Here’s a weird twist in the "let’s cash in on the latest blockbuster film by making a bad game as fast as we can" mentality that’s pervasive among many of today’s large and small video game publishers: "Let’s take a 40 year old action flick and make a bad game out of it" instead! The license will be cheaper! Okay, okay, it’s not that simple and the game isn’t that bad either, but you get the gist of the idea.

The story line will seem hauntingly familiar to those with affection for the Steve McQueen classic, wherein the main characters are Allied POW’s looking to escape from a (romanticized) German prison camp run by a bunch of ignorant dolts. You’ll recognize McQueen (Virgil Hilts) and other characters such as Charles Bronson (Danny Willinski) and will be in charge of several players throughout the game.

The Great Escape, at its heart, is a stealth action game wherein you control a character from the third person perspective and perform hunt and fetch missions, for the most part. You’ll find yourself in other forms of game play as well, such as firing at BF 109’s (German Fighter Planes) from the rear turret of your aircraft - which works remarkably better than the rest of the game, I might add. After landmark stealth based mission software from Konami (Metal Gear Solid) and Namco’s upcoming Kill.Switch, this game doesn’t even come close to the same level of solid game play, atmosphere, or technique. Sure, you can crouch, creep, see behind corners with a stealth camera, and do all of that standard stuff that you’ve become accustomed to.

The AI is severely flawed, to the point that you’ll throw your hands up in the air wondering either how you got past that guard while walking right by him or how a guard without any line of sight could possibly have seen you. Couple that with certain segments that are particularly lengthy (you’ll find yourself starting over...and over...and over... just to get the guard’s patterns down) and the frustration factor reaches a crescendo fairly quickly. Most of the game is quest and fetch based and this further adds to the tedium. Most of the time, alerting a single guard will result in your capture. You can attempt to run away and the guards will somehow stop looking for you, that’s very puzzling I might add, and can continue on with whatever your current task might be.

Graphically, the game’s characters are recognizable and environments are suitably rendered, if unspectacular. In the sound department, the voice acting is generally better than most games that are out there. Kudos to the developer for using pieces from the original film score (Elmer Bernstein), as well. Unfortunately, it’s not nearly enough to save this title from obscurity as it, at best, is a mediocre entry in what is quickly becoming the genre de jour.

· · · Haohmaru