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> Results: Escape From Paradise City
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The ESRB Says
Blood: GamerDad saw blood spatter from every battle. Language: Plenty of use of words featured in films like Scarface are heard throughout the game. Violence: Everything in the game is about killing thugs and beating up mob bosses. To paraphrase the movie Airplane, you take your chances getting out of bed in the morning, crossing the street, sticking your face in a fan ... or making a cross-genre game. For every game that succeeds, there are a dozen that fall flat. And if you dare to cross three genres, the likelihood of failure rises exponentially. And it is that daring attempt that makes me applaud the developers while criticizing the mixed success of the results of their efforts. Escape from Paradise City mixes up role playing, real-time strategy, and a top-down take on the sandbox city-centric thug-whacking genre (i.e. GTA clone). And unfortunately the distillation isn't kind to any of the constituents: they all lose something of their charm rather than the game being 'more than the sum of its' parts'. Does it sound like the game gets pretty repetitive? That is because it does - despite being less than a dozen hours long, working your way through neighborhoods becomes drudgery before long. The problem is that the game presents a very compelling scenario - you have the motivations for your characters, the general course of action, and the eventual end-game all lined up early on. And the initial chapters are quite enjoyable - it is when you realize that you have completely tapped the depth of the game within fifteen minutes that you suspect you will be stuck on this treadmill for the rest of the game. And so it comes to pass. But as I said in the beginning, I still applaud the developers for taking a chance: Escape from Paradise City isn't a bad game, it just fails to live up to its own potential. The combat lacks depth, the environments lack variety, the multiplayer lacks ... players, and the overall experience just feels lacking. With a little variety and some spicing up of the combat system this could have been a really solid effort rather than a mundane treadmill. Skip on this one - at least until it is in the bargain bins, which shouldn't take long.  
Escape from Paradise City fully embraces the stereotypes of a gang-ridden inner city out of control - violent encounters with thugs, strong language used at every opportunity, and a generally dark and seedy feeling throughout. The battles are fast, intense and bloody and the cutscenes and general dialogue features plenty of strong language typical of the crime genre. The game is fairly mild for a M-rated game, but the content clearly targets it as an experience intended for older teens and adults, and therefore earns an Adult GamerDad Age Seal.
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