The Getaway: Black Monday

"A promising looking game turns into a disappointing let-down"

The Getaway sold itself with fantastic visuals and professional voice-overs, but it failed to deliver in a key area: the gameplay. Gamers were subjected to less than intelligent AI, and surprisingly unexciting police chases through central London. Even more sadly, two years of tinkering with the formula has resulted in a game which is no better than the first.

Storyline

The game is set two years after the original. The gang-world of London is in uproar again, and your players will affect how the 'gang war' goes. One of the neatest things is that you get to experience the story from three different perspectives instead of seeing just one person's view. Black Monday is not unlike a film in the way that it delivers it's story. Although the story itself is another of the predictable 'save the world' stories, the cut-scenes are full of personality and humour. The characters deliver the story well, and the shift between characters doesn't block the flow of it. The storyline is exciting, and one of my favourite things about this game.

Graphics

Focusing on the positives, Black Monday is a great looking game. The city of London looks similar to the original, which isn't a bad thing at all. The game is immensley styled, focusing on showing the dark, gritty, gang-world side of London's side streets and alleyways, whilst still making a believeable game world on the outside.

Black Monday focuses on bringing out realistic detail more than anything, and that's where the game excels. The characters are photo-realistic with realistic facial tones. The buildings are photo-realistic and look very much like their real-life counterparts. The cars are photo-realistic and are instantly recognisable to the car addict. If you noticed a reoccuring word there, you'll know what this is all about.

Sound
The professional voice-overs sound fantastic. Each character sounds like you'd expect and the voice is full of personality. The musical tunes are also nice, although you won't really concentrate on them. The effects also sound excellent: from gun-noises to tyre-screeches this sounds excellent.

Gameplay
This section is where I cast a negative gloom over the game. Lets just say for starters, that the game looks good on the outside but on the inside, it's really basic stuff.

Firstly, I would like to point out that the average brick has more intelligence than the AI. The enemies do take cover behind boxes, crates etc. sometimes, but mostly they'll just charge in a line at you, guns firing. Although this sounds like a challenge, all you really need to do is take cover yourself and kill them as they charge round your hiding place. Not nearly as tricky as you'd expect, then. Your foes rarely work as a team, they just do their own thing. I wanted to be challenged by this AI, but in the end the enemies were just too easy, and more importantly, stupid! The battles turn out to be a dirty brawl with guns, instead of the well scripted, exciting fights that the cut-scenes deliver. A little more organisation please, thugs.

And another way the game becomes easy is the healing sequence. Simply rest against a wall to heal health and then you are ready to go. The problem is that the battles are stop-start, meaning that you'll defeat a group of enemies, be given a safe-spot to heal up and go again, meaning that you are almost always fresh for your next skirmish. Again, this does take some of the challenge away, and left me for one a little disappointed.

The second type of battle is stealth. The levels seem to be designed with a linear style. In a nutshell, the stealth levels are made so that one path is pretty much the only way, instead of there being a variety of methods to tackle a situation. The enemies seem both alert and dumb: if they see you they'll open fire, but crawl in a shadow right next to them and it's OK. The stealth missions are a wasted opportunity and end up being boring and poorly-executed.

Finally, the 'exciting, police chase thrills'. The cars start up so slowly that it takes almost a half-minute to hit full power, and if you hit something you'll have to crawl back up to a decent speed. You are almost destined to hit something, as the traffic is like London was before the congestion charge (real bad with loads of stationary cars), which takes the remaining shine off the not-very-exciting-or-thrilling car chases.

Maybe this game is trying to do too much, as the different aspects seem rushed. The controls are a little twitchy and the camera is very poor. Maybe if they had ditched stealth mode and spent the time refining the AI/general combat this could have been better, but no.

Replay Value
As for the reasons above, the story is a little disappointing, but what's more disappointing is that there are virtually no extras. Unlike GTA, where the gameplay rewards you with new areas, planes and such, this gives you nothing. London has no extra missions, no collectables, no secret stuff worth noting. Very disappointing indeed.

Final Verdict
Well, this game is unrefined, poor, rushed and disappointing. Yes, the graphics are excellent, as is the sound, but from there it just goes downhill. The City of London is an empty shell, and once the missions are out of the way, there's not much to do. Seriously recommend a rent first.

Storyline: 9/10
Graphics: 9/10
Sound: 9/10
Gameplay: 5/10
Replay Value: 5/10
OVERALL: 6/10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/18/05