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Hands-on with Prison Break: The Conspiracy
Fox Network's hit TV show coming to PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 in March
Written by Steven Williamson, 09 February 2010
We assumed that Prison Break: The Conspiracy, the video game based on Fox Network's hit television show, would place us in the role of Schofield, the main character from the series. But you actually play as a brand new character named Tom Paxton who is sent to Fox River prison on behalf of the "company" to find out what Schofield is up to and to ensure that the execution of Burrows, the man wrongly imprisoned for murdering the brother of the Vice President of the United States, goes ahead as planned.
If you've watched the show that opening paragraph will instantly make sense to you, but even if you've never seen an episode the writers have done a decent job at bringing you to speed by unravelling information early on that highlights Schofield's plans and his scheme to help Burrows escape.
In Prison Break you're tasked with keeping an eye on Schofield and monitoring what he's up to from a safe distance. By visiting NPCs around the prison, who you'll recognise from the show you, you pick up objectives that forward the storyline, but there's also a fair amount of freedom given to you to carry out other tasks, such as beefing yourself up in the yard using weights and a punch bag to work through the fighting ranks or building up your reputation through carrying out side-tasks for inmates, or earning cash through dodgy deals.
The gameplay in Prison Break focuses largely on stealth missions. You'll often find yourself having to infiltrate different parts of the prison carrying out favours for people, such as searching for a hidden stash in the boiler room, or foraging for drugs in the infirmary. Most of the stealth tasks that we've carried out had a few things on common. Firstly, you enter stealth mode whenever you're in a place that is out of bounds to prisoners, which means you need to be on full alert for guards and cameras otherwise you'll get caught. Secondly, and more often than not, you find yourself sneaking through ventilation shafts and from room-to-room, working your way to a set location to perhaps steal an object, or eavesdrop on a conversion before having to make your way back to safety without getting caught.
It's pretty straightforward stuff - stealth play at its most basic level. You follow a marker on your mini-map to your objective and along the way you're prompted by indicators that pop up whenever you're close to an interactive object. The prompt might show that you can climb up a ladder, shimmy a pole, or unscrew a ventilation grate. The focus feature also gives you a helping hand by letting you zoom in, showing you in which way you should head next. It comes in handy when you can't work out how to get past the guards who walk up and down corridors and in an out of the many rooms in the prison on the look-out for prisoners who have strayed off the beaten path. You study their behavioural patterns and sneak behind them or down a corridor when their backs are turned.
P3Zine Issue 36
For our latest Prison Break coverage, click here to download P3Zine Issue 36 for free.The preview doesn't demonstrate that much variety during the stealth missions. The prison is huge with no room off-limits so there's plenty of space to explore, but during the missions we found that, more often than not, we ended up hiding in lockers while guards walked into the room, or rotating the analog stick to pick screws out of grates. Still, there's some fun and certainly a challenge to be had out of strategically planning your path forward by watching the movement of guards and then pouncing swiftly at just at the right time to sneak past them. While searching for a knife in the kitchen, for example, you constantly have to be on the move from station to station while cooks hurry around the kitchen tending to their boiling pots. The missions can be tense and exciting.
Quick Time Events also play a part. The first QTE kicks in when you arrive at the prison and you're grabbed from behind bars by a fellow inmate on the way to your cell. On this occasion you need to execute a simple two button combo to escape his grasp. The use of QTEs can get a little irritating though. On numerous occasions, after entering a ventilation shaft, you have to quickly respond to a command prompt and press a button while climbing across the rafters to ensure you don't fall; it just doesn't add anything to the game. When you're in a genuinely threatening situation, however, the QTEs add a bit of tension and the short cinematic scenes that cut in are often enjoyable to watch as you wrestle dramatically with an inmate.
During our preview time we found hand-to-hand combat to be very basic. Currently you have a quick fast punch and a slow hard punch, plus you can block and dash out of the way. The fights are fairly slow-paced, where a mixture of blocking and attacking is needed to succeed, however it may be that you unlock more moves in the full game as you progress (we're checking on that.)
There are a few annoyances in Prison Break that we hope are ironed out before release, including some poorly thought-out checkpoints, and the fact that if you fail to execute a QTE correctly you just basically go back to the beginning of the sequence knowing exactly what you need to do. It also feels a little unfinished at the moment. Fox River prison is a huge place and it often seems like you're travelling a long distance to get somewhere without anything to distract you or entertain you along the way. If some collectibles were dotted around the prison it would make exploration all the more worthwhile. Maybe that will happen.
Nevertheless, in our couple of hours of gameplay time we've played some entertaining missions, watched the storyline progress nicely and enjoyed interacting with the cast of characters who portray their on-screen counterparts very well. An online versus mode, where you fight one-on-one against a fellow inmate, choosing from the likes of mob boss John Abruzzi, C-note, Teabag and others from the series, adds a little extra value.
Prison Break: The Conspiracy is due for release on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 on March 16, 2010.
Prison Break coverage available in P3Zine Issue 36 - click here to download it for free!
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