User reviews

I really liked this one for starters. It was well worth the wait and well worth the attention as well.

• The graphics in the game, in my opinion, were very good. I can see how the game makers and designers at Sony Computer Entertainment America and Team Soho made the levels very unique and challenging because you have to reach your destination by following the indicators on the tail lights of your car, and then when they both flash, that means you've reached your destination. I think that this was a very nice touch because it feels so real and all the places you go to are all real as well, and not in some kind of "made-up" place that the game makers and designers thought up of.

• The controls in the game, in my opinion, are pretty good. I know that it can be a bit irritating at most times, because you never know when you're gonna run out of ammo because, again, they don't have a display for that. But, then I realized that you'll know when you're running low after you've been firing the pistol, shotgun or assault rifle a lot of times, and then you feel the controller vibrate. That's when you know it's time to reload. The driving controls for the game were also good as well.

• The voice-acting in the game, in my opinion, was very good. I can see now why it said on the back of the case, "Cast of professional actors", because every single actor and actress gave a really good performance in the entire game right up 'til the end. Just amazing.

• The dialogue in the game, in my opinion, was also very good. There's no scenes of empty dialogue anywhere throughout the entire game and I think that the dialogue was very detailed and very well-written.

• The cars in the game, in my opinion, were very good as well. Just make sure that you don't go flying at a rapid speed, then what happens is that your car would catch smoke and if a front or a rear tire is flat, then you'd be swerving around all over the place, which is kind of annoying at most times, but other than that, the cars are very good to handle and get around with.

• The gameplay in the game, lastly, in my opinion, was really good, too. I find that the idea of you having to drive to a certain place and it takes you a little while to get there and then you can shoot up different people there for a little while too, whether you were Mark Hammond or Frank Carter, it was fun, and nothing but fun.

Some action-driving players may feel unusual about the idea of a game that has no map or a bullet screen or an arrow to show you where to go next, but, I have to say that this game is definitely one of the best driving/shooting adventure games I've played in a long time, right up there with Grand Theft Auto.

I definitely would recommend this to anyone who's looking for a real fun challenge in a really fun game.

With all of that said, I give "The Getaway",

9 stars out of 10.

I'm not going to fool around, i'll get right into the review.

Story: 9/10

Mark Hammond, a retired Collins gangster from Soho, has recently been released from prison and is now managing his own night club in central London. He has a wife (Suzie) and one son (Alex). His life is brilliant and he is in a great position. But one day his life turns from brilliant to horrid. Early one morning an old rival of the Bethnal Green Mob, Charlie Jolson, kills his wife and kidnaps his son. Mark immediately hears the gun shots and rushes to the street to find Suzie dying. As on lookers scream, Mark rushes to his car to chase after the Bethnal Green Mob through an early rush hour in London. This starts the longest day Mark will ever remember. The story advances with excellent twists which i won't spoil for you. There's also D.C. Frank Carter, a detective working at Snow Hill for D.C.I McCormack. He's been working on a case to bring Charlie and Jake Jolson into prison. You can play as both characters.What can i say? The story is supreme, however a bit unoriginal. Still, it definitely creates enough tension to keep you playing through the game from the first level to the 24th level.

Graphics: 9/10

Wow. The graphics are amazing and compete along side 'Metal Gear Solid 2' and 'Rachet and Clank'. Just look at the screen shots. The characters details are amazing and the streets look real. If that's not enough, you just have to switch on Progressive Scan Mode (Only on certain TVs - I haven't seen the results) which i can only imagine make the graphics 10 out of 10 quality. So why 9? Of course, with over 500,000 digital photos put in the game as textures the quality of the buildings had to be dimmed down. Also, often the graphics are slow to appear or just lag in certain areas of London. To sum it up - The game uses every ounce of power the Playstation 2 gives away.

Gameplay: 8/10

There's a hell of a lot of things to mention, but the most clear thing is that's there's no on screen details. Team Soho have very cleverly worked around this to give it more of a realistic/movie feel. There's no on screen map which will be noticed first. This has brilliantly been worked around and you navigate your way around London by using the vehicle's indicators which will automatically flash telling you what to do. Great, huh? Another obvious loss is the health bar. Now this one is amazing. Each time the character is injured, bloodstains will appear on his clothes and he will be visually crippled, limping around or dragging himself. This is a huge step up in games. On most other games you can be on 1% of health and the character will look the same as it does at 100%. There's also no ammunition notification. The only sign of this is the controller vibration when you have no ammo left. All this does make the game a lot harder than it would be if there was on screen detail, however, you get used to it very, very quickly.

Some of you may be disappointed with the skinny weapon range. This includes a Baseball Bat, Police Baton, a Crowbar, a Knife, Pistols (Also dual pistols), Shotguns, an AK-47 and some nice MP5s (Also available as dual). Yes, it's skinny, but i guarantee you won't notice with the amazing gun fights and gang wars going on. To make up for the small range of weapons there's a massive range of movements to do with stealth. The most important in the game has to be the wall lean which leads to the jump out movement, blind gun shot movement, jump out shots and wall to wall stealth. You can also do all this behind small boxes while crouching too. But that's not all. There's rolling and hostage taking (Which leads to immediate shot, neck breaking, pistols whip and arrests) which are really fun. Add this to the game detail, the gun range and such, and you can shoot gas cannisters underneath stairs to make the stairs collapse and poison gas in the hospitals which can poison enemies. Awesome, huh?I can only find a few flaws in the game. The major one is the camera. It's quite awful, you have to manually move it often, unfortunately. However, i got over this quickly but i realized many other people haven't. This one flaw prevented this game from getting 10/10 in the Official Playstation 2 Magazine UK. Just to show off more, there's around 50 fully licensed vehicles in the game (Like Mazdas, Rovers and even TVRs and Lotus')! There's also 10 great hidden cars. There's a hell of a lot more in depth things, like in the car chases.. But if you buy 'The Getaway', you'll find out.

Rent or Buy?

I noticed that on some of the games forums that some people love the game and some people hate the game. This is why i'll call it 'The Marmite Of Video Games'. The reason for this is because they expect a copy of 'Grand Theft Auto'. Well, you're all wrong, as you hopefully just noticed. The two games shouldn't even be in the same category. Try and catch a demo, if you can. Failing that, rent it, and decide for yourself.

• Luke Hudson

this game is very fun to play. the game is stylish. the story is good too. real cars are included like saab, BMW etc. First you play mark hammond whose's son is kidnapped by the jolsons after you have completed the game then you play the policeman frank carter who is also with in the story and you play with his point of view. when you have completed the game, you play play free roam where you can explore London but not whole. the game is not like other games that when you're wounded, you need to find a heart and you can carry many weapons as you like, in this game you can rest against a wall to recover yourself and you can have max two pistols and a two-hand weapon. but still the crew should have put abit more effort in it but overall: 8/10

"The Getaway" is not a video game version of the Sam Peckinpah heist flick or even of the Walter Hill remake. It's a British gangster movie in the vein of Guy Ritchie's "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels". Or is it a video game? It certainly seems like a movie, but it's not.

For years, game developers have been wanting to create a so-called "interactive movie". A product with the look and feel of a motion picture, but one where the viewer is totally in control of. For the most part, they've failed miserably, as is the case of the horrible FMV titles from the Sega CD days.

However, most recently, programmers have come close to such a thing, just play "Max Payne" and you'll realize how much game makers have evolved the concept. Still, I've never played one such as "The Getaway", a gritty, in-your-face gangster opus with characters that use the "F" word so many times that you would think Quentin Tarantino had something to with the script.

In fact, like Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction", the story of "The Getaway" is structured in a very nonlinear way. The two central characters, an ex-gangster who's been pulled back into the "life" and a rogue cop share the spotlight in telling the tale from their own different perspective.

It's us, the players, who could use some help controlling these characters in putting them to good use. As great as the "movie" is, it's the game's controls that need to be polished. Moving these two characters around is, for the most part, a chore. In the name of "realism", the makers have decided to get rid of the usual standard for video games.

There are no health bars (you look tired as you get shot), no maps of the city (London) you constantly drive in or even direction indicators (you have to rely on your turn signals). This is a bold move on part of the makers, because we gamers love games because of the very reason that they get us away from realism. We don't really care for realism in video games. At least the way it's played out in this product. It makes for a very frustrating game expierence.

The reason the "Grand Theft Auto" games are so fun and addicting is the way it constantly relys on a "virtual" world. "The Getaway" is the opposite, I know most players will look at this as a "Grand Theft Auto" ripoff, but it's far from the truth. "GTA" is a parody of recent American gangster pictures, "The Getaway" is a dark, unnerving action game that isn't comical in any way. Its a step in the right direction in bringing the "interactive movie" to life. In that way, it works, but there still is room for improvement.

I'd give it *** out of **** (Good)

PS2 owners have been awaiting the release of The Getaway in the same way fundamentalist Christians await the second coming of Christ. Screenshots were first made public a couple of months after the console's release, and ever since then there has been a massive sense of anticipation - could it ever live up to it's hype ?

The answer is both yes, and no.

The Story is played out from two different perspectives, both of which you get to play, and both of which interact with each other as they take place simultaneously.

In the first part, you play Mark Hammond, low life gangster scumbag, fresh out of jail. His wife is murdered and his son kidnapped by henchmen of Crime Boss Charlie Jolson. Thus Jolson blackmails Hammond into carrying out a variety of multi task missions for him as Hammond becomes public enemy number one as he battles to get back his son.

In the second part you play Detective Frank Carter of the Flying Squad, your typical maverick copper with no respect for authority. Carter's missions generally occur in the aftermath of the carnage created by Hammond, although the stories often cross when Hammond and Carter begin working together.

The voice acting is brilliant, real actors, real Londoner's, real story, and the FMV's are the best that have ever been seen on any game so far (although it can be annoying that you cannot skip them). The story has an incredible cinematic quality,, and you feel like you are playing a part in a Guy Ritchie movie.

Also, on the positive side, the game boasts truly beautiful graphics - at least hi-spec PC standard, with realtime lighting and shadows, beautiful car models and incredibly detailed scenery. The first thing that strikes you when you open the box up up is the map that comes with the game, the area of London that is photographically reproduced is simply MASSIVE !

There is no popup, very little slowdown - even with 30 plus vehicles onscreen at the same time. In fact the game runs frighteningly fast.

The game tries to opt for realism too, your car's performance degrades pretty quickly after afew big bangs, and smoke pours from the engine before eventually bursting into flames.

The car models are stunning, they really do look like the real thing.

Also too, there's no cartoon-esque fliying through the air and getting up when a car hits you, ONE hit and you are dead ! Similarly when your character is shot he very quickly becomes incapacitated and can hardly walk, this can be resolved by standing near a wall and resting.

The police are also frighteningly intelligent, as are the gangsters who accost you on the streets. Although I was abit aghast that the British Bobby's would open fire on me for brushing my car against a lamppost ! They lay down stingers, set up roadblocks, pull up alongside you and shoot your tyres out. You WILL scream at them with using the same four letter words that the game's characters use (-:

But be warned, this game is not for the sensitive and the politically correct, this game really does deserve it's 18 rating. There are scenes of torture, brutality, incessant violence, all with a relentless undercurrent of racist invective directed at the West Indian Yardies, and the Chinese Triads by the white characters.

The "out of car" part of the game is also extremely well done, it is part "Metal Gear Solid" (back to the wall, skulking in the shadows) and part "Max Payne" (diving rolls with guns a-blazing). But even better (cough) you get to grab any person near you an use them as a human shield !! Finished with them ? Then snap their necks or blow their brains out with your gun ! Told you it was violent.

It's full of neat and yet cruel little touches, for example in one of Carter's missions you are in the hospital on Tottenham Court Road protecting your partner who was shot earlier. You can wander into the other hospital wards, see those people in the beds attached to life support machines ? Hear the "beep beep beep" of the machines ? Well, why not shoot the life support machines, or shoot the patients themselves and hear them flatline ! :-)



On the negative side.

First thing you will notice are the way the vehicles react to the controls. You will expect GTA3 style vehicle performance, and you will curse when you don't get this. But calm down, you'll soon get used to the "realistic" car performance. And the second thing you will notice is how damned hard the game is ! You'll be swearing at every lamppost and bollard you crash into, cursing every copper who gets too close to you and handcuffs you on the floor. But bear with the game and you will get used to it.

There is NO ingame map !!!! How crazy is that !! The designers decided not to clutter the onscreen display with information of ANY kind, the directions you need to take in the vehicles are decided by your vehicles indicator lights. There is not even an onscreen compass so you know which direction to go. Unless you have an enyclopaedic knowledge of London streets then you WILL get lost very quickly. One mission sees Carter at a Docks near Tower Bridge, and he is called to a disturbance in Soho (right across the other end of London), and he says he will be there in 5 minutes !!!! In the packed and twisting narrow streets of London, this is nigh on impossible without a Gameshark cheat cartridge.

Probably most disappointing of all this that once you have completed the game, all you unlock is "freelook" mode, where you can cruise the streets of London at your leisure. It is now that you quickly find out that the environment has no interactivity to it at all. You CANNOT visit ANY London attraction because they are all fenced off for no reason I can think of ! Why can't I walk upto the Millenniuum Wheel ? Why does it have a big fence around it ? Why cant I crash my bus through the gates of Buckingham Palace and have a snoop around ? No reason at all except that the designers decided that you couldn't do anything that was faintly interesting and it all seems pretty petty.

It is now that you realise that the game possesses the same kind of "empty" quality that "Driver" and "Driver 2" had. All this beautiful scenery to look at, but nothing you can do with it except admire it from a distance. This is where "GTA3" and "GTA Vice" score big, because once the missions were over then the game really began in earnest and the environment truly was interactive.

But in "Getaway" you are hemmed into what the designers want you to do and see, and this is why I took my copy back to get a refund.

Team Soho - the designers have spent many years creating their own game engine which is in every way superior to "GTA3"'s "Rendaware" engine, but I believe they were forced to release the game early for the Xmas market and so it seems only 75% finished. With the massive amount of money invested in this game there will surely be a franchise created, and I think that the next game in the series will be something truly extraordinary that will make the gaming world really sit up and take notice. All the potential is already there in this game, it just needs more GTA3 style interactivity.

I would say, RENT this game before you buy.

Let's get one thing straight: You can steal cars, you perpetrate crimes and you shoot people. Lots of people. But aside from those similarities, this game bears little semblance to the GTA series. While the GTA games give you a arcade feeling, The Getaway is meant to be as real as possible. There's no screen junk like maps, health bars, ammo counter or anything. You are guided by the blinking indicators on your car and your health is gauged by the way you move and the blood on your suit. The controls are acceptable, but not as tight as they could be. Controlling the cars is much more enjoyable than GTA3 or GTA:VC. Unlike in GTA:VC and preceding games, you can only target hostile opponents, which saves ammo and frustration in a fire fight. The on foot engine has stealth. Hide against walls, pop out around corners, etc. You can take hostages and use them as a shield. Opponents may not fire if the hostage is important. Cops, however, will NEVER fire at a hostage. The weapon selection is limited, you can get pistols, a shotgun, an AK47 and MP5s. Be warned, this game definitely mature. Plenty of course language, stark violence and some other mature themes. Overall, it's a great game.

For the first time, a game like this actually has a point, has suspense, and keeps you entertained with hard as hell missions. this game is truly unique, and I suggest people either play it or read up on it. I mean, if you like crime movies or crime novels, you will most certainly enjoy this game. Long live the ultra-violent crime games!

While playing The Getaway, it is almost impossible not to compare this with Vice City. The real difference is how I perceived both games. In GTAVC, I was wondering just how they fit all the different elements, including 103 songs, 30 weapons, around 50 missions, and a massive city all in a disc. In The Getaway, I was wondering just what took up so much space that they could only include 5 weapons, 24 missions and hardly any secret elements or cheats. If the PS2 is capable of storing all the things put into GTAVC, what was all the work put into in The Getaway? The answer is probably the city itself and the large amount of very cool-looking cutscenes that are needed. The city is 40 sq. kilometers, and the cutscenes, all together, are apparently more than an hour long. Still, they could have made this game much more fun if they had added some side missions and made it less linear. Nonetheless, a fun game for the few days it takes to finish.

Let's start this off by me saying that you should not go into this game thinking it's GTA made by Sony and placed in a real city, rather look at it as a British Mob movie similar to the scenarios of Lock, Stock and Snatch. The game isn't as vast or as non-linear as GTA but it does have it's strong points. The sound is top-notch, with great voices and music for the game; graphics are top notch, with realistic looking locations of London and real-life European cars, many of which are not offered on this side of the Atlantic. Although the game is fairly linear, the story-line is rich enough to warrant a full play through. The only real downside is the controls that can be a bit of a pain at times, but it's something that is easily learned. The guys who made this game (Team SOHO) are already planning on releasing a sequel to the game, which would take place probably in New York, and seeing how well they recreated London, their next game will be even better.

The Getaway is a violent action/adventure game where you first play as a ex-criminal, and then you play as a vigilante cop. The storyline goes that you (Mark Hammond) is out of jail and trying to get back on the straight-and-narrow, however, a ageing crime lord, Charlie Jolson, kills Mark's wife and kidnaps his son, so he has to do various missions to get him back. ONce you finish that part of the game, you then play as a cop who doesn't care for the law, and he goes of hunting for Charlie Jolson. The games graphics, in my mind, they are better than that of GTA 3 and GTA VC, and the car selection is great, where you can select from a Nissan Micra to a Lotus Esprit V8. The car steering and damage are more realistic as well. However, the game loses points on the lack of weapons, all that you can select is a Beretta's, AK-47's, Shotgun's, & Uzi's. Also the lack of missions can also be a concern, and once completeion of the game, the Free Roaming feature is no good if you want to engage in a high speed pursuit with the cops and gangs.

Overall, I would have to give it a 6.5 out of 10.

The Getaway, says Sony, is a perfect combination of both movie and game. You, the player, have to complete missions implemented in a storyline told by several cut-scenes. On-screen information like health bars, hints and directions simply don't exist: you have to rely on your car's turn signals to find your way through the faithfully remodeled city of London. Realism is the keyword here.

And it's the realism that makes this game hell to play. I am a big fan of the 'cartoon' approach that Rockstar uses in its brilliant GTA games. Unlike Grand Theft Auto, The Getaway wants to be taken seriously. Example: killing pedestrians in GTA is fun. You get money for doing so and if you wait a few seconds, an ambulance will arrive to undo the damage you've done. Whereas driving over pedestrians with your vehicle is ludicrous in GTA, it's a rather uncomfortable business in The Getaway. The sickening thud and the screaming of the person you just hit make this quite horrible. And you'll have to kill a few peds in this game, believe me. London folks appear to be suicidal, which means they'll regularly walk into your car. Same goes for the innocent people who get killed when they walk stupidly into your line of fire.

Telling the entire world that your game is ultra-realistic sheds expectations. People don't expect crappy animation, cheesy controls and abysmally behaving cars in a 'realistic' game, and neither did I. This game should have set a benchmark, and it did: The Getaway is the world's first ánd worst movie-game combo ever! A brilliant idea, good storyline and seedy atmosphere are worth nothing thanks to the ruddy gameplay. Games shouldn't be realistic, they should be fun. Ironically, The Getaway is neither realistic nor entertaining. A lousy 5.5/10 is even more than they actually deserve.

For me, The Getaway is by far the best game I have played on the PS2 of its genre. It's realistic take on damage towards cars and your character are done well, the use of the five weapons is also an excellent point and the acting and voices by the cast is simply amazing.

Although other reviewers often say "It's good but it's not like Grand Theft Auto (3 or Vice City)" This statement is both ironic and ridiculous because The Getaway doesn't want to be like Grand Theft Auto, in fact it is probably the opposite end of the spectrum when analysed along with GTA as it doesn't try to be witty and funny by making parodies of London and England related subjects and instead delivers a gritty, well scripted look at the underworld of London.

And to the nay-sayers that question the usage of only five guns, the fact you can carry only one or two at a time and that the healing process in the game is "unrealistic," Think about how unrealistic Grand Theft Auto is; if Tommy Vercetti falls of the side of a building he just lands with a thud and is able to go on as he pleases, plus the added fact that he carries so much heavy weapons on his person should make it impossible to walk around with so much ease (besides, where does he put his rocket launcher when he's not using it? In his sock?)

Anyway, The Getaway is a fantastic game that should be bought, played and played again until you can remember word for word every cutscene in the game (and to those that whine that "you can't skip the cutscenes," you can't the first time they play but when you play again you can skip them by pressing R3 (that's the little twiddly one on the right of your pad, OK)