The Getaway

"You Muppet, Lahndan's callin'!"

It would be myopic of me to ignore the similarities between The Getaway and Vice City, with the games being compared and contrasted from before release. The best way to sum these two fantastic games up is if both were films. Vice City would be a mix of the of Scarface and the ironic humour of Snatch. The Getaway on the other hand would be an all action version of The Long Good Friday crossed with The Bill. With these two games it is all about taste. Where some people were utterly compelled by Vice City, they may well scoff at The Getaway, and the person who enjoys a more taut and rounded experience may enjoy The Getaway. Likewise, I enjoyed both Vice City and The Getaway. In many ways, The Getaway is much alike Silent Hill. Both games had supremely likeable characters, a twisting and exciting plot, plus claustrophobic and frantic gameplay. The Getaway is a game you would probably play on your own, rather than go and invite the lads round for a beer night to play on. It is quite absorbing.

After 6 years in development (The Getaway began as a PSOne title in 1996) will The Getaway prove to be a huge hit or a wet lettuce?

The Getaway is not a racing game as GameFAQs suggests, rather an action adventure/Driving game. Set in London, 28 square miles have been accurately recreated, being the most realistic city ever created on a game. Many areas of London are included (The City, Soho, Southwark) on the map, with many landmarks (Buckingham Palace, Oxford Street, The Thames, Houses of Parliament and Tower Bridge) also making an appearance. The Getaway is realistic to the point of almost frustration. All vehicles are fully licensed, from the likes of Nissan, Honda, Bentley and Saab, yet no Audis, BMW’s or Ford’s. Cars sweep by at speeds faster than the average car, the framerate is excellent, there is negligible pop-up, and the city is so huge it would take ages to get from one end to another. This leads to two problems. 1) On missions it is very easy to get lost, and the in-game indicators don’t make it much easier, and 2) There is no in game map to help (There is an external road map, though), and this does lead to much frustration as it is impossible almost to find where you are. It is also very easy to get knocked down and killed, which is also annoying, yet frighteningly realistic. Cars smash up quite easily with tyre blowouts, engine failures and death at the wheel all very common. The graphics are second to none in terms of quality mixed with quantity. Everything looks extremely real, it IS London! Vehicles are perfect recreations of their real life counterparts and handle as such. Really good actors play the games characters very well. The game actually used the real actors faces in development, so there you have it! The voices are done by relative unknowns, but includes bond girl Anna Edwards and Michael Preston (Mad Max II).

The plot is one of the high points of the game. The Getaway begins with 3 hoods in a car outside a posh Soho Pad discussing a job- the kidnap of a woman and her kid. The bad news is the job goes wrong, with the woman ending up dead. The good or even worse news is, you are her husband, Mark Hammond, and he soon discovers that he is a pawn in the diabolical schemes of Charlie Jolson, of the Bethnal Green mob who runs a counterfeiting ring out of his Warehous in Southwark. Charlie tells Mark that unless he takes on increasingly suicidal missions, the kid will die, and thus Mark must embark on a dangerous descent into the London underworld. After completing Mark’s missions, you play the game again from a different perspective as Flying Squad’s DC Frank Carter who is obsessed with nicking Jolson (No it is NOT the same missions with a different character). The plot is similar to many Gangster films, yet IMO is very good for a game. There are many enjoyable characters to encounter and it is thrilling enough to warrant a full play throygh of the game (If you’re renting it; You’ll do that anyway if you bought it). The dialogue is a bit clichéd at times, and some missions will seem similar, but persevere and this is one of the best points of the game.

Missions are fairly straightforward in contexts: There are three types, driving, stealth and combat, with combat and driving taking precedence. If I were to choose my favourite, it would be the combat, a mix of Metal Gear Solid 2 and Max Payne. I couldn’t wait to get the driving sections over with, as they often took a long time to complete and were mostly irritating. In the driving sections, you need to drive against the clock (Usually) to get to a specific destination. This task is not helped by the fact that there are no on-screen marks showing you the route. This is compensated by a rather novel way of indicating, the cars indicators flash, showing you where to turn, and the hazard lights show where you must stop. This is a problem at times, as much of the time; it is impossible to know where you must stop to finish a mission. Sometimes a cut scene denotes this, others it is trial and error, which has been frustrating in the past, leading you to have to re-do the driving sections over and over again. Also, missions come in various parts, often driving somewhere, on foot shooting and driving. It is frustrating when re-doing levels after completion that you cannot choose which part to play. Small things such as that would have made the Getaway a much better game. Many levels are ambiguous as to how to complete them. You have an objective screen in the pause menu, but in one level in particular, the objective is to find Sam and Kill Danny (Fake names to avoid spoilers of course). You will spend hours trying to find Sam, yet the game fails to mention that you cannot until you kill Danny! Be specific please Sony. Many levels are huge in magnitude when you take all areas into account, and most will require multiple plays to get it right. Also, much of these levels are fun and cool to play and thus you will want to replay them again. Sadly there is only one camera angle that upset me, as I got used to being able to look behind and to the sides in The Driver games. Unfortunately this means it is quite hard to shake the police off your tail who are extremely annoying especially on later missions for Mark Hammond.

The controls are another issue. There are some cool features (Take a hostage and exploit them) yet most are flawed due to a very poor control system. It is near impossible to manoeuvre when holding someone hostage, and it is impossible not to kill or arrest rather than let them go. One thing that puzzled me is both Mark and Frank are able to sprint outside, yet when on foot inside buildings and other specifically on foot sections, he merely jogs! Why, oh why did you do this Team Soho? It would have quickened the pace and made the game much more fun, now it is just annoying! The best way to compensate for this lack of speed is to roll around on the floor everywhere. The targeting system is improved from the demo, you can now automatically aim, but the manual aim cannot be uninverted sadly, and is often hit and miss. The cars handle extremely realistically, which is a plus point. Sadly, when driving a bus or lorry, you get an in-car view! This smacks of being unnecessary and ill conceived. The graphics are quite splendid in relation to many other PS2 titles, especially when you consider that there are up to 30 cars on screen, moving at the same time in conjunction with the pedestrians. Cars are pristine and fully accurate, the city is as much accurate as you’d find in real life and the interior sections are brilliantly detailed and decorated. Cutscenes cannot be skipped unfortunately, so it would be wise to complete a level before restarting at a later date, or you will have to endure often lengthy and boring cutscenes (This is rectified when replaying the game by pressing R3), yet some such as the gang war or torture scene are very interesting.

Music is used throughout, yet there are no radio stations, especially in the cutsecnes. The music was composed by Andrew Hale (In the demo it said he was awarded, but I cannot recall what for), yet it is often quirky and amateurish which tends to undermine the serious and tens nature of some cutscenes. It is sometimes reminiscent of some 1950’s gangster movies. Most music (Used at the crackhouse and nightclub) is impressive. The voice acting is superb in most places, with Joe Rice doing very well as Frank and Don Kembry slightly wooden as mark. The non-cutscene sounds are also well done, with the cars sounding like their real life counterparts, and there is a sickening crunch when you run someone over (Complete with a damaged front end of your car). The artificial intelligence is at times woeful. Once being chased by a copper, they got out they’re car and got run over by a London bus. Also, I hold a gun at a copper as they approach me, and the wooden top runs at me with a baton! Needless to say he was dead in a few seconds. Most enemy characters too run towards you like robots, getting cut down quite easily. Even a showdown with a boss character is ruined as all you do is stand in front of him shooting at him until you need to regenerate (By standing next to a wall for a few seconds), and shoot him again. The boss merely stands there as if he’s waiting to be killed! He doesn’t hide or use cover at all or even attempt to regain his health. The AI really needed some working on. Also there are a number of silly glitches in the game, such as people walking through walls, people being killed by a stationary car- Once two police officers got out of the car to arrest a yardie, after nicking him, walked back to their car, and died after getting to the doors, collapsing in the animation that occurs when you smash into someone. Finally, sections of the road disappear at times, but the glitches are often comical rather than harmful, so it cannot be scrutinised too much as it is a huge game.

What you get with The Getaway is an extremely accurate and realistic, huge city to drive around in. Real cars, real handling, an excellent plot (Very cinematic, you’ll want to play it until the end) and excellent graphics. On the downside, there are many niggles that prevent it from gaining a top rating, such as the poor control method and lack of replay value. If team soho waited a few more months and ironed out these flaws, The Getaway could have been a Ronaldo, world class. As it is The Getaway remains an Andy Cole, Decent, enjoyable yet fatally flawed.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/16/03, Updated 01/16/03