Joseph Luster
January 15, 2009 
Combine Frank Miller’s take on The Spirit with Curious George’s The Man with the Yellow Hat and what do you get? Aside from the obvious horrors associated with that concoction, you wind up with a rough profile of Mr. Esc, Exit‘s protagonist and rescuer of man, woman and child. With the help of his fleet-footed maneuvering and your own quick thinking, Mr. Esc has the ability to dash in and out of a burning building or an icy shopping center with time to spare and a legion of thankful survivors nipping at his heel.
That’s the gist of Exit DS, another portable port of the title that first appeared on North American PSPs in 2006, followed by an Xbox Live Arcade port in 2007. Anyone that’s already been through either of those experiences will find something very similar here, visually speaking, but putting what was formerly controlled with a traditional face/shoulder button layout in the dual-screen world has its ups and downs. Before getting too into that, though, it’s important to understand the unique mechanics involved with Exit, and what separates it from your traditional environmental puzzler.
The fun here lies in figuring out each scenario that presents Mr. Esc with increasingly dire rescue situations. The first 10 or so stages act as training, teaching the player how to do simple things ranging from putting out fires to picking up and carrying injured people over and under various hazards. The bottom line couldn’t be more straightforward-get the people and get to the exit-it’s the little things that change the game and give the player a lot to remember. Fat people have different needs and abilities than normal-sized adults, as do children, dogs and so on. There’s quite a lot to it when all is said and done.
That’s the best thing about Exit, too, but this is hampered by touch controls that can be a bit finicky at times and might test the patience of a lot of players. It’s not that they don’t function properly, it’s that there’s just too much in this game for Mr. Esc to do with such a simple setup. Clicking on him and a location on the map moves him there, but these commands keep piling on top of one another as the levels become more complex, and it’s a lot easier to do something unintended that spells certain doom when it gets to that point.
The small scale of the screen plays into this, too. It’s nice to have the map on top, but without the more panoramic view provided on PSP or XBLA, scrolling around the map while repeatedly snapping back to Mr. Esc becomes a little tedious. Thankfully, the DS’s lower resolution didn’t stop the stylized visuals from translating fairly faithfully, and it’s really been one of the most attractive aspects of the game since it first debuted. The style will hold up even more successfully if you turn the volume down, because situations become that much more intolerable when companions are stuck somewhere in a room yelling HELP over and over until you can’t take it anymore. Hey, if they’re going to be obnoxious about it, Mr. Esc should just let them burn.
Exit DS dances around disposability at times, and will continue to do so depending on how well the controls click with each individual player. When and if they do click, there’s a lot of game to enjoy, and it’s certainly worth the effort for someone with even an inkling of interest in the concept. There are plenty of stages, and the situations eventually venture out of the traditional burning building setting and into frozen shopping mall stages and a crisis on a sinking luxury liner. While I personally think there are better versions of this game out there, the DS port is a viable option, and will cater well to quick-thinking gamers that like solving puzzles under flame-broiled duress.
Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Taito
System: Nintendo DS
Available: Now
Rating: E
