An outrageously unique, albeit flawed romp.
By Colin Moriarty

I had really high hopes for Escape Plan. After seeing it introduced at Gamescom in Germany this past summer and being one of the very first people outside of Sony and developer Fun Bits Interactive to play it, I quickly realized the incredible potential of the game before just about anyone had even heard of it.

Some six months later, would-be PlayStation Vita owners and skeptical gamers alike have heard plenty about Escape Plan. A puzzler oozing with quirkiness, charm and style, my time with the final product proved to be quite fun. But Escape Plan also finds itself saddled with a handful of glaring problems that hold it back from what it could have been -- the must-have, day one purchase for Vita's western launch.

Exit Theatre Mode

What you'll undoubtedly notice first about Escape Plan is its beautiful black and white graphics. With the exception of some red in the game's logo, you'll see nothing but grayscale anywhere else in the entire game. Main characters Lil and Laarg are an adorable tandem that really pop and stick out in their black and white realm. In fact, the entire game can easily be described as gorgeous, with a special attention paid to a unique aesthetic that contributes greatly to the overall feel of the game. Complementing the art style is an almost ironic classical music score and other sonic accompaniment, including laugh, gasp and clap tracks pulled straight out of your favorite '80s sitcom.

The idea behind Escape Plan revolves around the aforementioned Lil and Laarg, two characters with different body builds who are attempting to flee from the evil clutches of the devious mastermind named Bakuki. Our two heroes hatch their escape plans over and over again throughout the game's 78 rooms. Each room is its own puzzle, and the puzzles themselves are strewn across four different environments that all admittedly look the same as one another. Expect to die often in Escape Plan; death is actually considered instructive, though, because you'll know exactly what you did wrong so you don't do it again. Then again, the game does tease you by putting the number of times each character dies directly on their chest. Y'know, just so you don't forget.

Most of the puzzles have one single idea behind them, though various solutions can be found in certain situations. Escape Plan doesn't use the Vita's face buttons or directional pad, instead relying almost entirely on PlayStation Vita's alternate control functionality (with an emphasis placed on front touch, back touch and SixAxis in particular). However, the analog sticks and trigger buttons come into play from time to time, allowing you to adjust your view and toggle between Lil and Laarg, respectively. No Laarg, behind you!

Each puzzle is solved when Lil and/or Laarg successfully leaves the room in question. But just how do the puzzles themselves play out? Well, one puzzle might have you tap a coffee machine to have Lil drink out of it, thus giving him super speed and the ability to dodge danger with his quickness. Another puzzle might have you insert Laarg into a bubble and then control him by swiping on the front touch pad while avoiding razor blades and spikes. There's great variety in the puzzles, though certain conventions are reused as the game goes on.

Escape Plan's strength relies on this gameplay and how the entire title is presented as a whole, but it's not without its own problems. The control scheme works most of the time but can still be finicky and touchy. Sometimes, certain gestures don't work like they should the first or second time. I often had to swipe at Lil and Laarg more than once to get them to start walking, or tap the back touch pad repeatedly to cause a distraction to enemies in the room. Escape Plan totes a really novel approach to the puzzle genre, but I wish the outcome of your gestures was 100 percent reliable, instead of just reliable most of the time.

Likewise, Escape Plan contains a three-star scoring system that counts how quickly you get through a puzzle and how many gestures you use. But the game often forces you to hold your PlayStation Vita in weird ways in order to not accidentally run your gesture count up. If you're going for high scores, you'll find yourself frustrated quite often when you accidentally tap the back touch pad or graze the front touch pad, which will count as a gesture and minimize your chance of a three-star rating. This is perhaps the single most confusing aspect of the game's design, and something I wish the developers did a better job of dealing with. Lil's gonna be free-fallin'.

Another strange problem I found was that Escape Plan had me accidentally putting my PlayStation Vita to sleep every so often. If you're gesturing with your right hand, you'll hold the handheld with your left. But because of the accidental gesturing problems mentioned above, chances are you'll be holding the Vita by putting your hand in a C-shape, which puts your pointer finger directly over the Vita's power button. One false move, and you'll put your Vita to sleep. It's not the end of the world, of course, but this certainly takes you out of the experience.

These sorts of problems don't ruin the game, but they do diminish it slightly. For an adventure absolutely beaming with personality and potential, the gameplay experience wasn't quite as fine as I would have liked, but it doesn't make Escape Plan anything less than a great game in its own right. It's just unfortunate, because it could have been more with slightly better execution.

Still, the game absolutely reeks of nonsense and humor, which is exactly what you'd expect from a team partially comprised of the squad that brought PlayStation Network gamers Fat Princess several years ago. Appropriately priced on the PSN at $15, Escape Plan is a worthy purchase, especially if you're looking for a pick-up-and-play game that can be digested very slowly, one morsel at a time. I just hope Fun Bits Interactive gets a crack at a sequel, because Escape Plan can easily be better than just great.
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