Video Gamers Podcast - [Flashback Friday] A Way Out - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: November 3, 2023

Take a trip to the past with this video game flashback episode. A Way Out is a unique co-op video game that lets you and a friend work together to escape prison, escape the law and live the lives of Vincent Moretti and Leo Caruso in a truly unique gaming experience. We break this video game down like no other gaming podcast can, give you our thoughts, what works, and what doesn’t in another packed gaming episode from your favorite video games podcast!  Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Redletter, Gaius214, Nate and Kiitaclyzm Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com//videogamerspod Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/videogamerspod Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Older favorite episodes these are and hear different hosts you may. But flashback Fridays are the path to the light side. Fun leads to enjoyment. Enjoyment leads to laughter. Laughter leads to happiness. Get into it now, we will. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast.

Each week, we like to break down a multiplayer game by having a lighthearted discussion about the game, what works, what doesn't work, how we felt about playing the game. And Todd remains on paternity leave, but I think he will be joining us here maybe within the next couple of shows. And with me, I do have the diamond thief, the man who went to prison for grand theft, assault, and armed robbery. The hothead himself who can take out an entire police force with just a lamp stand. Leo! Are you talking to me? Wait, that was just his character's name in a way out.

It's Josh! Yay! What's grillin', Mr. Villain? Mr. Villain? to me wait that was just his character's name in a way out it's josh yay what's grilling mr villain oh i did that just for you paul because we know how much you like to cook meat and you know your show your your show intros there so how the turntables back when when todd was hosting i'd come in with the rhyme and, and now the protege has become the master. I intentionally picked a really bad rhyme there, because I knew I could not begin to touch your mad rhyming skills there. Yeah, I don't even remember some of the ones I pulled out. Like, What's Cookin' Good Lookin' is a well-known one. I don't even remember the other goofy ones. I think there was What what, Shake and Bacon.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was one of them. I'm for it. What's Grillin' Villain? I'm for it. All right, so before we start to take a look at A Way Out, which is what we will be taking a look at this week, we generally like to just kind of catch up on our week in gaming, just kind of see what we've been up to. So what's been going on in your world, Josh? What have you been playing lately?

You know what's funny? I've been playing. I mentioned it last show. I mentioned Firewatch as one of the games that we mentioned during the bonus round. And so I was like, dude, you know what I'm doing? I'm going out. I'm buying Firewatch. Found it for five bucks.

Started playing it. I've had an epiphany. You know, you guys pick on me because I'm the crazy junk rat and I'm the mad flanker and I'm the guy that just wants to go in guns a blazing, which is true. Yeah. The wild card of the group. But I'm finding out that I really like story-based games. So you guys know I'm a huge fan of Subnautica, right? If you haven't played it, go pick up Subnautica.

It's great. But that game really blew my mind, like caught me completely off guard, you know? And I remember bragging to you guys about how much I loved it. And I was like, oh, you guys all need to go out and buy this game. And you're like, no, the game looks stupid. I don't want to loved it. And I was like, Oh, you guys all need to go out and buy this game. And you're like, no, the game looks stupid. I don't want to play it. I've played, uh,

the vanishing of Ethan Carter, which was, you know, very similar, you know, as a story-based game. What remains of Edith Finch is another good title. Um, that's,

that's along those lines. And now I'm playing fire watch and they're just like, they're the most like chill games that you can get like invested in and you know there's not a ton of like gameplay mechanics but i think i'm like i think i'm finding out that i really enjoy that like calm like breather type game i actually don't know anything about firewatch are you talking more of like an interactive movie type of game or just a more chill laid back let this game unfold while you just kind of like explore in an easy to navigate world correct it's not i mean a lot of people kind of call them interactive movies the gameplay elements are very minimal i

mean it's you know picking stuff up running to a place uh interacting with an object, you know, and that's really about it, you know, as far as that goes. So it's not, there's not much in the way of actual, like, gameplay mechanics. And it's like, there's stuff that is unfolding, and I have to run through the woods, and I have to do this. But there's, it's really just like, it's like a movie. It's, you know, it's like, it's a story. Like, I'm living this story

basically i'm definitely a huge fan of games like that i like when they have you know just some calming type mechanics like i loved the game abzu where it's just like really beautiful lush underground world you just get to explore it kind of learn more about the world i think journey is a lot like that uh flower i never played. But yeah, I think there's definitely a place where sometimes you want to go out and just murder people and create chaos. And then other times, you know, sometimes you just want a nice calming game. And I think like all things, you know, good measure of each is where I like to be. Yeah, it's I mean, like even golf, like we've been playing a lot of golf together lately, but I'm way too competitive to be able to just like sit back and chill playing golf. You know, like

I am, I am like, I better be making those putts. I better be like beating you guys. And so I'm like, I'm very like, Ooh, I want to win. And so I'm focused. Whereas like these other games, I can really just chill and play these games and not stress about it and i generally have found that i really enjoy them like so funny that you mentioned feeling too competitive to play golf with our friends because i don't even know if you saw this in discord the other day me and one of our friends james were trying to explain to other people in our discord who don't have the Golf Club 2019 why we like to play. And he was mentioning how it's a very wholesome experience

because we're not very competitive and you can just, you know, sit down with a snack or a drink and we banter and we talk. And I always joked that I was like trying to be the caddy of the other people where I'd say like, oh, dude, you're going to way over hit it there with the five iron, you know, cut it back to the six. And then I was like, well, it is quite wholesome, except for Josh. Josh will be a little bit more of that competitive edge that he'll bring to the table. Yeah, I just, it's not in my nature to not want to win. And I, yeah, I mean, I don't get wrong. I relax and I have fun. But if I'm competing, like I'm competing to win. And yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong, I relax and I have fun. But if I'm competing, I'm competing to win. Yeah, I totally hear you. Yeah, I actually haven't really been playing a

whole lot of games this week. Although I have been watching a lot of the series Avatar on Netflix. And I got to tell you, this is a great show full stop. Not even a great kid show. As an adult, I love this series. It's probably gonna end up in my top 10 of all time, and you know how much I love TV. I mean, I'm all about The Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, and this show, honestly, is right up there. It's incredibly mature. I've shed a couple tears watching this show. I haven't laughed as hard as I have at a show in a long time

as I have with Avatar. So I kind of feel like that's been displacing a lot of my gaming time because we'll knock out two or three episodes as a family. We're about to start the final season, and I'm already a little bit sad because we're going to be coming up at the end. Well, now you got me wanting to check out Avatar, so I might have to dig into this. Yeah, it's still in the Netflix top 10, even though it released a few weeks ago.

So even tonight, we ate dinner in front of the TV, which we normally don't do because everyone was asking to watch more Avatar. And my two-year-old runs around yelling, Appa, yip yip. Which I know doesn't mean anything to you, not having watched it. No, I was going to say. Oh, and we'll say, Anna, do your earthbending. And she'll start busting out her earthbending moves. And it's the funniest thing. Even our two-year-old loves it.

And it's such a good show. You know, we're not getting paid by Nickelodeon or Avatar, but seriously, go watch it. It's like a 9.3 on IMDb for a reason, and if you haven't seen it since you were a kid, watch it again. It's a pretty emotionally complex show, surprisingly. So anyway, as far as games do go,

I did pick up the Command & Conquer remaster, but I've only played about 30 minutes so far. But I was such a big Command & Conquer fan back in the day. I was really feeling a lot of nostalgia opening this game back up. All the old music. Because I don't think Command & Conquer is anywhere on your radar, is it? I never played it, believe it or not. I don't know when it came out if I was just on a different level of life

than you guys, maybe. I don't know. It's kind of like Pogs. I never played Pogs, and I know you guys talk about those all the time. So it's like, I think I was just a little bit too old to get into some of that stuff, and Command & Conquer I think I just missed out. You were too busy playing

Jax and Kick the Can out on the street. Oh, you sucker. Those are the only games they had back in the 50s. I keep getting older every episode. Save me. You're now in your 70s

if I'm doing that math. I was going to say, I just skipped right over the 60s because i think you called me 51 last time so i did i did all right well i think that's that's about all i had here for this week are you ready to jump into a way out let's jump in buddy all right so i do want to preface our conversation of A Way Out just by saying that we are going to be sharing some minor spoilers in the game. With this game being completely story-based, more or less A Way Out is an interactive movie. And so I kind of feel like there's no possible way that we could talk about it without any spoilers. But we will keep the major spoilers, especially in the

final quarter of the game. We won't divulge any of those. So if you haven't played A Way Out yet, still stick around. Just know that we might, you know, spoil a little bit as far as where the game goes in the beginning and the middle. But we will definitely give you warnings if we are going to go into any major spoilers. So still stick around. I think you can still enjoy the podcast and then you can still enjoy the game afterward. Yeah, the goal is definitely to get people some knowledge if they haven't played it, but not ruin the game for them at the same time. Exactly. And a lot of this game, honestly, is just having to experience it. So even if you do share a lot of details in the beginning and in the middle, I really don't think it'll alter the experience much at all. Yeah.

All right. So to kick things off, I do have a description here, which was written by EA. From the creators of Brothers, A Tale of Two Sons comes A Way Out, an exclusively co-op adventure that follows two prisoners, Leo and Vincent, making their daring escape from prison. Together with a friend on your couch or online, you'll explore notions of trust and consequence as your decisions begin to catch up with you. So for our listeners who have maybe never played A Way Out, maybe they haven't watched any footage of this, Josh, do you want to tell them a little bit about what this game is and how it works? Yeah, this game's unique, man. I mean, that's one of the reasons we wanted to talk about it. But there's not another game out there that I can think of that falls into this category quite so much. So what a way out is, is it is a co-op based game where you take control of two different characters.

They start off in prison. I don't want to get too in depth here right now, but they start off in prison and you have to work together, interact with each other. It's split screen, so you're constantly able to see what's going on with the other person that you're not controlling. And then it's very character-driven. It's very story-based. And you have to solve problems along the way. You get into difficult situations, and you got to get out of those situations. The game does a really good job of varying the gameplay, which I think is really neat in this game.

It's almost like three different games in one, because it'll go through these transitions of almost genre. Right, and it's really cool that it does that. I mean, that's really kind of like a top-down, you know, obviously we'll get more detailed, but story-based, co-op, character-driven game is the best summary I could give, I guess. Yeah, it's kind of hard to succinctly explain what this game's like. So I think one of the funny things about this game that does make it unique, like you pointed out, is that there is no way to play this game solo. You have to play this game with another person. You cannot play with an AI. As far as I know, there's no matchmaking through Origin or through EA. So one of the interesting things with this game is you buy it, but then you can extend a friend pass to an unlimited number of friends online.

They can download the game. And as long as you host it as the game owner, any of your friends can join and play with you for free. So in our case, I bought A Way Out back when it first released and none of my friends did. And yet I played through it with you and I also played through it with my friend Andrew. So it's kind of neat that only one person buys it and you can both experience it. That is an amazing thing to do. And I really wish more game developers would do that. I would not have bought this game along with you initially. It's actually a really cool thing that they did because they knew you can't do this game with an AI. Even if they tried to develop that, I think it would ruin it. Yeah, there's no way it would work. You mentioned a little bit about the simultaneous split screen.

And what's interesting about that is there's always something interesting to listen to or to follow on one or both sides of the screen. We might both be talking to characters simultaneously, and they're talking about completely different things. And so it's interesting that you're trying to follow both storylines simultaneously, and yet it does work together in harmony in a lot of different cases, where I might be able to see you in the background of my screen, and on yours, you're doing something else, to someone or we might both be riding motorcycles and then they're going to cross each other and so you see it in action from both angles and so the game does this really interesting thing with playing with perspective

and with you know just your field of view between the two characters. It's a very clever way to do co-op. It's a little bit different in that regard. It's definitely unique. Yeah, it's very original. And something to mention too is when we say split screen, this isn't like a couch co-op split screen. Even though Paul and I are playing online together remotely, you still have that split screen. Exactly. Right. Which is interesting because most have that split screen. Exactly. Right. Which is interesting because most people hear split screen and they think, oh, I'm sharing the same TV or the same monitor with somebody. And no, that's not the case at all. This game is 100% split screen no matter what, which is neat.

Yeah. Sometimes one character is just walking to the next objective, but then the other character is going through a cutscene. And so it's kind of fun where you're just walking, which would normally be boring, but instead I can actually just watch and see whatever my partner is doing. And that was very clever, and I do wonder if we'll see that type of element in future games. Because I think there's a lot that you can do there. There's a lot of creative freedom in how to mesh those two together. So I thought that we could go back a little bit in time. Do you remember first finding out or hearing about A Way Out?

Do you remember how you ended up playing it to begin with? I do, actually. I had played Brothers, which is a great game. And then I remember... This is what's funny i don't know if you actually know this but i remember i'm not a big talk show guy but or late night especially but i was watching some talk show conan o'brien or something back in the day and they were interviewing the developer of a way out it was one of those things where it's like you know how they have the guy on like they did that with No Man's Sky.

There was a lot of hype around that. And I just remember watching this part where they were interviewing the guy and he was talking about this game and how they developed it and what their goals for the game were and how they really wanted to make it each part of the game different

so that it didn't get stale and boring for people. And then shortly thereafter, I think you had mentioned, hey, guys, this looks like a really cool game. Who wants to pick it up? Only one of us needs to buy a copy of it. Thanks for buying a copy there, Paul. Yeah, I got nominated for that. And then we started playing it after that. Yeah. You mentioned the fact that this is the same guy who made the game brothers a tale of two sons and do you mind if we take just like a short detour just

to talk about that for a minute that game's great man okay so for me i had picked up and played brothers and i found that game to have a profound effect on me in a lot of ways that anyone who wants to say that video games cannot be art have not played games like brothers oh yeah because brothers investigates grief and death and healing and all of those concepts in a very profound way so if you haven't played brothers i am gonna spoil a little bit of that ending. So you can just maybe skip ahead like 60 seconds here. But in that game, you have the two brothers who are out trying to get some healing water that's going to heal their dad. Their mom has already died. And so they go out on this adventure. And the older brother can do stronger

things and the younger brother can do stronger things and the younger brother can do weaker things and you always work them together and you would hold like the left trigger for the older brother to do whatever he was going to do and the right trigger for the younger brother well at the end of the game the older brother actually dies and so now you're playing the very end of the game as just the younger brother and all of a sudden you get to a thing that you can only operate as the older brother, you would think. And so then when you go to activate it, the younger brother then takes that action. And the rest of the game, he's able to learn from him. And now it's like he's now the older brother and is able to operate like him. And I remember thinking, I would have never thought that you could make the controls of the game an actual element of the story. And at that point on, I thought, that's so creative. I'll try anything that this guy makes in the future.

And so as soon as I heard about A Way Out, and at this point now he's way more famous because of what Brothers did, and so I couldn't wait for it to come out. I gladly ponied up the $30 to buy it because I was very curious to see what he would do this time around with a bigger budget. When you first start playing with a friend, you do have an option to select to play as either Leo or as Vincent. And when the game starts up, you don't know anything really about anything yet. It just pops up and you invite your friend and now you each have to pick a character. And so I just jotted down the very short snippet of what they tell you about each character.

And for you guys as the audience, you can probably guess who Josh and I each picked. But Vincent is 43. He worked as a banker. He is serving a 14-year prison sentence for fraud, embezzlement, and murder. And his personality is rational, disciplined, and reserved. Then on the other side, you have Leo. He's 36. He grew up in an orphanage.

He's serving an eight-year sentence for getting caught during a diamond heist. His personality is confident, short-tempered, and a joker. Yeah. So Josh, when you and I first looked at those characters, did you identify with one more than the other? Yeah, you know, I've always wanted to work in a bank, and I've always wanted to be responsible. No, I went with Leo right away. As soon as I read that description where it was like, okay, this guy's a joker and he's confident.

I'm not sure I tempered, but that's okay. You can't win them all right there. But yeah, I instantly was just like, okay, I'm going Leo. And you started laughing because you were like, yeah, I kind of figured that fits you. It was so obvious that you were meant to play Leo and I was meant to play Vincent. Yeah, it really didn't work out well. And we both just immediately knew. Yeah, there was no arguing over who got to be Vincent or anything like that. So the game does let you switch characters anytime you reload the game. So it doesn't lock you into one. But we never wanted to switch.

We felt like those were the right avatars for our characters. We stuck with them. Yeah, and that's something to be said, too. Like, I, you know, we could have switched, but I had zero desire to, like, try. Like, I was attached to Leo at that point. Like, that was my guy, you know? And so I was going to see things through with him. And that

was pretty cool. Yeah, absolutely. I think we both really identified with those characters. And since the game does take a lot of emotional turns over the course of the story, even though this game, look, it's not a perfect game, we are going to poke fun at some of the issues with this game. But I still found it to be incredibly engrossing, especially toward the end. You know, the beginning and the middle maybe didn't quite fully engross me into the story,

but by the end I really did. So I felt like I really identified with the motives and the character of Vincent. I know you felt the same with Leo. And what's kind of funny is when we first played this back in 2018, we actually didn't finish. How far into this game do you think we actually made it? Because it's not even a very long game. When we played it a while back, I mean, an hour and a half, two hours, maybe, playtime? I think we played one session. Yeah. So I want to say like, yeah, an hour and a half, I think, playtime wise.

Why did we not finish this game? Dude, I have no idea. I don't remember. The only thing I can even remotely think of is that some other game released where it was like, oh, okay, everybody's playing this. And we just shelved it for some reason. Something must have happened. Because I remember not really loving the beginning of this game. And I played the first hour and a half with you.

And I played the first hour and a half with my friend Andrew. And something else must have released. Because none of us played it for the next two years. And then here we decided to pick it for the show and i was a little worried jumping back in because i thought oh man i'm gonna have to play the beginning of this game for the third time it didn't really grab me before is it gonna grab me this time and i gotta say i still thought the beginning was a little bit weaker compared to the ending but i really did love the experience. I thought it was

really fun. You and I just finished it actually this afternoon. And I felt really pumped afterward. I loved the story. I loved the ending in particular. It was better than I thought it was going to be, to be honest with you, because I remember playing the initial hour and a half, and then having to go redo that. I remembered everything about it. And so it was like, all right, well, we kind of have to go through all this again. And then I remember getting to the point where it was like, okay, this is all new for me. And it was like, I just kind of woke up. You know what I mean? I was like, all right, I'm ready now. We got through all that stuff. And the beginning is a little slow, to just touch base on that. The beginning is slower.

One really funny element that we didn't touch on quite yet is that sometimes you hit a fork in the road in the game and it presents you with two options. There's what Leo wants to do and what Vincent wants to do. And you have to agree and come to a consensus of what to do. And what they want to do falls in line with their personalities. So like at one point, and this is not a spoiler, you do escape from the prison. Right away in the beginning, you know that because the two characters are talking while on a plane

and they are talking about the escape. So you know from the beginning, these guys are going to get out of prison. I'm not sure what's going to happen after. And so basically after they first get out of prison and they're on the run, they're trying to get out of the prison area. And so there's a bridge. And Leo says, well, let's just go knock out that cop, steal his car, and let's go drive it past all the cops.

And Vincent says, no, are you crazy? We have to go underneath the bridge. Let's go ahead and cross on the under railings. And so as a group, you have to talk about it and decide, well, what are we going to do? And sometimes we would make the wise decision. And sometimes just for the humor, we're like, oh no, we're definitely going with tie up that couple and throw them in the closet as opposed to stealthily walking around because we just need to see what's going to happen. Yeah. So that was another really clever element.

I want to thank you for, you know, being willing to go with the Leo side of things. We did. We generally went with Leo. The only time that we really didn't was one of the funny elements of the game is that Leo has a fear of heights. And somehow that comes into play like eight different times during this game. And we did have an opportunity to force Leo to go parachuting. And we couldn't resist that. No, and I'm glad we didn't either.

Yeah, that led to some very, very funny scenes. So generally, we did go the Leo route. But that does lead to a little bit of replayability. You could go back, even though most divided the game into like four quarters. So I thought we could just do like four mini segments where I'll just kind of remind you a little bit about that part of the story. And then let's just talk about anything that stuck out, anything that worked really well, anything that didn't, anything that we want to poke fun of or any plot inconsistencies, anything like that. So I thought that would be kind of a fun way to structure it. Yeah, that's a good idea. So the first mini segment here I've called Jailhouse Rock. All right.

So you start off in prison. Leo and Vincent meet for the first time. And they make a plan to escape together. And then they actually do escape from the prison is there anything during that time that kind of stands out to you dude that is the least secure prison i think i've ever seen now this game does take place back in the early 70s so i don't know if security has really come that far in the last 40 years. This prison has some design flaws. Let's just say that.

It's got some serious issues. So with as many guards as are walking around, there's some really dumb stuff and layouts. I mean, I guess the game didn't want to get into how do you really escape a maximum security prison, because that might take a really long time. So they definitely took some liberties there. But there are a few times where you're like, come on, man, the guards aren't this dumb. Or why would they put a window right next to a metal detector? That doesn't make any sense. Let's talk about that metal detector. Okay, so in the game, you do have to go steal and smuggle some items to different areas.

So, like, for example, you can go take an item that's in, like, the medical center, or you might have to your cell, you have to pass through a metal detector, but there's just a window right around the corner that connects the two sides. So I would just hold a screwdriver, you'd go through the metal detector, and I would literally hand it to you through an open window, and then I would walk through myself. Yeah. And then I would walk through myself. This is definitely a little bit of a shortcut in designing the game. I feel like you can smuggle stuff into prisons. It happens all the time. It's usually not by handing them through open windows. Yeah. So that was a little interesting.

Also, did you like how you could disconnect the toilet and there were no pipes? Oh, no. There was no plumbing. No pipes. No sound of it scraping on the floor. This thing was on the most well-oiled, like just slick hinges that you've ever seen in your life. Yeah, that part was interesting, too, because that's a part where you kind of have to dodge the guards a little bit. And you need your buddy's help.

He's kind of looking out for him. But, man, you could open and close that toilet in like a half a second flat. So, I mean, you know, they definitely took some liberties there as well. Yeah, that was so funny. And one of the things that I really did like is that I even made fun of it when you and I were playing, because it had been such a long time. I forgot I forgot uh Leo and Vincent kind of make their plan and they kind of dig their way out of their cell and I was like oh I'm really glad that this came together for them in one afternoon yeah planning this whole escape but then actually to the game's credit they don't make it quite that easy it is a several day process so the characters kind of get out of their cell,

but then they run into another hurdle. Okay, well, we need to go figure out a way to get past this. And I really appreciated the fact that the game did not force you to always walk all the way back to your cell. And then the next day, walk all the way back there. The game would give you some shortcuts. So as soon as you ran into a hurdle, they would talk about it, the screen would dim, and then they would wake back up the next day back in their prison cell. So I really appreciated that in the game. That would have been terrible, because that

would have been... The beginning is not the best part of the game by any means, but that would have really made it a lot worse if you had to backtrack the whole way. Yeah, it would have felt much more laborious all right so so first segment was jailhouse rock second segment alien ant farm all right so leo and vincent run across a farm in the middle of nowhere and okay look i know that's a bad segment name. It's on purpose. All right.

Funny side story. I saw Alien Ant Farm open for 311 back when I was in high school. Really? And everybody booed Alien Ant Farm off the stage. So anyway, yeah, they were not the greatest of bands. So anyway, Alien Ant Farm. So Leo and Vincentcent those are their names they run into this farm they have to do some things on the property and then it ends with a long chase scene with the police both on car and by boat and i think for you and me, this was a real turning point in the game.

Definitely. Definitely. Yeah, because up till then, it was just a lot of walking around and kind of interacting with characters and stuff. I mean, the prison plays a big part of the game. This is the part of the game where, to me, it really did open up because they started to show that this is not just like a walking simulator. This is not just, you know, walking around interacting with, with,

you know, NPCs or something like that. And that's when I was like, okay, this is pretty cool. Like, I hope they keep doing stuff like this because the car chase, the car chase was a ton of fun.

You were driving, I'm in the back with a shotgun. Uh, I mean, so that was really cool. You know, the boat part really does stand out to me as well. Because you have to, you know, take this boat down the river. And that ain't easy to do. As we found out many times. It's not easy because each of us can only control one paddle.

And I will say, with the exception of the ending so other than the very end the boat scene is definitely when you and i got our loudest yes because we were definitely shouting yelling at each other are we going left or right are we are we going left or right go left left then we'd both start like going left but then we'd realize it's too much so then like we'd we'd try to over correct and then one of us would be left one yeah it was it was it was chaotic we legit died on the boat ride probably three or four times and this is not a hard game all right this is something that we might touch on later this game is not hard all right it's more the experience

and the fun but we did legitimately die multiple times on this boat ride. That boat's really hard to steer, man. It is hard to steer. But it was so thrilling. And it was such a prolonged chase where you go straight from the car to getting out and then running and jumping into the boat. And then you have the moment where the game, for me, went from moderately boring to, oh, I'm actually really interested to see where this goes. And so that was what I had here for the second segment. Third mini segment, Preparation H.

Okay. Ooh. This is the point of the – if you don't know what Preparation H is – I don't remember that part of the game. If you don't know what Preparation H is, you can go Google it. But the Preparation H segment is the part of the game of them are in prison in part due to some guy named Harvey. And as the game goes on, you start to learn more about it. And so kind of the goal of these characters, it's kind of twofold. They each have their own families, which is part of what they're concerned about.

And they're also concerned about taking care of Harvey. And so during this part of the game, they're doing research. They're trying to figure out where Harvey is. What are we going to do about it? And so a couple things that might stand out for this part of the game is Leo asking to make a stop to visit his family. There's also a scene where you have to torture somebody who knows harvey's whereabouts oh that part was so great so funny and then you also both end up in a hospital

due to a certain situation you both have to go and visit a hospital. So what stands out here in the third quarter of this game? The torture part, number one. The torture? I mean, I don't care. If we have to spoil anything, the torture part is the one thing we got to spoil, man. Good old Ray. Ray was the guy's name. Yeah.

So you're trying to find Harvey. Harvey is like a – he's a big bad guy and you're going after him. And of course, like finding any big bad guy, you got to find somebody that knows where the big bad guy is at. And so you know where that guy is. You wind up capturing him and he won't tell you anything. So then you got to go, okay, well, we're going to make you talk. Yeah. And there's so many different options to make this guy talk.

And you and I were just having a heyday trying out different stuff. Yeah. I looked around, and one of the options was a lamp. And I was like, how on earth am I going to torture the guy with the lamp? And so I just clicked it. And Ray, as he's tied up in this chair, he even says oh what are you gonna do like stick this light in my eyes great great idea and then my character proceeds to strip the wires and electrocute the guy while the lamp was plugged in and so the guy's just shaking in his chair and then it's like you know

where's harvey where is he and of course he still won't give up the info and next thing i know what are you rolling up with oh i'm i've got the the nail gun the nail gun yeah i mean that sounds good right like makes sense to me get groceries delivered across the gta from real canadian super with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. Yeah, I thought he was just going to threaten, like, maybe hold the nail gun up to him. But what did Leo do with it?

I put at least a dozen nails in that guy's legs, man. He just goes straight up to his thigh and goes, and just shoots him full of nails. He ain't getting through the prison metal detector after that, that's for sure. No, man, I mean, I'm not an advocate for torture, but in this scenario, it was so outlandish that we couldn't help but just laugh at the idea of, like like plugging in this lamp and electrocuting the guy i thought i thought it was so funny so yeah you you do torture ray and did you know that

there's actually a hidden scene because we we let ray live we got the information and then we left well like any normal good guys would do. I mean, we're not monsters, Paul. We only tortured the guy. We're not going to do anything more. Right. They're criminals with a heart of gold. Right. You can do a couple of secret options and Leo will kick Ray off of that skyscraper and he'll fall to his death. What? I mean, not that I would do that. I'm just saying I didn't know that was an option. So this game, because I try to avoid any potential spoilers while we play, but when we were done, I looked on YouTube, and there's a bunch of secret trophies and hidden cutscenes you can unlock. It's kind of clever that that's built into the game. So I think the other thing that stands out to me was stopping by to visit Leo's wife and son.

And I kind of feel like Leo made a couple poor decisions during this part of the game. That part of the game made me uncomfortable because as the father of my son in that game, I'm not real happy with the way you treated my son, Paul. I've been in prison for eight years, and I haven't seen my kid in a while. Got to talk to my wife for a little bit, tell her what's going on with the plan, and then you just go off and just completely replace me.

I was being the father that you never were to that child. I was playing basketball with him. I was encouraging him. I told him that he could be a pro, which I thought was a little bold because I didn't see him actually shoot or dribble. Because as soon as you were done talking to your wife, you came and joined us on the court. And what level of participation did we give this young child? We tried. We tried to pass him the ball, and then he was just a garden gnome, basically.

Yeah, all you and I did was just run up and down. And they were actually dunking the ball, which I thought was hysterical, because these guys, they're not, like, unfit, but they did not look like guys who could go dunk on a hoop. No, definitely not. That did crack me up. You stay away from my son. Okay, Paul, in the future. All right. Yep.

And then also in the scene where you and I had to go to a hospital to visit someone, it was like a very time sensitive issue. And you and I are just wandering through this hospital. And one of the things that we haven't really touched on yet is that there are a lot of mini games within A Way Out. And you noticed that there was a set of Connect Four in the waiting room. And you and I just sat and played Connect Four for a solid 15 minutes. Instead of worrying about the storyline, we're fugitives, we're not worrying about the cops. We just sat and played connect four and then had a competition of who could pop a wheelie in a wheelchair in a wheelchair yep out

in the hallways really good at wheelchair wheelies by the way i held that for like a solid minute until i said all right i'm bored i'm just gonna fall on purpose uh so those kind of those really stuck out to me i feel like we were definitely goofing off a lot more in this part of the game. Yeah, but the game almost encourages that because there's a lot of in-between where, and this is part of the pacing of the game too, is there's just times where you're just kind of hanging out for a little bit. Yeah. And so obviously that was kind of funny because we were in a rush to play Connect to 4, Yeah. hospital throwing cards at one point um and it's just neat that they incorporate that i mean there's

really no point to it other than just atmosphere maybe or to kind of slow down the pacing of the game and kind of say look not everything is this mission to go get harvey you're still just people that sometimes have to just kill a little bit of time yeah even in the middle of us stealing a truck we stopped and played horseshoeshoes for a while. Yeah, you really got Horseshoes too, by the way. I was pretty good at Horseshoes. I was killing the minigames in A Way Out. Alright, and then for the final mini-segment, the last quarter of the game, I have titled, It's the End of the world as we know it. So I'm really bringing some timely music references

here between Alien Ant Farm, REM, Elvis. So there you go, kind of shows our age a little bit. So at the end of the game, the characters do leave and they depart to go take on Harvey and his crew. And I would probably just leave the story a little bit more vague like that. I think what really stood out to you and me is the fact that the game became much more action-packed at this point. Yeah, I mean, I kept joking the entire game, even when we were in prison, going, when do we get rocket launchers? Like, when do we get rocket launchers? Because I did not think this game was like that. And, you know, I'm not going to spoil anything, but it definitely gets faster paced towards the end of the game.

And there is some gunplay in this game. And so that just became really neat. And again, that kind of goes to the whole, there are different phases in this game. And that's one of them. And it's really cool to have happen. And then they do it. So they're very in touch with like the player in this regard and like what you kind of want to see happen with the story. Oh yeah. Yeah. And so that was really cool.

Yeah. It transitions from a breakout of prison to these two guys who are fugitives out on the run, kind of like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. And then all of a sudden it's like this uh 80s action where you and i are running around where you have a choice between an m16 or a shotgun or an mp5 or i think a sniper i think those were the four options yeah and then all of a sudden we're just storming a compound and it gets pretty violent. And I think that didn't catch us off guard or anything, but

up to that point, you're not really expecting a whole lot of violence, and then they definitely bring a lot of that toward the end of the game. Yeah. I mean, we talked about the car chasing, the boat. I mean, there's motorcycles and all kinds of stuff. The game just changes frequently, and it definitely keeps you on your toes. It adds a layer of fun. Just to me, just when I felt like it was starting to get repetitive, it switches gears. And that is great that it does that. Exactly. Because this game's only about six, six and and a half hours and so the fact that it kind of transitions like every hour and a half to two hours i thought was really ingenious yeah i thought that

was probably the best thing about the game all right so that kind of sums up what we have to say about the game i do have some reviews that were written and left on metacritic a way out can be found on origin so it's not on Steam, unfortunately. But I did go ahead and I pulled a couple reviews here that I think you will enjoy. So the first review that I have here was a 10 out of 10 perfect rating, and here's what the user said. A Way Out has to be the best game I've played this year by far. The direction, the mix of gameplay style, discovery with games within the game itself, hom for free makes it even better. What a journey. First time I've played a game for six hours straight, apart for a 30-minute break for dinner.

Some of the sweeping camera moves was just mind-blowing, some reminded me of David Fincher. Can't recommend it enough. Two friends will have a blast with it. Pretty accurate. I'm listening to the review, and he's touching all these points and I'm like, yep. Yep.

Yep. It's not a 10 out of 10. It might be overstating the positives a little. He definitely is, is, you know, stating what the good points of the game are. So,

and I agree with all of those. Yeah. And, and David Fincher is my favorite movie director and let's let's pump the brakes okay a way out has nothing on fincher movies like fight club or gone girl or you know half these other movies that he's made but in any case the the next review here polar opposite ready this is a one star one star review had high hopes but this game is so boring you can barely ever actually play the game most of your played hours is just watching cut scenes the game

is also ridiculously easy there is almost no way that you can fail would have been better if they just made a movie instead of this failure of a game this guy didn't know what he was playing i mean yeah simple simple. You don't go into this game not knowing what it is. But then again, I guess that's our job, right? We're explaining what it is to you guys listening out there. But this isn't his genre, and he didn't know what he was getting into. Yeah, I don't disagree with the points that he's making. That's just what this game is. If you don't want to play an interactive movie that has some shooting elements, then don't play this game. If you're

cool with having a lot of cutscenes and it being story focused, then those points don't matter, because this game's not supposed to provide nonstop action. Right, exactly. All right, so here's my favorite review it is a little long so bear with me it is a three-star review it's it's barely coherent but i'm gonna go ahead and read it anyway all right this game does nothing well you start the game as a man standing in a prison with your friend your friend is next to you and he's there with a knife. You are like, help me open this toilet, I need to go in. He is helping you get in the toilet, and a guard come. You get some beds, you get some tools, and you climb through the toilet.

Leo is a very bad boy. Vincent is a very good boy. They are different, but they are the same. They are close now, even though Leo doesn't want to be close. They get out and are chased by dogs. Like, WTF? Who would let dogs go that far? This game gets so bad from here because it doesn't know what it is.

Is it a hospital drama, or is it a crime thriller? Like, Leo is such a wuss, he should freaking kill Ray. Why did he not just drop kick that crap bag off the roof like for real he hold a blowtorch against his privates and not kick him off the roof this game was fun but not many times did i smile overall three out of ten that's the that's quite possibly the best review I've ever heard. When I read this the first time, I legitimately started crying when I read, Leo is a very bad boy. Oh, man.

And then he ends it by saying, this game was fun, but not many times did I smile. Three out of ten. I had to read that review. I thought it was too funny. Oh, my goodness. I love it 3 out of 10. I had to read that review. I thought it was too funny. Oh my goodness. I love it. That is great. Alright, and then the final review is a 9 out of 10. I thought this was probably the best

most succinct review. A Way Out is the best game I have ever played with a friend. You should really get it. It will bring some tears to your eyes, jokes, sadness, chases, and puzzles't remember getting real emotional. Not sad, anyway. I did get emotional, but sadness was not the emotion I got. Yeah, this game, I would say,

maybe also depending on which player you've identified with more, it'll probably bring out different emotions. But I thought that was great, right? There's high drama, jokes, chases, and puzzles. What else do you really need to know? Yeah, I mean, yeah, it really is. That's spot on.

Yeah. So let's take our guesses, which we do every week. We try to guess what the user score is for this game. So this is from Metacritic, 0.0 to 10.0. What do you think users have rated A Way Out? 8.4. Wow, that's pretty high. I feel like that's a safe bet.

Alright. My guess was 8.0, and I thought I was guessing high. It's a 7.6 on PC. Oh, I lost. Dang it. It's actually an 8.0 on PS4, so it's a little higher on console. I'm not sure why. But yeah, I think the initial hatred kind of got focused on the pc reviews almost every negative review you read just says such long cut scenes i found it so boring you

hardly shoot people until the end and it's like well that's just the genre you just didn't know what you were signing up yeah i mean and not every game needs shooting man like even though this game does incorporate some it's definitely not like the pinnacle of the game or what this game is about, like, at all. You know? And so not every game needs to have shooting in it. And these people that are like, man, I didn't get my rocket launcher. Like, that's why I was joking the whole time about when do we get our rocket launchers? You know?

Because it's like, you don't need that. Exactly. So, all right. Even though I was closer i'm still gonna give you the honors josh go ahead and set us up for make love marry murder wow you don't even need the music for that part man look at that i'm getting so good at this you don't even need the music for that part man look at that i'm getting so good at this you don't even need the intro anymore you you really left left nothing on the table there for that one um this one's easy for me this is a make love plain and simple i mean this game does not deserve

murder unless you are one of those people that just didn't know what you were getting into or just hate story character-based games. I mean, if that's not for you, then, hey, I completely understand. Don't buy this game then. But don't play it knowing that you're not into that and then give it a bad score because you don't like story character games. Like, I don't... Yeah.

You know, that part doesn't make any sense to me. But, I mean, you know, yeah, make love all the way. I had a blast playing this with you. It is super cool to have a good buddy that you can go through this game with and that you can make those decisions and laugh and, you know, just experience it. It's by no means a merry. I mean, I'll never play this game again, you know, and that's not a knock against the game necessarily. It's just, we've experienced it.

Like the experience is over, you know, as far as that goes. I mean, I could see maybe if you had another friend that wanted to play it and then you could play like as Leo instead of Vincent and you could make lots of different choices. Right.

See how there is some replayability there. Not for me. I, like I said, I've I'm happy with the experience, but I would not play this game again just because. So it can't be a Mary in that case for me. that I'm getting a great deal. I'm going to play the game for a long time. A Way Out is well worth playing. I highly recommend it. Just know what you're signing up for.

You know, it's $30 and you're going to get six hours of fun out of it. Since a lot of the fun and a lot of the driving force of the game is discovering the story as you go. And then once the story completes, there's not a whole lot of reason to go back and play. So, you know, once you already know how the story ends, you're just done. So it's a blast. The highs of this game, I thought were very, very high. It's just limited gameplay. So if you have the budget, you know, maybe instead of dropping $30 to, you you know rent a movie on demand during the covet outbreak or maybe if you're listening to this and life's somewhat back to

normal maybe instead of going out to the movies for 30 bucks you know buy this game instead and you'll get six or seven hours you can play this with anyone even if they never play video games anyone can pick this up and play yeah that's very true one other last thing that we didn't really mention that also made it super fun was intentionally letting each other die so there would be oh that part was great yeah there'd be like a part where like one character's like they've already crossed a little ravine and the other person's sliding down and they jump and you both have to hold the left mouse button to grab each other and so like both people would be holding it and then at the last second you could let go and their hand would come back and they plummet to their death and so every once in a while we had to intentionally

let each other die just to see the scenes it was great too because it was always at the like the most rando times too where it's like okay we okay, we're, we're cruising along. And then all of a sudden I just see you just, I see your button just let go. And I'm like, Oh, you know, no, don't do it,

Paul. Yeah. And let's just, just tease it that, you know, we, we went parachuting and there, there were some shenanigans during,

during the parachute portion. All right. So there you go. It's a, it's a, a consensus. Make love. All right. So there you go. It's a consensus. Anonymous make love. All right. Well, let's move into the leaderboard.

See where this game is going to compare with our others. All right. So this game is going to be kind of hard to place. Yeah. Being story-driven, shorter gameplay. It's definitely not going to be at the top or the very bottom. I don't think. I think it's going to be in the middle.

I do find it's got to be in the middle somewhere. All right, so right now we have 17 games in our leader board for those of you who maybe are listening for the first time even though we're very much comparing apples to oranges to i don't know turkey we we try to compare what we recommend to our audience so uh i think this is probably going to be somewhere kind of near the middle so we've got six war zone seven valorant eight far cry 5 keep talking no one explodes the cycle civ 6 rim world gtfo it's going to be somewhere in that mix i i honestly have no idea where to put this do you have a starting spot this is why i love the leaderboard, though. Because taking a game like A Way Out, which is a story...

I mean, it's a two-player co-op story-based game. And putting it up against the likes of Call of Duty Warzone. You know what I mean? How do you justify that? You can't. I mean, it's crazy. That's the fun of it, though. So, I think I want to put it one under the cycle.

Okay. Above Civ 6, but below the cycle. I think it's definitely better than Civ 6. So if you want to put it at 11, I'm okay with that. Let's do that. I think the trouble is, cycle is too low on the leaderboard right now because it's such a good game and it's hard to put this above the cycle. And that's the, that's the catch there. If the cycle was ranked higher, I think it would only reinforce that it's somewhere right by keep talking and no one explodes or civ six.

You know what I mean? So I'm with you there. So let's put it under the cycle for now. And then we're, we're going to, we're going to review the leaderboard in a, in a show coming up here pretty soon because i think we all see some stuff where our our thoughts have changed

or after stewing on it for a little while it's like hey this might be ranked too low this might be ranked a little too high kind of thing so yeah i think that'll be fun also to kind of you know maybe take a look back at some of these games and not go into them in a lot of detail but kind of just talk through why it might be too high or too low and try to convince each other. You know, we're strapping now. We're going to have to hear Todd's case for Halo yet again.

Halo Reach, he's going to want it higher than 16 now. Each week, Halo gets pushed down. That's my favorite part. I love it. My favorite part of the show is just pushing Halo down again. Oh, man. All right, so we're good? It's 11 now. Oh, man. All right. So we're good.

It's 11 now? It's 11. All right. I think that's a good spot for it. Yeah. So if you haven't taken a look at our full leaderboard, you can come see it at multiplayerpodcast.com. And you can kind of use that. Maybe if you're looking for a new game to play, take a look at our rankings.

See if there's something there that you haven't played and might be interested in. Go back and listen to the episode and then maybe pick up the game if you want so that that brings us to the end of today's show uh next week we are gonna be doing a two-for-one episode we've done this once before when we did i think we titled the episode co-op couch potatoes or couch co-op potatoes this will be couch co-op potatoes too we are going to be taking a look at minecraft dungeons which just recently came out such a fun game and we're also going to take a look at the game raft so we have two games that are actually quite different so if you want to check those out minecraft dungeons is through the microsoft store

you can play it on the Xbox Pass if you have it. Raft you can find on Steam. And then we will be back with our bonus round episode on Thursday. And then we'll be back to our fully scheduled episodes, which will be Minecraft Dungeons and Raft the following Monday. Anything else to add, Josh, for the end of this episode? Just, I mean, if you're listening and you haven't left us a review yet, I mean, just please take the time to leave us a review. Honestly, they're so helpful for us. We really love hearing what you guys say. I mean, honestly, it's really cool to just be able to go in and actually read reviews that people leave for us. So it doesn't have to be super wordy.

Just write something for us. Let us know what you to be super wordy. You know, just write something for us. Let us know what you think. Obviously, five stars is the best and that's what we're really hoping for. But if you're listening and you haven't left us a review yet, do us a solid, leave us a review. It really, really does help the show. Yeah, absolutely. And come check us out on social media. You can find us on Twitter at MultiplayerPod. And come let us know if you have any thoughts on the leaderboard, any ideas for future segments on Bonus Round, any questions that you want to ask. We'd love to hear

from you guys. And that's about it for this week. So until next time, if you see Josh out on the streets with a nail gun, go run in the other way. Stay away. I'm coming for your thighs. He's not afraid to use it all right see you guys next time all right see you everybody