However, I'm coming away from this experience a bit disappointed. At first glance, it looks like the DS version has managed to carry over everything that made the PSP original so great. The level design, visuals, and overall look and sound of the game is pretty much spot on, but the touch screen controls just bring the whole game down for me. They never feel intuitive, and when you get to the point that you need to juggle around different survivors and multiple paths, it feels more like a chore than anything resembling fun. Thankfully, you can opt to ignore the touch screen controls in favor of the D-Pad and the face buttons, which is pretty much the best way to play this game.

If you're not familiar with Exit, I'll give you a small breakdown. You control Mr. ESC, a world famous escape artist that's devoted himself to saving the lives of others, typically those trapped in some sort of burning/demolished building situation. Each level is a series of corridors and rooms, with various survivors scattered about that Mr. ESC needs to rescue and bring to the exit of the level. There are a few different obstacles for ESC to overcome, including long drops, fire, and so on. Certain survivors come with different skills that ESC will need to make use of to overcome the different puzzles in the game, and the player gets to take control of these survivors when they're needed. Along with that, ESC can get a variety of tools to help him overcome certain places, like fire extinguishers, boards to cross long gaps, pickaxes to dig thru rubble and so on.

The sheer amount of stuff ESC needs to do to overcome certain obstacles and levels might throw off the casual player, especially if you're just looking at screen shots and videos thinking this is some type of quirky puzzle game. Sure, it pretty much is, but it's also quite involved, which I think will put some unaware people off from the experience. That said, it's also a pretty cheap release, at $20 it's hard for me to say that you shouldn't give it a shot, even if these puzzle platform games aren't quite your cup of tea.

It's a shame that the stylus controls don't work all that well though, since it was one of the main draws for me giving this release a shot. The idea behind them is that to make ESC move around you tap him and then tap a spot on the screen, which he'll then move to. You can also touch ESC and then slide the stylus in the direction you want him to move to get the same effect. You can queue up points for ESC to move to, which means you can string together a series of movements and events for ESC to do, but this is also where the stylus controls start to fall apart. Certain movements, particularly dropping down from high platforms, are rarely precise unless you're mapping out the steps for every movement one step at a time. If you try to do multiple movements, chances are he'll often fall to his death instead of taking the slow but safe approach to falls. However, without the ability to queue up movements, the entire game becomes really, really slow and it ends up not being very fun at all.

Still, as long as the regular controls are present it's not something I feel like I can complain about too much, and the end result is that Exit on the DS is a solid port and well worth playing for people that have missed out on previous versions. At $20 you should give it a shot, especially if you've been a fan of games like the Lost Vikings, Braid, and so on, as I think it fits into that mold quite well. It doesn't have a big gimmick to it, and the touch screen controls are pretty worthless, but it's still well worth playing.