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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