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Reader review by pickhut
October 14, 2008 Upon first glance of EXIT, you'll probably assume that it's just an average, two-dimensional platform title taking place mostly inside normal buildings. And you'd be half right. EXIT puts you in control of a man called Mr. ESC, an escape artist (get it, HAR HAR?), and for the duration of the entire game, you'll have to constantly help whiny people exit hazardous situations through 220 stages. You're damn right that's a lot of stages. It doesn't sound all that great, and when you play it for the first time, you'll have even more doubts.As you tackle the game's ten training stages (you can skip them, but there's a catch... two, actually), you'll be annoyed by how Mr. ESC controls, because he feels so mechanical. The best comparison I can give is how Lara Croft controlled in the original Tomb Raider games: the jumps you have to time right, climbing up objects, and just the overall delayed actions of all the moves. Once you finish your flashback of those horrifyingly annoying experiences of yesteryear, you still give the game a chance and continue with the training levels. Though they get irritating with the giant tutorial bubbles that stop the flow of action, you'll eventually get used to the controls and the feel of the title, as well as knowing how to do specific actions, getting you ready for the meat of the game.
At first, it's real easy, obviously. In each stage, you simply have to find the victims, who are trapped in various buildings with problems. They range from fires that have gotten out of control to rooms being flooded and hotels being snowed in. But, as you continue on through the stages in each Situation, getting civilians out will require much more thought on your part. Say you're trying to help an injured patient get to the exit of a hospital; of course, he can't walk, so, you'll have to carry him, slowing you down in the process. Thankfully, there's a stretcher cart in the same room you can put him on. Problem solved! Not so fast... After you quickly push him out of the room through a door that comes back down seconds after hitting the open switch, you run into another problem: smoke in the next room. You'll have to leave the patient behind, crawl under the smoke into the next room, and see what you can do to get rid of it. You find a switch that turns on a fan, sucking all the smoke out, and you move on ahead with the patient. However, more problems await you, which involves using an elevator, getting the injured guy onto another stretcher, and again having to go through a few more switch-rigged doors. This has got to be the most complicatedly-designed hospital, ever...
That's actually one of the more easier stages of EXIT. There are quite a number of stages that not only ask you to save people, but also use them in helping others escape, as well. Need to keep a door open, so you and the person you're going to save can get out? Order one of the civilians you already rescued to stand on the open switch. Need a pick axe, but can't reach it because you're too big to crawl under the giant icicles? Tell the boy that can't stop talking to crawl under them. There's even one level that involves having you and a big woman push boxes and safes in the right position on a constantly falling platform in order to make it to the exit. It's a game where you'll have to constantly put into consideration your surroundings in each level, what objects are available, how many people there are, and how you'll have to utilize all of this, just to get to an exit you can easily reach yourself. It seems very daunting, especially when you're still trying to get used to the controls and commands, but before you know it, you'll be running, jumping, climbing, and ordering like it was nothing.
While it actually ends up being more than an average, two-dimensional platform title where you rescue people, it's very time-consuming. It took me almost a whole week just to get through 70 stages, not because they were hard... some of the time... but because of the thought you had to put into solving each one. You normally get stuck in most of the stages, and have to restart, trying a different experiment or method. Also, if you're aiming to get the achievements, this game will take a bit longer to complete. Some achievements involve getting certain scores once you reach the end of specific Situations, which actually means you'll have to score a full 100 points in every stage. To do that, you'll have to beat each level in the shortest way possible, forcing you to use quick reflexes and perform stunts you usually wouldn't do. EXIT is one of those games a specific type of audience would really like, so, if you're into video games where you don't have a problem putting your mind to the test and experiment over and over again with puzzles, then this is a very entertaining title. I enjoyed it, and I thought my brain was going to explode during some levels.
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