Escapee GO!

Genre: Top-Down Stealth

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local Wireless)

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Review:

Escapee GO! is a Top-Down Stealth game first released on the Nintendo DSi via the DSiWare service in 2012, which was later grandfathered into the Nintendo 3DS eShop when the Nintendo 3DS released, and with the game later being ported to mobile devices in 2014. This game puts players in the role of a woman who appears to be escaping from a psychiatric ward, running and hiding from orderlies and soon from federal agents.

The presentation in this game makes use of simple 2D pixel art visuals with a subdued soundtrack to add to the tension, with the only other sounds here being the alert of guards seeing you, the noises associated with use of power-ups, and a synthesized scream that plays on the main menu and at certain points during the story.

Escapee GO! feels like it’s constantly stacking the cards against you. Your character ordinarily walks pretty slowly, and running quickly drains a stamina bar. Players must generally find at least one switch or keycard before searching for the exit to an area, and it’s not always clear where these are. Enemies are constantly running around in search of you, they can see you via direct line of sight from quite a distance away (even from off-screen), but you only have a small circle of vision that you can see and hear those enemies. Furthermore, the only tools you have to fend off enemies that you can’t outrun or hide from are single-use abilities you find within the game’s levels, of which you can only hold one at a time. On the sliding scale of Stealth games, this game is firmly on the side of “make players feel weak and helpless”.

If you happen to have friends who have a copy of the game, you can partake in a multiplayer match where three inmates try to run and hide from one empowered “huntress” trying to track them all down and catch them before they can escape. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to test this game mode, but it sounds like it could be fun, and with the game only costing $2 per person, this might be worth looking into.

However, even for fans of the Stealth genre, I think that overall Escapee GO! is an acquired taste. It just feels like the game finds every possible way it can make things feel unfair and just plain not very fun. And while I’m sure that there are some players who will delight at that sort of thing, I think most will grow weary of it quickly.

tl;dr – Escapee GO! Is a Top-Down Stealth game where players take the role of a woman escaping a psychiatric ward. This isn’t a bad game, but it is one that only a small subset of Stealth fans will enjoy, because it finds countless ways to hobble and weaken your character, making it feel like the game is trying to be unfair. While some may like that sort of thing, and others may enjoy this game’s multiplayer mode, I think that most players will find the way this game constantly disempowers the player to make them grow tired of it quickly.

Grade: C

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