Unique games are few and far between on our beloved PSP. Just walk through your local EBGames and you’ll see rows and rows of ports and conversions. Not to say that it’s a bad thing. There is definitely a place for portable versions of ones console favorites. It’s just that playing the odd original gem makes owning a PSP worth it.

Exit is one of those gems.

In Exit you play the part of Mr. ESC, an escapologist. It’s your job to rescue people from various predicaments. Think Spy vs. Spy meets Lemmings and you’ll have a good idea on how this game plays out. In this game your are presented with a series of levels which have you running around rescuing people from various predicaments. There are different types of helpless trapped victims in this game, each one with their own set of strengths and weaknesses. For example the child is small enough to squeeze through small tunnels, but is unable to get himself up high ledges. You’ll have to take each victim’s abilities into account when you are planning how to solve the levels.

And yes I just said solve, Exit is an action strategy game. You’ll have to plan out your solution to the levels, sometimes replaying them a few times to figure out the proper solution. While this can be frustrating at times, I found the actual gameplay quite addictive.

The victims in the levels aren’t just robots either. If you use the analog stick a little mouse cursor pops up allowing you to give general commands to the ones you are saving. These are very basic commands mind you such as telling them to pick up a key, or unlock a door. But having some form of control is a great thing. I did run into a few instances where my commands would be ignored, or the victims following me would get lost. A quick tap on the Left trigger stopped them in their tracks and allowed me to regain control. So it wasn’t all bad.

Exit contains 100 levels total, which are divided into 10 chapters. You have access to the first 7 chapters when you start the game, so if a level stumps you, you can leave it for later. I think it was a very smart move to divide the game up into 100 little levels. It makes it that much easier to just pick up the game for a quick run through a level or two and also just as easy to put it back down again when you get a little too frustrated to continue. They definitely kept the portability of the game in mind in this way.

Ubisoft took an interesting design direction for the art and graphics. The star of this game, Mr. ESC, is nothing more then a few polygons making him look like a shadow. The level graphics look almost paper or comic-like, almost as if you were looking at something that came out of the Viewtiful Joe games. I’ll have to admit that it was this design direction that first interested me in this game, even before I saw or heard about the gameplay. When you first get into the game and start moving around it seriously looks like you are inside a comic book. This is a very cool design direction, and way different then the normal drive for photo-realism.

The soundtrack is decent in the game, but nothing about it stands out. Ubi threw in a few sampled phrases that your character says, and some for the victims as well, but they didn’t over do it.

The one complaint that I would have with this game is the control. It’s quite muddy in places, almost to the point that you think you are playing a turn based game. The delay between hitting say the jump button, and your character actually jumping is quite jarring. When you are using various environmental items like ladders or ropes you lose all control of your character. To use a ladder for example you stand in front of it, and press the action button. The computer then takes over the control and plays out the animation of you walking up to the ladder and climbing it. You are not able to stop in mid climb, change directions or anything. Basically if you make a mistake and climb the wrong ladder or whatever you have to wait out your character climbing, then turn around and climb back down.

This is a huge step back in gameplay. This is something that you would never see in and of today’s games. Hell, even older games like the Lost Vikings or the original Prince of Persia series had more interactive control. Personally I can’t see why this was included, except to make completing levels with all the possible points extremely difficult.

While Exit doesn’t feature any multiplayer modes, there is a very cool online download system. At the time of writing you could go online through the wifi network and download 5 more level packs. Each of these packs contains 10 levels and adds a huge amount of additional gameplay to this title. No word has been given on the total number of download packs available, but I can easily see 10 if not 15 or 20 packs coming out after all is said and done.

I guess other developers have finally taken a cue from the success of Wipeout Pure and added downloadable content. This really goes a long way to promote the long term success of a title, and helps it to not just fade away by the next release Tuesday.

I really had quite a bit of fun playing Exit, admittedly more then I thought I would have had. While the learning curve was quite steep, the levels were paced in such a way that you were quickly trained for the numerous sorts of obstacles that lay ahead.