Exit (PSP)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 4.0 stars Excellent
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 8.0 (4.0 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Ryan Davis
• Reviewed on: 02/14/2006
• Released on: 02/14/2006
• Originally published on GameSpot: Exit (PSP) Review

Substance and style shake hands in Exit, an engaging new puzzler for the PSP where a striking visual dialect and outside-the-box-of-blocks puzzle design collude to create a spirited and oft-challenging experience. Name-checking puzzle classics like Lemmings and the original Prince of Persia make for convenient, fairly accurate shorthand when describing Exit, but they don't give the game due credit for the way it forges something fresh out of familiar elements.

Exit has less a story than it does a premise. You play as Mr. ESC, a professional "escapologist" with a serious caffeine addiction who lends his agile frame and sharp mental faculties to paying customers who need people extracted from dangerous situations. Over the course of the game's 10 stages, you'll puzzle your way out of a burning building, a flooded mall, a quake-rattled hospital, a blacked-out underground facility, a hotel that has been hit by an avalanche, and more. Though the types of hazards you'll have to surmount can range from bare electrical floor panels to flooded caverns, your goal is always the same: to find the survivors and get them to the exit.

Finding the survivors is usually pretty easy, since you can use the analog stick to scroll around the area near Mr. ESC. Hitting the select button will bring up a simple map that pinpoints the locations of the survivors and the exit. Mr. ESC is nimble and strong, but he's not superhuman. He can run and jump across small gaps, jump and pull himself up onto ledges, push boxes, crawl through low passages or under clouds of smoke, and swim underwater for less than a minute. However, contact with fire, electricity, or a fall from a great height will cripple Mr. ESC instantly and will end the mission.

The survivors you'll encounter often have even greater physical limitations, which will regularly mean that it's easy to get to them, but getting them out of the building is a trickier situation. There are four different types of survivors you'll encounter: young adults, grown adults, children, and the injured. Young adults are about as strong and spry as Mr. ESC, though they can't jump as far. Grown adults are stronger, which means they can move objects that Mr. ESC himself wouldn't be able to budge, but they also require assistance getting up and over higher ledges. Children, who can't jump far and need help getting both up to and down from higher ledges, can traipse across surfaces that would shatter under the weight of a larger person and crawl through passages that are too tight for Mr. ESC. The injured survivors are the biggest liability. They cannot move on their own, so either Mr. ESC or an adult survivor has to carry them, which severely slows them down, whether they're walking or using a rolling stretcher, which are hard to come by.

There are a few somewhat arbitrary limitations, like when survivors can get into elevators on their own but can't actually operate them. However, the abilities of your survivors are a major factor in figuring your way out of a building. You can use the analog stick and the triangle button to select any survivors you've made contact with and give them destinations and various tasks. Sometimes having a survivor helping you out just makes the work go faster, but in most levels, there are situations that require the talents of multiple people at once, making for some seriously devious puzzles.

When survivors are in "follow" mode, they're smart enough to not do anything life-threatening, though if you directly command them to walk into the middle of a blazing fire, they'll do it, no questions asked. They also seem to have trouble reconciling vertical and horizontal space at the same time, which means they'll sometimes get stuck when given the broad order to climb a flight of stairs. At worst, though, this just means they require a little extra babysitting.

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Exit (PSP): $19.99

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