This game has achieved one thing: I enjoyed it less, the longer I played it.

Usually, I tend to be wary of games, and it takes about an hour before I can get into it fully. However, in the case of ‘Prison Break: The Conspiracy’ which I’m told is based on a hit US TV series, the opposite was true: I enjoyed the first hour, and hated the last one. I haven’t seen the TV series so I shall be evaluating this game for its own merits (or lack thereof).
The plot is based on you being a secret agent who has to make sure that someone dies in the electric chair. Is he innocent? Probably, but I have no idea, because the storytelling is so convoluted and intangible. Initially, I understood what was going on, but by the seventh chapter I stopped caring. The characters are unlikeable (which is probably fine, since it’s based on a prison) but they also lack any real personality or even relevance to the story. For example, when someone who tried to kill you returns from prison hospital, you might think: Uh-oh, the proverbial excrement is going to hit the proverbial fan. It doesn’t. I think the developers realised how appalling the plot becomes half-way through and left it to the cleaners to finish it off. Apparently, the characters were voiced by the actors from the TV show, which means that I will do everything in my power to avoid watching the show. I doubt that anyone cared enough about the game that they did something as ambitious as reading the script before recording started. The script is as dull and non-descript as its voicing.

Cutscenes are irritating, too. Usually, I don’t mind mediocre dialogue, because it gives me a chance to switch off and stop concentrating. Unfortunately, the developers decided to instil some ‘fun’ into cutscenes. The result is a button-mashing mess that nearly gave me RSI. There are so many cheap failures that make you restart the dialogue that are irritating and serve no real purpose – they don’t improve the gameplay, they do nothing for the plot and they are pretty damn frustrating, all in all.
Okay, so the plot and characters are crap. Will the gameplay redeem it? Erm…no. The problem is that the game does three things. Badly. You have to: fetch things (ENDLESSLY); fight things (BADLY); and sneak past things (FRUSTRATINGLY). All you do is fetch and return missions, and while the attempt to create an open-world prison seems pretty good initially, it turns out that the developers have achieved the remarkable feat of making it completely linear. There is only ever one way of doing a mission, featuring a stealth system that, when compared to MGS4’s stealth mechanics, looks like it has been set up by a bunch of primary school pupils. I wanted to be able to go around the prison to find side-missions, but there were none whatsoever. I wish that I could say something nice about it, but I can’t. It is absolutely hopeless – I started a swear-count during some of the missions. If you get caught, can you resist? Well, no. If you’re seen by even a janitor, it’s back to the checkpoint. Oh, wait – maybe an AI system would adapt to your way of going through? No, all that changes is that if you’re noisy they’ll catch you automatically. There are some options, like hiding in a cupboard, turning off the lights or switching off the radio, but you use them so infrequently that they don’t feel will integrated – you use the latter option TWICE in the whole game. According to the website, it’s ‘immersive’. Being drowned is ‘immersive’ and between re-playing the game and that, the decision could go either way.

The bourgeois fighting systems seen in other games have been observed and then forgotten. You get three options – punch, punch harder and block. Apparently there were some reversal moves, but I couldn’t be bothered. Combos? No. Rewards for fighting? Tattoos. Whoop-de-doo. It was fun, admittedly, the first time. I did expect it to change a bit, but it didn’t. The only way to improve is with some tedious and repetitive mini-games. It’s lucky that the game only lasted 8 hours, because I was getting really irritable by the end.
The graphics in the game are the only thing that’s vaguely acceptable in the game, if you don’t mind something quite basic. Character models are passable, and the prison does, in fairness, look like a prison. Apparently, the prison is modelled accurately to the TV show, but I can’t confirm that, although it seems authentic. It’s a shame that all the graphics can show is a thoroughly mediocre game.

There you have it. If you really love the TV show, you might want to pick this game up, but I would really advise you not to – it’s too short, irritating and shallow to be of any value.

5/10