The films about the prison “The Green Mile” and “The Shawshank Redemption” are considered by many to be almost the best in history and regularly occupy the top places in all movie tops. Games about prisoners and prison life are much less lucky, but released in 2015, The Escapists, which was a simulator of prisoners escaping from places not so remote, received a lot of rave reviews and won a devoted audience. Naturally, the sequel was not long in coming.
In the sequel as a whole, everything is the same, the mechanics remained untouched. There are a dozen different prisons to choose from, and in each our prisoner is left to himself – live, survive, think about how to escape. This, however, is not a synonym for complete freedom, which exists in typical “sandboxes”. In The Escapists 2, on the contrary, your life is subject to strict rules and a strict routine – as befits a prison.
You need to have time to do everything on time – go to the test, to the dining room (replenishes energy), to the gym and library (there you “pump” strength and intelligence, respectively), to the shower (it’s better not to raise soap!), to work, to lights out. If the guards notice that you are not there or you are late, the level of suspicion towards the character rises.
This means that checks of your cell are also becoming more frequent, where in the bedside table and in its secret compartment you can store various things useful for escaping – a screwdriver, wire cutters, crowbar, a bat, and so on. And even follow the instructions of others.
The quests are mostly simple – beat up someone, take a bit to someone, find a can of paint. But there are also puzzles for ingenuity – someone, for example, will ask to sabotage a cellmate so that he could not go to work and lose it. But it’s more interesting if you flood his cell, clogging the toilet, the poor fellow will definitely not be up to work!
As a reward, they give money, for which it will be possible to bargain for something useful from other prisoners, as well as a reputation. If you act more rudely, beat everyone (and no one forbids this), provoking fights and riots, constantly sitting in punishment cells and not completing quests, then your reputation will fall below the baseboard, and the guards will torture you with camera checks.
Everything is like in Prison Break
All these mechanics in The Escapists 2 have been added, improved and decorated. In general, there are more details around, everything seems more alive – the prisoners are constantly talking, telling some stories, complaining about something, joking, complaining.
An advanced character editor has also appeared, allowing you to create some kind of hairy bespectacled freak in a hat from the head of a bear (such a prisoner, you see, will also bring revival to the prison routine).
However, much more importantly, there is even more freedom and variability in the gameplay itself – how to plan, prepare, and how exactly to escape. No one has canceled the most obvious methods.
such as digging tunnels with a preliminary curtain on the camera and closing the hole with posters, organizing riots and solving problems with the power “pumped” in the gym. You can make a scarecrow, put it in bed, take away the uniform from a lone guard and run to cut through the fence with homemade wire cutters as soon as possible.
Let’s run away together!
The uniqueness of the escape options largely depends directly on what kind of slave you find yourself in. There are a variety of correctional facilities to choose from: some are in the desert, others are in Siberia, others are at the military base where you were taken as prisoners, or even in space, and the action takes place in the future.
There is also a prison on wheels. More precisely, on the rails – this is a well-guarded wagon that takes you somewhere in the middle of the prairies, and to escape, you can use the horse galloping nearby.
That is, there are many options, including the most fun, unexpected ones. And they are even more interesting, more fun and more inventive if you act together with other players, especially with friends or with those whom you understand well. Yes, the sequel has a full-fledged multiplayer. And this is not only about a cooperative, where fun does not negate mutual assistance and responsibility, but also about a competitive mode. There, players compete to see who can quickly find a way to escape from prison within the allotted time. All related elements are in place – both records and leaderboards.
