OnEscapee
| Developer: Invictus | Graphics: |
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| Publisher: Sadeness | Sound: |
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| Year: 1997 | Difficulty: |
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| Genre: Action | Lastability: |
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| Number of players: 1 | Rating: |
6/10 | |
You play as a guy abducted by aliens, trying to escape.
This game required a CD drive and a hard disk. It was ported to PC in 2004.
The intro and settings are superb. It is certainly the most beautiful dump I have ever visited in a video game. The somewhat lugubrious atmosphere strongly recalls Another World. The controls, however, feel far less intuitive, as are the “puzzle” resolutions. I must’ve fallen off that cliff at the start of the first level twenty times before giving in and watching a walkthrough on YouTube. Honestly, I’m not sure how I’d have managed back in the day. Probably would’ve tossed it into that drawer of incomprehensible games where I couldn’t even make it past the first screen. Not that there was any room left in that drawer…
While your character can roll and jump, don’t expect to pull off acrobatics à la Flashback. There’s not a single platform in sight. Given how sluggish the controls are, that’s probably for the best. There’s also no dialogue or text descriptions – an element that contributed greatly to the atmosphere of a game like Metal Mutant, for instance.
Everything here leans on the visual atmosphere and the cinematic direction, backed by a polished soundtrack and death sequences as graphic as they are creative – which you’ll have plenty of opportunities to witness on repeat. That said, the lack of pace and variety in gameplay quickly becomes noticeable: run, shoot at stationary objects, occasionally click aimlessly on glowing buttons, or stumble into nearly invisible paths in the background.
The ending is fairly original, provided you have patience, a walkthrough, and tissues on hand…
For something similar (but with better controls), I can’t recommend enough LIMBO (PC, 2011) and its follow-up, INSIDE (PC, 2016).
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