EXIT 4 - Portal Reviews

Note: My review for EXIT 2 will appear very similar to my review for the game, EXIT, from the same developer. Why? [i]Because the developer copy + pasted their entire game four times.[/i] It provides little of value to gamers when developers try to get paid for the same game multiple times like this. EXIT 4 - Portal is an older game from 2018. It's a venerable 7 years old at the time of this review. It's a simple "I can't believe it's not a mobile app" puzzle game, the type that's been done a hundred times or more, basically a ripoff of an old 2003 Flash game called "Orbox", the idea is that you push your ball in any of the cardinal directions and it moves until it stops. Negotiate the puzzle levels to run over all the coins etc, touch the required points then land on the exit square. The only differentiators here are a couple of special squares that push you in different directions, and some rather mediocre 3D graphics that aren't much better than the original Flash sprites of the game they're ripping off. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. The game features low-polygon "retro" assets with cartoony, mobile app style shader effects, making this look like a barely functional mobile app from 15 years ago. This visual style is a method that lazy devs often use when they have a lack of interest/capability to create highly detailed, high poly models and instead use shader effects to disguise that shortcoming under the name of "art", or "We made it look bad on purpose", which really isn't something gamers should have to put up with. It's unclear why the developers weren't willing to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets and high resolution textures for the game. It's far below the state of the art visuals gamers expect as a result of their decisions. The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts. This looks and feels like a mobile app, but I wasn't able to find it on the app stores. Maybe it was removed, maybe it was rejected by Apple and Google (they do have more rigorous quality standards than Valve does for Steam, after all). Regardless, for all intents and purposes EXIT might as well be a mobile app, it has the same limitations and dumbed down qualities. It's impossible to recommend such a game to PC gamers. We don't spend all this money building gaming rigs so we can pretend they're iPhones and play games that might as well be mobile apps. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 2 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 110,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 110,000+ games on Steam? EXIT 4 - Portal is overpriced at $5 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. This is also competing with over 14,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product. For comparison, the $5 asking price for this game could get you games like "Middle Earth - Shadow of Mordor", "Batman: Arkham Origins" or "X-Com: Enemy Unknown". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.