The Great Escape isn't that fun of a game and it would only be recommend to really hardcore fans of the movie.
User Rating: 5.3 | The Great Escape XBOX
The Great Escape is based on the 1963 film of the same name that starred Steve McQueen. You play a variety of characters that were in the film. You are imprisoned in a POW camp that can supposedly prevent all escapes. You start by playing the characters in events leading up to their capture that were not in the film. Fans of the film will notice key events while playing the game. The game was developed by the people who made the Conflict: Desert Storm series and they used the same engine for those games. This game is based on stealth so don’t expect to be gunning your way through the game like in their previous titles. Some of the scenes from the movie are recreated in cut scenes but they use the exact same 1963 quality audio which isn’t too great. You only play one character and you can only issue orders on two missions and that is very limited. You start off with really simple objectives like sneaking hut to hut to talk to people, sneaking around the camp to steal tools or sabotaging equipment. There are vehicles in the game but they don’t come in much until the last two levels. You only have to not be seen to really be stealthy in this game. The AI of the guards is really simple. They can’t tell if someone has been in a room or not. They will have to see you to go investigate something. Every objective you receive is explained and shown on a map when you press select making it easy to finish them. You also have a maximum amount of 3 saves during a mission and that is sometimes lowered if the mission is short. The controls are also very simple when in stealth missions. The combat in this game is next to horrible though. You can only fire while standing still and that makes you a very easy target. The auto-target feature is not reliable because it can take time for it to lock onto an enemy and even then the lock-on goes all over the place. The manual first-person aim can also be annoying because it moves so very slow and I couldn’t find a way to raise the sensitivity. When you are trying to manually aim at an enemy the game sometimes makes you aim straight at the sky when you press the button for first-person aiming and that is very bad since it moves so very slow. Conflict: Desert Storm series has the same combat features but they have no problems and are done well. I found it better to in some missions if possible, to run past the enemies to finish the objective since the combat is so frustrating. Most of the missions are based on stealth over combat though. The stealth portion does get repetitive because the objectives rarely change. The game does change quite a bit after the great escape though. You play different characters on their journey to leave the country. Some missions turn into just plain run like hell missions on foot and by motorcycle or help the French Resistance and shoot every German that moves. The graphics are nothing special. You will get used to hearing the same sounds and phrases from the Germans over and over again. The graphics really remind of you Conflict: Desert Storm while playing but the Germany environment is much different to that in Desert Storm. There is nothing in this game that makes you go wow when you are playing. The frame-rate was consistent and never dropped once while playing. I could not recommend this game to anyone. Those looking for a good stealth game would be better off looking elsewhere. There are plenty of stealth games that have a share of action and do both better than Great Escape. It would even be hard for me to recommend this game to fans of the film. Note that this game has a different ending that is happier. If you know you want to try this game then rent it and do not buy.
