Gaming Target - PlayStation 2: The Getaway

Written by Matt Partington on February 06, 2003

Full Review: And you thought the streets of L.A. were bad.

It all started back in early 2001, when a mere two or three screenshots were revealed of a game simply dubbed as УGetawayФ. Since the PS2 was establishing itself and earning the respect of its customers, this was a game that truly showed the potential graphical power of the system with its visual flair and picture-perfect visuals. Shortly after, the game virtually disappeared and wasn't heard of for a good year. No European game has ever been built on the magnitude of The Getaway, and after a very long wait and a three and a half year development cycle, The Getaway has finally been released for the PlayStation 2Цbut was it worth it?

On one end of The Getaway you have a game that's ahead of its time, a truly groundbreaking event. On the other you have a game that has undeniable problems that many are going to find disturbing. Although not a bad game, The Getaway is a Уlove or hateФ experience. Read on to find out why this is the perfect game for you, or the absolute worst.

The Getaway excels in more than one area, but most importantly is it's story. At the center of the plot you have ex-criminal Mark Hammond. Mark is a crook-gone-straight. After solitary confinement in a prison cell, he's started a flourishing nightclub hoping to forget any history of his past lawbreaking life. After only two months of owning the nightclub, a u-turn occurs in Mark's life. While taking a nap, he hears a shrilling scream outside, one that happens to be of his wife. Mark quickly runs outside only to find her sprawled on the street, drenched in her blood and his son being taken by three mysterious figures in a speeding car. Bent on vengeance and that only, you pursue the vehicle in hopes of finding out who they are and retaining your child. The car leads you to a depot, of which is occupied by Charlie JolsonЦone of London's leading crime bosses.

Mark was once part of the Collins' gang, a rival of the Jolson party. Charlie Jolson is a quite evidently a foul man who spews more obligatory phrases than any human should. He sends Mark on a series of crime sprees, corrupting the streets of London and opposite crime organizations. He uses Mark's son as a tool to get him to go on suicide missions. Mark's only hope is that eventually, his one and only child will be returned to him. Not till the very end of the story do you learn why exactly Jolson is doing this to you.

Frank Carter is the other half of the main plotline. A police officer, recently removed from service, bent on destroying Jolson's gang and getting the henchmen involved arrested. Most of his missions run parallel to Mark's, although they only see each other two or three times throughout the entire game. Once you beat both stories, you start to see ties in between the two and how one affects the other.

Set in the mean streets of London, you've probably heard about The Getaway's excellent storyline. It's pacing is one of the greatest I've ever witnessed in a game, and it could more than easily pass as a top-notch screenplay in a Hollywood or British crime flick. Which is just what it's likeЦa crime film from England. The story has been obviously influenced by movies such as Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and Get Carter (the original, not the crappy remake). The character development is spectacular; you can almost feel the internal and external conflict in Mark's life. He deeply desires to kill Jolson and simply take his child, but he knows that if he fails then it could mean his life and his son's. It's things like this that make The Getaway's story a one-of-a-kind experience, and is truly the glue that holds the game together and compels the gamer forth.

Although you see games like BMX XXX and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and think Уadult,Ф you can also tell that they are almost trying to appeal to the younger audiences, given that they'll get a large feedback from the pre-teen and under 17 age group (as sad as that is, they are playing BMX XXX, which no one should be doing considering it's absolute crap). The Getaway is as adult as it comes, and there's no joking or gimmicks. Team Soho has undoubtedly pushed the edge of what has become acceptable in videogames. The language in it makes Vice City seem like an episode of Sesame Street. The violence is gritty and gory, and the amount of mature content spans about every possible creak and crevice, from drug use to prostitutes and corrupt cops.

Is The Getaway so adult that it's shocking? No, but it's possible that if they pushed another limit and added something such as full-frontal nudity, then you might see some petitions or small protests. The mature style is beneficial to the experience. It creates flair to the game, mood and individuality. It's quite obvious that Team Soho had a goal when making this gameЦto integrate elements from film into a game so you actually think of it as a movie. And they've succeeded, with flying colors. Unfortunately, The Getaway make some dear sacrifices with this frame of mind, and ends up hurting itself in spite of it.

In order to make The Getaway like a movie, Team Soho would have to create the most realistic environment possible, and what better setting than London? One of the prime reasons why the game was delayed for about two years is because they spent that time taking tens of thousands of photos of more than 40 kilometers of metropolitan London. No game has done this before. None has even attempted doing this, and none has even gotten remotely close and probably never will for a long time. This recreation of a real downtown is unprecedented in every way possible, and it's one of the grandest visual accomplishments I think any videogame has ever made. Everything from the street rails to the architecture and building textures is spot-on. Truly the only things not touched down on are the smallest city streets and allies. I feel as if the gaming industry has taken this achievement for granted without acknowledging simply how amazing it is.

Like mentioned earlier, when the first screenshots were revealed of The Getaway, gamers were simply stunned about how phenomenal it looked. It truly showed the potential of the PS2's power at that point, especially when some doubted the console. It's 2003 now, and The Getaway is still one of the best-looking games on the system. Team Soho went for the biggest goal possible, making a fully realistic graphical presentation; unfortunately they come up a bit short because of some problems. At first glance, The Getaway almost looks picturesque, particularly in driving segments. The world is fully dimensional, nothing seems out of place or unordinaryЦsimply realistic in every sense. Unless close up to something, the textures are great given the PS2's minimal texture mapping abilities. Many games have problems with blocky figures, but The Getaway does notЦeverything has straight, clear-cut lines and is one of the least blocky games you'll see on the console. The detail on each and every object is stunning, from real logos (such are Chanel) on boxes in the depot to the type of brick grain on buildings.

But alas, there are some troublesome but not drastic problems. First of all the game has an aliasing, there is noticeable jaggies here and there particularly on cars and character models. Even though the textures are lifelike, they are awfully flat on certain things when up close. Models in the cutscenes seem flat as well. Despite this, The Getaway is simply УrealisticФ in numerous ways, and only held back from vivid perfection because of some apparent flaws. It's still no wonder why at one point or another, The Getaway was once declared Уthe coolest looking game ever.Ф

The story plays out mostly through cutscenes. This is another place where Team Soho has outdone most all others. Instead of Disney-like animation, the cutscenes in The Getaway were actually simulation out by a team of actors who wore full-body motion capture equipment. The outcome has greatly payed off, and the game has possibly the best cutscenes on the entire system as of now. No gesture seems out of place or fake, everything from the body language to the facial expressions is as real as it comes.

Gameplay-wise, The Getaway is split up into two portionsЦon foot travel and driving. At this point, you might be wondering why there have been so many complaints about the game's quality. Up till now, it seems like an all-around model game. The main problem with The Getaway, unfortunately, is the gameplay in total. Although it's probably not as desperately bad like you've heard, there are difficulties that result in counter-balancing the gameplay versus everything else.

To get around a bustling city of 40 kilometers, you're going to need something fast right? That's where the driving aspect comes into play. The Getaway features about 53 cars. These aren't just cheap knock-offs that are supposed to closely resemble vehicles though, they're real licensed cars. It'd only be natural to have issues with the driving at first, but after playing a few hours you'll become a natural. Dodging head-on collisions, swerving in between polls and rails, outrunning the copsЦthis is merely the typical.

The Getaway takes place in London thus all the driving takes place in the left lane. This was actually a problem for me at first, adjusting to the change. But it only made the game more challenging, trying to figure out all the tricks of the road. It actually makes it more fun when you're competing instinct against mental notes, and usually instinct wins whereupon you run flat into another car on a right turn. Sometimes it feels like the cars are going far too slow, but after all this is a metropolitan area with many narrow and one-way roads (this was particularly a pain in the neck). The cars wreck beautifully, however ironic that might sound. Practically any part of the car you hit will get damaged in some way or another, and once it's taken its limit of damage the car will stall and possibly start on fire. Crashing the cars is one of the most entertaining parts of the entire game believe it or not, darting the wrong direction in a one-way lane is more fierce than you might think.

Each car handles differently, and this is more than manifest when in the driver's seat. Although many games have cars that travel at different speeds, The Getaway has vehicles that drive, veer, and handle very uniquely. Things seem sensitive at first, but once that is overcome, the driving side of the game is one of the best you'll find outside the racing genre itself. You can tell that Team Soho went that extra leap to make it that much more peerless.

The second half of things is on foot. During missions, this is likely what you'll be doing most of the time. It consists of stealth maneuvers, shooting, and general walking. Since many times you will be infiltrating enemy territories, then just spraying the place with bullets, you're going to need some nifty tricks up your sleeve. Mark and Frank can do many stealth movements. By pressing X by a wall, you will hide behind it. Around corners, you can peek or pop out to do some shooting (there's many variations to this). R1 is the auto-aim button, which is infinitely important, and R2 is the manual aim (Square to shoot). X also allows you to somersault and roll in order to dodge bullets or being seen. The Getaway allows you to do enough sneaky tactics to get by, but doesn't make it so complex that you almost forget what to do. It's really on the borderline of simple and overly elaborate.

Taking people hostage is also a standard occasion. Instead of it being something humorous like you might expect out of a GTA title, it's pretty gritty and gruesome. You can take anyone and everyone hostage, from police officers to citizens and mob bosses. If you take someone important hostage, the enemy will hesitate to shoot you unless you turn your back, whereupon they'll probably hit you on the back of the head and knock you out. If you take some random person off the streets hostage, criminals won't pause to blow your head off, but police will and might try to compromise with you. The AI works rather well in this aspect, although they're sometimes sluggish and stupid there is some awfully smart computer intelligence to fend off. Mark also has the skill to heal himself if he is injured. You simply have to get near a wall, and he'll put his arm on it and start to rest. If you're on the verge of death, it can take up to probably two minutes for him to completely heal, which actually seems like a long time while playing and can get rather tedious.

So far, this looks great on paper, but most of the game's problems are within the on foot traveling. The controls can be stiff, sticky, unresponsive and just feel plain clumsy sometimes. For instance, when you're leaning against a wall and neat to jump out and shoot enemies, sometimes the R1 button gets screwy and the game won't allow you to shoot. I'm not sure if it involves having to press the button at the wrong time, but it's always a pain to take two or three bullets from someone who should be dead and only isn't because your trigger sticks. Sometimes what you're trying to do just won't happen, and you'll have to run in circles trying to slant against a wall, in the meantime exposing your position.

The camera angles change pretty often in The Getaway. This is understandable, since the indoor environments are very realistic and modeled from actually interiors of the buildings. You'll therefore have to readjust the joystick commonly to get Mark walking back in the right direction. All this is vanquished in a few hours, once you get used to the problems and sensibility of the controls. Yet before that, you might experience some irritating troubles.

There's a lot of action in The Getaway. It's about fast cars, gunplay, murder, and everything in between. Given, there is any shoot-outs during play. Whether in a big empty lots or tightly packed hallways, each and every gunfight in The Getaway is an intense occurrenceЦthey're actually rather exciting. Since the game is based on the concept of true to life events, you're not going to find a massive arsenal of weapons. The default weapon is a wimpy pistol that takes about four shots to kill foes. You can pick guns off the ground from perished enemies, which leads to double pistols and heavier upgrades of pistols (there's probably only one more type though). There are two types of rifles in the game, the MP5 Navy submachine gun and AK47. These both provide rapid fire and take out bad guys more efficiently. Lastly you have two types of shotguns, and smaller things such as a baseball bat and butcher's knife. You might think that this is far too minuscule and arsenal to last the whole game, but let's think logicallyЦare you going to find a rocket launcher in the streets of London?

Probably every existing preview and review of The Getaway has a paragraph dedicated to how the game has no indicators or HUD's (heads-up displays). This means no map, no health meter, no arrows pointing in directions, no radar, no nothing. To think of this as ridiculous would be the first intuition, yet this feature (or rather lack of) capitalizes the gameplay. The game aims for being movie-esque, and it does this well. Much of this feat was reached because of the lack of HUD's. You don't see a health meter on Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2. Believe it or not, your rear blinkers are all the indicators you'll get while driving. When you're supposed to turn at the first right, the right blinker will start clicking. The same with the left, and if you're supposed to stop they'll both flash at the same time. I suffered the occasional hardship with this, sometimes it'd drive me into a dead end or just had me stumped, but the system works rather well for the game and I honestly can't complain about the way it was executed.

The only real problem with no HUD's that I found was the lack of an out of game map. Would it honestly hurt the gameplay if they treated it like a traditional roadmap? In fact, it'd probably enhance the driving. In games like GTA3 you could, and had to, learn the city by heart to get around. Since The Getaway is a more linear game based on story more than running around for the hell of it, you never really learn the city very well and just follow the blinkers to wherever they tell you. Very seldom will you be able to enter an area of the city and actually know you're way around, unless you're actually from good ol' London.

The Getaway has the type of soundtrack that you might expect from a game of this caliber. At any rate, it's a good score that presses the game's mood forward. During missions and gunfights, it'll speed up productively and keep a heavier beat than while you're just cruising along minding your own business and pounding pedestrians into your car grill. The best use of it takes place during cutscenes, otherwise it often lays ambiently in the background. Good nonetheless, but not stellar. Probably the biggest problem is that each song doesn't have enough individuality to break it apart from the rest.

Since cutscenes are key throughout The Getaway's story, there's obviously some fabulous voice acting done that parallels the cinematic quality. Since the plot takes place in London, real English actors are used (duh, it's a British game too). Anyhow, it's a bit tough first trying to perceive what the characters are saying, being a stupid American and all. The accents are heavy, and when I say heavy I mean heavy. Not only that, but there's a lot of slang used such as claret which means blood or bird, a young woman. So much so, that in the back of the manual there's a page dedicated to the terms and explaining what they mean.

There's a total of 24 missions in The GetawayЦtwelve for Mark and twelve for DC Carter. Some missions provide easy objectives, some are much more difficult. The Getaway borders the highest degree of challenging without becoming frustratingly hard. If you play your cards right and heal when required, you can blow by each mission at least by the third time through. Other times it might take you an entire four to six tries, or just merely on the first. This all depends on how hardcore you are, and the way you're going at the enemy. You have the option of going postal, but that's about five times more knotty than to use the stealth tactics.

For a long while, The Getaway was looked at as a УGrand Theft Auto clone.Ф If you still think this, let me put your thoughts to rest because The Getaway is just about as far as you can get from GTA without being a different genre. The Grand Theft Auto series relies highly on allowing the player to freely roam areas and do practically anything and everything they want. It's fun, pure 100% bonafide fun. You can play the missions whenever you want to, just merely get to the checkpoint. The Getaway is different in a sense that the story is what drives the game, free-roaming and non-linear exploring is permitted, but it's not like GTA in any sense whatsoever. Most of the time you'll just want to get back to the story instead of going out and shooting a bunch of civilians. Plus, it's hard to be a GTA clone when you're development cycle started far before GTA3 was even heard of.