The Getaway

"The game was rushed. It needed more time to iron out the flaws."

Sony announced that it spent millions of pounds making The Getaway. Yes! It sounds ridiculous and is the sort of money that is spent on a film, although by todays standards, it costs a lot more. We have The Getaway. A fast action paced game that takes place in London. A whole 40 Square Kilometres of London has been recreated and for the first time, we are actually playing a game that is realistic. A real city, compared with GTA for example. You play a man called Mark Hammond and your role is to get his son back who is kidnapped by an old East End Gangster called Charlie Jolson. Jolson has him right where he wants him and gets Hammond to do high risk jobs all over London. Interesting story? It certainly is but how does the game fair? Read on.

Graphics: Looking at the surroundings it is not surprising as to where most of the money was spent developing this game because what you have is a spot on recreation of London. Well 40 Sq Km's of it anyway. People who are familiar with London will recognise some or all of the landmarks and recognise some streets here and there and some will recognise all, if your a Cabbie that is.
Apparently they have managed to recreate all the shops and all the houses meaning if you go to say Oxford Street and see Dixons for example, you should see it there in the game. Although this claim is not totally true. I sometimes pass through Edgware Road and its populated with Arabs. Passing though Edgware Road through the game, and firstly we don't see any of the shops that sell the Hubble Bubble smoke in there and secondly we don't see any Arabs there. Perfect recreation? Well almost. As for the inside of buildings, they are what you'd expect from the PS2 and the cars are a damn good recreation and of course you have got the usual cars you see in London everyday like Citroens, Nissans, Vauxhalls etc. Oh and the nice touch that they have is a Number Plate.
Characters are drawn nicely and look incredibly realistic. But then of course they would, they are based on real people. Anyone seeing the trailers for this game will have seen the Real Mark Hammond in the flesh, so they done well on that part.
Graphics? They got it spot on in my opinion.

Sounds: How does it sound? Well when your on a mission you have some complementary background music which goes well. You don't have any Radio stations that can be listened to although if you are being chased half way down London, I think Music will be the last thing on your mind.
Cars, how do they sound? I have to say they sound like something from a 16bit SNES game. Its totally awful. A lot of the cars sound the same and have that usual whine noise. No effort was done to recreate what the cars might sound like but instead the designers thought they would opt for Driving sounds that have been used in a game 10 years ago thinking no one would know the difference.
Usual guns sounds are spot on at least, so that's a welcome relief. As for the speech, well they obviously weren't going to mess that one as its the voice of the actors that play in the game. Excellent voice acting.

Gameplay: Well this is the crunch. Does it meet up to the requirements of everyday games?
Well the sort of gameplay that is entailed in the Getaway is similar to Grand Theft Auto minus the fact that you can't run, jump, do a driveby with a gun and do what you want etc etc.
Basically a lot the missions are made of go into buildings, shoot the bad guys, get out and make a Getaway in a car. Just like GTA. Winning formula and it works but unfortunately, there are quite a lot of things that will really begin to annoy you.
The controls, I have to say they are quite fiddly at times. Controlling Mark in a building can be disorienting because the Camera angles can get screwed when your close to walls. You have no way of looking behind unless you actually turn around. Shooting people can be difficult and sometimes when your in a situation it doesn't work properly. Doing a free aim is incredibly slow and takes too long to do. Its a shame they didn't look at games like Max Payne or Hitman to get ideas as to how to do first person shooting and doing it properly in this game. You can also stand against a wall or crouch behind a large object which is obviously influenced by Metal Gear Solid. Although you can't actually peep your head around a corner to see what's there which should have been in the game and would have given it more depth. The good point from all this is the ability to come up from behind and take someone as hostage and put a gun to their head. So controlling Mark is a little bit of pain but controlling the cars is where it really is let down.
I have to say out of all the driving games or games that involve driving, this has to be the worst. Move the analog stick a little bit and the car can go all over the place, furthermore turning corners in a handbrake fashion is terrible. The turning circles can be a little poor as well. Handling of the car at high speeds is a little jerky and if you move the car into one direction and move in the other, or should I say weave in and out of traffic, then you can find yourself losing control and crashing into a car or a lamp post etc.
Compared to driving a car in GTA, it feels more realistic driving one in GTA. You can't see what's behind you when driving which is a total mystery especially if the game is realistic and the fact that you can't look left or right from the car. Also you only have a fixed camera angle so driving from an inside car view is a no no. This can make it difficult because you don't how far someone is behind you when they are chasing you.
When driving along the car's indicators will flash and they usually point out where to go. Only problem is, this purpose is defeated when someone hits the back of your car. Also sometimes you can end up going in circles following the indicators. Its made worse as there is no map which you can refer to apart from the one that is supplied with the game which only has an overview of parts of London. Practicing how to drive the cars and getting used to the controls of the cars does help and although it hasn't been done right, you can get used to the limitations.

Other things that can be really annoying is not knowing how many bullets you have left. There is no bar or anything telling you whether you have any more left and you can sometimes end up not having any bullets in the middle of a gang fight for example. Also speaking of realism, why is it your able to take X amount of gun shots and you can rest up against a wall and recover in a minute? OK it would make the missions even harder but they wouldn't be if it weren't for the dodgy control system you have to use which is a real shame.

Other than that, playing the missions and following the story though is quite entertaining as this game is reminiscent of Guy Ritchie's Lock Stock and Snatch films involving underworld gangs, the East End and Cockney Geezar's. Once you have completed the Missions with Hammond, your then able to play as DC Carter and play through the game in another perspective as a crooked police officer. Overall acting is top class and is almost like watching a film. The overall controls let it down and trying to finish a mission can become quite hard and frustrating knowing that if they perfected those parts of the game in the first place, you would enjoy the game a lot more.

Final Thoughts: Now I am debating as to whether or not the games designers actually played this game before releasing it because if they did and thought they could pass it off as an excellent game which is perfect, then its really worrying for the buying public and the industry. To me, this game feels like its a prototype and we will get the finished product soon but what we have is the finished product. There is so much wrong with this game. What I have pointed out to you is not opinion but fact and a lot of people who have played this will agree and it wouldn't be surprising if they can add more points about the game in where it needs improving. The idea was perfect, I will say the story is pretty good and to recreate a city was a great idea and the fact that you can freely roam London when you finish the Missions. But lets hope that when a similar type of game comes out which is based on a real city, lets hope they don't make the same mistake again.
It really doesn't really deserve any more. The only saving grace of this game is the free roam option when the missions are complete.

So is it worth buying? Well you could save the £35 and put it towards a visit to London or buy it to see a recreation of a real city, what a 5 million pound game looks like and how games developers don't test their products before final release. Even though its not perfect, and with these flaws, you would still buy it and frankly I would do the same to see what the hype is about. Regardless of its faults, its worth buying to see London in a game and to view what is an interesting gangster type story.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/22/03, Updated 01/22/03