Game Reviews

Admittedly the mind-numbing stealth is broken up a bit by hand-to-hand scraps with your fellow cons – either incidentally as you skulk around the hallways, or voluntarily as part of the underground fights accessed in the prison yard (which earns you cash that you can spend on tattoos… and only tattoos). It's just a shame that the game's fighting system offers a level of control somewhat on par with attempting to play Street Fighter IV with your elbows. A pair of punches, a dodge and a block/counter are the only moves at your disposal, making for extremely shallow beat-'em-up thrills, so it's utterly astonishing that the developer has bothered to include a two-player versus mode in the game's main menu. What kind of remorseless bastard wants to inflict this on one of their friends?

Worse still, that's the full extent of the combat. You can level up Paxton's speed and strength by hitting the punching bag or pumping iron in the yard, but you never unlock any new moves or combos. Nor will you ever get your hands on a gun, or a shiv, or anything at all that could be remotely classified as a weapon. By the time you've finished the first two out of the game's nine chapters, you've basically seen everything Prison Break: The Conspiracy has to offer gameplay-wise.

But persist with it and you'll be treated to awkwardly timed quicktime events, generic characters playing critical roles (clearly the actors who played Haywire, Dr Tancredi and a few others didn't want anything to do with this heap), and a distinct lack of Theodore 'T-Bag' Bagwell. The manipulative psychopath's voice and likeness is in there for sure, but given that he's arguably the most interesting character in the history of the series, it's a shame he only makes a few sporadic appearances in the game.

The events of Prison Break: The Conspiracy run concurrently with those of the series’ first season. It’s outcome is the same – they escape – and it doesn’t reveal anything that will please fans or cast new light on the show’s characters or plot lines. If you’re an absolute Prison Break diehard, don’t buy this game – steal a copy instead, surrender yourself to the police and then get sent to an actual jail – because serving a real sentence couldn’t possibly be harder time than this.