Buy Prison Architect Here.

 

In this video I’ll be reviewing Prison Architect for PS4.

Background Info

In Prison Architect, players build and manage their own maximum security prison built to hold the most hardened of criminals. The console editions include a fully-fledged story mode that explores the gruesome and often convoluted matters of legal grey areas in the prison system, and a wildly in-depth sandbox mode featuring new in-game community features. These new features from developer and publisher Double Eleven allow players to build, maintain and share their maximum security prisons with the touch of a button on either console.

Cope with blazing infernos, prison-wide riots, demolition and construction, and if you make it through unscathed the Mayor will be ready to give you the reigns of a brand new prison development where you can build the prison of your dreams.

Prison Architect was created by Introversion Software and recreated by Double Eleven for consoles.

My Experience

Prior to playing the game I had seen some gameplay online from both the PC and console versions and I was excited. When I first booted up Prison Architect I jumped straight into the prison stories.

After finishing the prison stories I thought that since I had learned everything, there would probably be not much excitement and wander in starting up a new prison of my own. But after I started up a new prison, I lost myself in striving to make the biggest greatest most profitable prison of all time. I also realised that the prison stories didn’t actually teach me everything, and I like that. I like figuring things out for myself and finding new surprises.

Gameplay

The gameplay is simple yet complex. Building, dealing with prisoners, keeping them happy and/or in line, making sure no prisoners escape through pesky tunnels or other means. trying to prevent deaths and injuries, trying to keep your finances out of the red and balance the books – there are a lot of choices to make and you can control the difficulty.

There are a few bugs and glitches (or maybe I just did something wrong, it’s very unclear at times). Some weird things happened like I had a bunch of prisoners crammed into 2 cells for some reason. I have no idea why that happened but I didn’t experience any game breaking bugs, although the game did crash on me twice in about 20 hours of play.

Story

The stories included in the ‘prison stories’ I mentioned earlier were pretty dark and I like that. Each story takes about 30-60 mins to complete. It made me think about prison and its purpose; is prison meant to rehabilitate criminals, or punish them? Is it a mix of both? Which way is more effective and beneficial for society in the long run?

These poignant questions didn’t affect the way I played the sandbox mode though. I didn’t really care for any of my individual prisoners at all, they were just numbers filling my quota. A little more personality and story injected into the sandbox mode would’ve been a great improvement, although I didn’t expect that in this sort of game at all, you do have the opportunity to pick up snapshots in sandbox mode which show you some artwork of prisoners or your staff doing some stuff but those weren’t interesting to me at all.

Theres also warden mode, where you can load up a pre-made prison or download a pre-made prison from other players via the world of wardens feature.

It’s interesting to see how other players are running their prisons as it can help you build a better prison but I don’t see myself playing the game in someone else’s pre built prison, I’d prefer to create something from scratch.

Is it worth the price?

 

Prison Architect is £19.99 on PS4 and I think it’s well worth the price. The amount of hours you’ll get from these incredibly deep and sophisticated systems is very much worth the amount they’re charging for for it. I think the game is incredibly fun, it’s very addictive and I really like the gameplay loop – it does keep me playing. If you start up a prison, 5 hours later you’ll still be doing it and the time will just disappear. I like those kind of games where I’m just so focused on the game that I don’t even realise where the time went.

 

Buy Prison Architect Here.


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