. In the end, both of us got “a way out”. My way was just not how I thought it would be.
The game follows two individuals, Vincent and Leo, from the time they meet up in prison. They have two main things in common. One, they want to escape the prison (which they do, eventually) and two, they have a general hatred for a guy named Harvey. Leo’s connection with Harvey was he was a partner of his who stole a diamond and left him to do the time. Vincent’s connection is a mystery. Both want him dead. And the game begins.
The co-op play of this game is what makes it an interesting concept. Players sometimes view a split screen in which they control either Leo and Harvey as they try to reach a particular goal. They achieve these goals (like moving a heavy object out of the way or lending a hand to reach a higher point on the map) through a series of what best can be best described as ‘button smashing’. In some instances, the game views off into one of the other player’s POV. Cut scenes are abundant as it has more of a feel of a movie than a game at times, moving the direction of gameplay from one task to the next or giving us a glimpse into the personalities of the two, which are quite clearly, different.
Choose Your Own Adventure
At various times, the players will have options that will affect the game much in the same vein as the Tell-Tale Walking Dead game(anyone remember the choose your adventure books from the 80’s?) For example, when Leo and Vincent approach a farm, we are given two choices; do we let some horses out and avoid the farmer and his wife or do we go in, tie them up and take them hostage? Each and every decision could affect the end game, or in the very least, determines what happens in the next series of events. In retrospect, it kind of has me wondering what would have happened had we chose the other option?
For the first half of A way out, Dan and I (or maybe it was just me…?) bumbled our way through the prison break in a way that was hilarious at times and intense at other moments. The game literally makes you feel like at any moment you could be caught and sent back to the pokey. What the game does well, it does really well.
At other times, I felt like the game was basically leading you from one quest to another (get money for guns to do this….talk to this guy for information….fix the truck by putting on this tire) and maybe I am just so used to playing sandbox go where ever you want types of games that I felt the game play was too easy. Save points were frequent so you never felt like there were true consequences for messing up.
Where the game fails momentiously is the “mini games” in the down times. Dan and I were given the option to play basketball with Leo’s son, fish in a shallow pond and even have a balancing act in wheelchairs. Awkward is the best description of these moments. Playing basketball was a series of throwing the ball up and watching it hit the pavement as Leo’s son begged to get the ball passed to him. The physics were way off and didn’t really move the story anywhere.
Me and Dan arm wrestle
The game’s story line could have been more enthralling if it was less predictable. For example, at one point our “heroes”(or should I say anti-heroes?) were tasked with jumping out of a plane. Dan and I’s viewers made the prediction that a parachute wouldn’t work and guess what happened? The story line also tended to slow the game down a bit as we got to get to know the characters to the point where both Dan and I were wishing we could simply move on. And then there is the arc. Did EA really take the parts of every crime drama and smash it into one? At times, during the cutscenes, I kept getting the impression that I had seen this story before. Was it Heat or some other 1990’s crime drama?
Voice acting was decent but had a number of things I felt were problematic. For one, there was no irony. Leo was the typical Italian (complete with the nose and New Jersey accent). Vincent looked like the tormented soul he was. Leo was a hot head criminal. Vincent was the “thinker” who did things calmly and collectively. As for NPC’s there were many but it seemed like stereotypes influenced the voice acting (Spanish people sounded like a cross between Cheech & Chong and that Mexican mouse on Bugs Bunny).
The ending is the payoff
The ending was the payoff. When it finally came, I honestly felt emotionally spent and betrayed. Maybe it was because I was on the losing end. I don’t know. But from a movie perspective (and this plays more like a movie than a game), I should have seen it coming. The one bad part was that I didn’t get to see the alternative ending, which I would have loved to see my character “win”.
Bottom Line
Dan and I enjoyed our playthrough but I doubt we will revisit it for a second time around. As he put it, it is good enough to be a free game but given the replay-ability (I guess you could see the alternative ending), A Way Out is much like a movie that you would watch once, feel good about it for playing and then put it away forever. I tend to agree with him. The good news is that if you are interested in playing, you only need one copy of the game (maybe you can con one of your friends to buy it).
Complete A Way Out Playthrough
A Way Out – Both Endings (complete spoilers)
drunkonlife
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