The Getaway: Black Monday
My obnoxious hipster contrarianism, which most noticeably manifests itself in my musical tastes, permeates even to my choices of Playstation games to buy. I was a fan of the original Grand Theft Auto, way back in the day when it was a minor success on the PC, but when GTA3 became a big hit on the consoles, the commercial crassness of it's success kept me away from it. Fortunately for snobs like me there's The Getaway, which uses the GTA game engine, but replaces the bourgeois gangsta trappings with quirky British coolness.
Not having played the more recent GTAs or the original Getaway, I'm not sure how the gameplay (or anything else) compares, but I imagine it's not much different. There are two different gameplay modes, on foot, in which it's a relatively standard 3rd person shooter, and in vehicles, in which you careen around the streets of London, running people over, blowing stuff up, and sowing general mayhem. I found the controls for the on foot parts quite hard to use, but I eventually got competent enough with them to get through the game. This might just be my unfamiliarity with console action games showing through again though.
In the beginning you play Mitch, a police officer, and about half-way through you switch to Eddie (and occasionally his sidekick Sam) who are rough but good hearted crims caught in the middle of things. Gameplay wise there's little difference between Mitch and Eddie, Mitch doesn't have to worry about attracting the attention of the police while causing havoc on the roads, and Eddie has all sorts of hand-to-hand combat moves, which you'll almost never use because you'll pick up a gun as soon as you can. Sam's missions are all stealth and no fighting. They're a nice change of pace, but the levels are very linear and really don't compare well to the likes of Thief.
Vehicle missions are the specialty of the GTA engine, and this is easily the best part of the game. Many a gleeful cackle was heard to escape my lips while hooning the wrong way down a one way street with the police in hot pursuit, the gangsters I'm chasing firing back at me with their uzis, and rows of pedestrians getting mowed down in all the carnage. There are a wide variety of cars to drive, although probably not as many as in GTA, since this game is a little more concerned with gritty realism, but you can still steal a big red double decker bus! Yay!
The on foot missions make up the bulk of the playing time, which is unfortunate, because they're not nearly as fun. The lack of a free camera means that every time you go through a doorway you're going to get nailed a couple of times by any enemies who aren't standing right in front of you when you enter the room. It's frustrating and just bad game design.
The level design on the other hand is very well done. The annoying on foot levels kept me persevering despite their flaws because I wanted to see what came next. There's nothing too exotic about the locations, it's your usual Warehouse Level, Boat Level, Sewers Level (you've always got to have a level themed after the sewers!), although a porn studio level is quite unique and memorable. But they change the settings and style of the action enough to keep you interested right up until the end. The vehicle missions all take place in the same impressive replica of central London. There's a lot of detail here (although I don't know how accurate it is) and it's nice just to drive around and look at it. You can even go sightseeing and see St. Paul's Cathedral, the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey and other famous landmarks.
After you've finished the story mode, there are a few other bonus gameplay modes (with additional levels opened up by obtaining trinkets in the story mode) which offer a bit more longevity for the game. There's plain old racing mode, police chase mode, and black cab mode. In the latter you have to drive a cab around town and make a certain amount of money within the time limit. These Londoner's are a strange lot, they'll give you just enough time to get to their destination but only if you drive at 100kph down all the one way streets in the wrong direction, and then complain about your driving just because you ran over half a dozen people on the way.
There's also free roaming mode, which just allows you to drive around the city with no set objective or restraints. It's a good way to go sightseeing and appreciate the setting's design without worrying about anyone shooting at you. Until of course you give in to the destructive urges, steal a bus and run down a bunch of pedestrians, then the police start chasing you, you kill a few of them and take their weapons, hey, it's just like GTA...
The plot is fairly generic, just your usual nonsense about feuding gangs, evil corporations and a couple of plucky heroes stuck in the middle of it all. It starts out pretty good, like an unusually violent and profane version of The Bill, (which I reckon would make for an interesting game), but it pretty soon devolves into cliché. On the other hand, the cut-scenes are pretty entertaining, just for the earthy Englishness of it all. (I think this is the first time I've heard the word 'cunt' used in a video game.) They're pretty much the only reason I persevered through the first few levels while I was struggling with the controls.
Graphics are very good (for a console), and while it's all a bit grainy the vistas of the cityscape and the Thames are impressive nonetheless. Sound is nothing special, except for the voice acting, which is all top notch, something very rare in the cheesy video game industry.
This is a pretty cool game in a lot of ways but I often found the gameplay to be frustrating and not much fun. In the future I think I'll stick to playing action games on the PC, and use the PS2 for RPGs. Which brings up a pet peeve, why do we not get any console RPGs over here? Sure we get Final Fantasy and most of the big ones, but I've read about loads of cool sounding games that are released in the States and never make it over here. Do they get them in Australia? Europe? If I put a modchip in my PS2 will it be easy to order these games from overseas? If it wasn't for the stupid fucking region locking I would have bought a shitload of them while I was in Singapore.
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