The Getaway

"Better than a kick in the pants."

Have you ever seen the movie “Snatch” with Brad Pitt? Well picture that movie, with the horrible accents, awesome gun fights, and a sexy blond in the mix. What? Okay no sexy blond but this is a damn great game. Team SOHO has an incredible game on their hands, and it could be better if it weren’t for a few minor flaws that I will get into later. Not only is this game the most realistic game you will ver play, but it is the only crime simulator you will ever play, it is just incredibly real. The only game that I think would ever make a fantastic movie, aside from Grand Theft Auto.

GRAPHICS: 11/10
There are the best graphics I have ever seen. They beat out any game, Past or present. I generally cannot see room for improvement when it comes to graphics like these. They filmed about 45 minutes of footage with real actors and then digitalized it and cut it up into FMV scenes. They look really crisp in the game and especially in the FMV scenes.

The cars look fantastic. Because they are all real and licensed cars to actually have something to compare it to, and these cars in the game, look so accurate to the cars they represent in real life it makes me want to marry my cousin. Another thing that is fantastic is when you shoot the window in a car, the cracks are so detailed and intricate it just amazes me.

The faces in this are another outstanding feat that has been accomplished by making them so incredibly real you almost think you’re watching a movie for a minute then you realize it’s just an amazing game. Two of the hardest things in gaming to do are water, and hair. They made the hair look so realistic, it almost rivals that spray on stuff. I didn’t see to much water in this, but I am sure it would have rivaled Final Fantasy water. Just amazing.

The guns, what can be said about the guns? Maybe that they are amazing, they are fantastic, they are realistic. Grand Theft Auto has some pretty cool looking guns, but the guns in The Getaway would kick the guns in GTA’s parents in the ass! The fire out of the barrel of the gun is perfectly timed with the sound and looks so realistic. I don’t know how many people have seen an AK close up, I have and let me say, the one in the game is so detailed and accurate it leads me to think if Team SOHO sold their souls to make this game look so damn good.

SOUND: 10/10
Wether it is a honk of the horn or a simple foot step they have it down to a hair. With near synchronization this is the best sound I have ever heard from a game. The voices are great. The cars sound very real. Gunfire is perfect and I wouldn’t dream of anything better because that would be ludicrous to improve upon perfection. The thing that amazes me on how hard it actually is to match up the foot steps with the actual sound and they did an excellent job on doing that. There was maybe one or two parts I saw with slowdown that made my above statement false, but like I said, one or two spots.

The gunfire sounds really accurate. It isn’t cartoony like most games where it sounds like a damn C4 pouch went off in your head. It is a slight pop with variation depending on the caliber of the gun. The hand guns actually sound real, it maybe a cliche, but I honestly thought a gun went off somewhere outside my house. It is common for that to happen, so that’s why I thought that, but it was just the game. The shotgun may sound a little to cartoony but it is the best I’ve ever heard, so I can’t complain.

The car engines sound so amazing it makes me want to cry. It’s a thing of beauty this game is, and I’ll stress that point until the day I day...or until I get bored of the game. The crashes sound awesome too. Maybe not quite as awesome as other games, but they do sound pretty hard. The screeching of the tires is cool too because it is something that is so basic, but a lot of games over look that, they just throw a quick screeching in there and call it quits. They clearly spent time to make it sound realistic and have it match up with a speeding car whip around a corner.

Now onto the voices. They are British. They are annoying. I love it. You know when you have a really good British accent? When it actually gets on your nerves to listen to. I can’t stand hearing them talk because the accents are so damn annoyingly accurate. The voice acting isn’t quite as good as it could be, but it is pretty damn decent nonetheless. The actor who played Mark did a fantastic job with the voice. In fact all the actors did an amazing job with the voice acting for this.

STORY: 10/10
You play Mark Hammond, an ex gang member who has been clean for two months. An old rival needs his help so he kidnaps his child and lures him into a warehouse where you start your missions. You are trying to do the jobs for this Mobster, Charlie Jolson so you can get your kid back. If you contest his demands, your child dies. What would you do in a situation like this? Well he has you running all over London doing missions for him which may involve some old friends of Hammond’s, but you have no time to play catch up with them.

GAMEPLAY: 10/10
With a fantastic story, amazing graphics, killer sound, the gameplay is bound to good right? Right! I love the gameplay, although free roam would make it rock even more, the gameplay is actually fantastic, the missions aren’t really timed, but you are often not able to exit your vehicle because you are being chased. The gun fights are simply amazing. A thing of beauty when you think about it. The car crashes aren’t over drawn and sound cartoony, they don’t explode right away, they slowly die, like most cars, or at least the ones I’ve had.

CONTROLS: 4/10
Here is where I see a flaw in the game. The controls are the suckiest ever. They are worse than Conflict: Dessert Storm controls. It’s not that there is too many buttons to know, it is just so difficult to maneuver Mark around especially in a smaller area. You basically have to walk in small circles to turn him around because turning in ‘aim’ mode is way to slow. So if you have a hostage and are in a gunfight with 5 guys, you’re toast, or as good as. Car controls are VERY unresponsive and that makes for a very hard chase or an incredibly hard escape route. That’s the only thing that brings this game down.

REPLAY: 9/10
It’s fun to replay mission, figure out different tricks to beat them. The game is very linear in a sense where you have to do the mission one way, but there might be a different way to complete the mission with the same ending.

BUY or RENT?
If you like shooting games and mafia style movies, buy this game. If not, give it a rent or two and just play through the mission and have fun.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 02/10/03, Updated 02/10/03