This review contains spoilers
The Getaway is an open world crime game/”Gta Clone” created by Team Soho of Sony Computer Entertainment with a budget around five million pounds or so according to IMDB, originally starting as a developer of basketball and racing games for the first Playstation before it ultimately transformed itself into open world driving. It ultimately transformed itself into an open world crime game (which apparently sold 250,000 copies) later on under the direction of the team due to competition between Sega over one of their racing games as well as the constant need to perfect the streets of London in their recreation of the game. It was also directed and written by Brendan McNamara of L.A. Noire infamy, mostly due to the fact that his constant need for perfection and treating his staff like shit led to the downfall of Team Bondi lead to Rockstar jumping in to finish off development for that game. It is this sort of strange coincidence that to me oddly makes sense that this was the case because how the game was programmed with perfection in mind feels like the kind of thing someone like him would be involved in. I’m gonna explain the gameplay here first.
The gameplay consists of going from mission to mission (of which there are 24 overall split between two playable characters), and set piece to set piece with mixed up bits of shootout gameplay, driving sections and a couple of stealth/precise dodge rolling bits here and there. You have a HUGE area of London to explore, and keep in mind that this map is as I say, fucking HUGE. Like I haven’t been there (yet), but what I will say for its limitations it’s amazing what the developers achieved in scope here without resolving to loading screens (unless it’s cutscenes or the like), though I’m sure that stuff like this is really the main reason why the game was delayed so long (along with probably getting the license to everything related to real life companies because holy shit there are A LOT of brands from FedEx to Burger King to Ted Baker amongst other ones along with basically every car brand in existence at that time except for BT because they didn’t want their brand to be associated with violence). With this stuff in mind, the game has a sort of unique presentation in the fact that it’s very dedicated to being as “realistic” as possible; there are no health bars, for the most part there are no loading screens which is amazing considering the scope (view GTA: Vice City as an example of how their world was programmed, sections of the map being blocked off by loading screens), there’s none of that. However, it can also lead to really confusing or frustrating moments; the first mission even being one of them; you have to chase a car across the city to a hideout and shootout with a bunch of dudes in a warehouse, cool right? The driving part, while confusing as hell (which I’ll explain in a bit), can be done intuitively if you for the most part know the right controls for most open world driving games. Once you get on foot? Ohhhhh fuck you have no tutorial on how to do anything, you’re basically just kind of thrown in and expected to wing it, which is a bit mixed for me but I managed to get through it with the help of a buddy telling me what they are and without that I might have been stuck on the first mission for longer than I would have wanted. Let me explain some of these on foot controls:
The X button is to take cover/roll depending on where you are or your speed/direction, apparently it can be used to grab an enemy from behind which I wish I knew before beating the game
The Square button is to pull out your gun (often with R1) and shoot/attack people in close distance
Triangle is to put it away/drop any big guns
Circle is to carjack people from their cars
R1 is to auto aim
R2 is to manual aim
L2 is to reload your guns
Again they don’t tell you any of this so you’re kind of just forced to wing it with no direction and it’s kind of jarring. When you aim down your gun with manual aim there’s no reticle which if you’re not used to it can be frustrating; for example in Mission 6 I’m escaping a police station and there’s an option to shoot the mechanical thing that controls the gate so I can escape, an option I always missed considering I can’t aim for shit. If you get damaged, since there are no health bars, you actually have to position yourself at the correct angle next to a wall to heal yourself, where you are put in a vulnerable position where you can’t make any movement of any kind, and you just kind of slowly breathe in and out as the blood on you magically disappears. Now this can be a mixed bag it’s arduous waiting for your health to come back up (nor do I know if it’s a limited thing keeping in realism), but I like how tense it makes it because you always have to watch for enemies coming around any corner waiting to pop a cap in your ass because they WILL charge you for the most part. What I can say about the gunplay is for me, unlike the driving, I actually got used to it and you kind of get into the groove of it fairly quick. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel stiff as hell sometimes because it certainly can, for example get caught on the stairs and it’s kind of a deathwish because your character trots up the steps like an old person just waiting to die of cardiac arrest and if people with guns are nearby you can’t really shoot them up from the steps so then you gotta go one direction or the other and shoot them and it’s really kind of annoying though if you shoot and kill one on the steps I enjoy their little tumbling down animation as it’s kind of funny. I think the worst example of anything on foot related for me had to have been Chapter 11 because dear god, on foot they have you moving through lasers while also having a companion behind you. Keep in mind, look up a guide and see how others do it because it took me try after try, and a decent hour or two to get past this ONE section, arguably the worst in the entire game. You fail to do a roll correctly or shimmy past a couch you’ll get gassed, sometimes there are multiple laser rooms in a row and you will be frustrated going through trying to dodge all of them while also dealing with goons in gas masks and a stupid companion who just kind of gets shot and dies. And the worst part is that this mostly has to do with the camera angles and slightly awkward moving controls, they’re awful in figuring out distance and it’s an actual struggle to move your character up to position without overshooting and hitting a laser to do a roll or shimmy into another area and often times due to the awkward player positioning I’d just knock into some lasers anyways, especially if I’m free aiming to get a grasp on my position. But then other times you’ll feel like a fucking badass, shooting through twelve goons with an AK just lining themselves up for you in the hallways of a hospital. It’s a strange genius but a very jank and sometimes frustrating dichotomy that honestly you’re gonna have to get used to playing this game. Again there’s nothing that can really tell you how much ammo or health you have, for the sake of immersion you are given nothing but your main character in the middle of the screen and told which direction to go.
But that’s only one of many things this game just kind of throws at you. Driving for the most part is normal except using the right thumbstick helps you do drifts, but how you get any direction is strange: you have to follow the blinker lights on the back in order to navigate to your next objective. Keep in mind, if it’s blinking to the right or the left it means the first right or left you should take, if it’s blinking really fast it means you just missed it I’m pretty sure and if both are blinking at the same time you’re in the right spot. I guess for the most part in almost every game, and in real life, I suck at driving; so I will always crash into everything and fly past traffic going the opposite way (in game only of course) because that’s just how I’m wired. These missions kind of need you to do all of that, navigating through the use of blinker lights while also simultaneously (not all the time, but a decent portion) going under a time limit that doesn’t show itself except for some rings and a faster speed in the music when you’re almost out. This has also led to some frustrating moments like in Mission 14 where you have to get to an area in four minutes from a decent distance before you run out of time; the direction the blinkers are giving me mixed with the fact that I can’t seem to shake off random cars of gangsters who just happen to see me and want to fuck me in the ass with no lube who just like to crash into me and throw off my progress non stop; this is mixed in with the fact that it’s realistic, take a crash and for the most part you will start seeing smoke. Go on for too long, it turns black, slows down and the engine dies; sometimes it happens immediately depending on how hard other cars hit so it’s kind of a “Shoot these guys or run to another car while they shoot out my tires and etc” and truth be told during this mission I swear to god Team Soho must’ve collaborated with Sony to release this game in an attempt to boost controller sales because I literally broke a controller in frustration during this mission, not proud of it but it can get really fucking annoying real quick; but then in other cases I’ll do a really good drift or the controls feel functional enough to dodge a bunch of cars and lose my pursuers like it’s Fast & Furious and I don’t understand how the hell that happened. I’ll be more than willing to say I suck eggs at games but again it happens to jump around between janky/frustrating design choices and then it switches to genius in a second and my mood switches immediately. I know some people kind of throw out that this is a Grand Theft Auto clone but truth be told the similarities kind of stop at a certain point as this game focuses way too much on immersion and not holding your hand to differentiate itself from everyone else. I’m going to go to the story because the rest of the game shines there and the design around the gameplay.
The story revolves around two characters: former gangster Mark Hammond and Detective Frank Carter of the Flying Squad, a special unit inside London Police. Mark Hammond’s wife gets shot and his son gets kidnapped by members of the Jolson gang, led by one Charlie Jolson, a brutish right wing old head dusty crime lord who hates the multicultural presence the other gangs have taken in London and being a bit salty about the old days plans to take the reins back. Using Hammond to commit acts of terror in exchange for his son, Hammond is blackmailed into acts like shooting up members of his old gang, the Collins gang; starting a gang war between the Yardies (a jamaican gang) and the Triads, shooting up a police station to assassinate a police captain and all sorts of shit. Meanwhile Frank is trying to figure out what the hell is going on, trying to arrest the Jolsons while simultaneously dealing with police corruption due to his police captain (the one shot by Hammond) having ties to Jolson; both of their stories and actions intersect with each other and it’s nice seeing what each one has in context with the other. I love the characters, I love the noirish plot they have going, there’s a lot of stuff going on (a lot of which I don’t want to spoil here to be honest because it’s that good but if you want to look it up on Youtube) that frankly to me even though it’s simple in its plotting is great in it’s execution. The only thing I personally could say is that although starting as Hammond is a strong opener first, I feel like they should’ve let you play as Carter first simply due to the fact that both it’s a lot easier than Hammond’s missions so it slowly rises the difficulty level of the game in a better way while also delivering the plot in a way that feels a bit more satisfying. After all, the idea that you’re a cop with no clue as to why all this shit’s going to hell, thinking that Hammond is some psycho only to learn that he’s doing this under blackmail feels more satisfying to me personally as it gives context to what Hammond’s stuff is later. However for what it is it’s good, and honestly again I love the plot. I also personally like the writing, for the most part you get a feeling for what the others are about motivation wise and personality and such; ESPECIALLY the Jolson gang. They’re a funny bunch, in the sense that they’re psychopathic racist gangsters with a clear love for each other and a hatred for everyone else, writing that could only be really accepted in 2002 with its constant mentions of racial stereotypes that are clearly satire on old gangster stereotypes. Another funny bit is when Hammond throws a duffle bag at a group of gangsters, only for it to go full black comedy as they unleash an angry cat and spend the next five seconds just shooting into the void as you escape into a warehouse only to hear loud screams, gunshots and smoke in a moment reminiscent of that one scene from Boondock Saints. Though to me nothing beats the final mission when Charlie Jolson finally loses it inside of a ship about to blow up; that monologue had me cackling over how fucked it was and how out of his mind Charlie was. Keep in mind that everything around the story is surrounded by stuff that is also immaculate and helps bring up the story even more. Basically, the game plays out like a Guy Ritchie crime movie and I love it. I’m just gonna post an example of some of the dialogue here from IMDB so you can get my point:
Jake Jolson: Oi Hammond. What are you doing?
[to Eyebrows and Walter]
Jake Jolson: Oi, boys, in here!
[to Mark]
Jake Jolson: I thought I told you to stay put.
Mark Hammond: What do you think I'm doing, moron? I'm looking for my kid.
Jake Jolson: [to Eyebrows and Walter] What did he call me?
Big Walter: A Mormon.
Jake Jolson: What the fuck's that?
Eyebrows: You know, Mormon - them bible-bashers that come round knocking on your door telling you that Jesus is a fucking Yank.
Jake Jolson: [to Mark] You must be losing it, Hammond. I've just been talking to Charlie about you and your little boy. Very touching. But now you've got a job to do for us. You're gonna run this geezer over to Chinatown. It won't take long.
Keeping with that in mind, again graphically the game for 2002 is graphically impressive and I can’t really complain because I’m sure it was great for its time. The art design is mostly just realistic 2002 London City so I can’t really say too much about that. The soundtrack however is amazing and uplifts everything around it; performed by the London Philharmonic along with composers Andrew Hale and Shawn Lee; personal favorites include the Main Menu theme, the song that plays in the Yardie’s crackhouse, and the chase theme going in between missions with a sort of sixties crime movie vibe that I really like. It helps bring the game to a more cinematic level, making the tense scenes more fucking tense and honestly just sounding great in general, like I literally downloaded the soundtrack online so I can listen to it offline. The voice acting is great as well, with my particular favorite being Richard Hards (heh) as Charlie Jolson, he sounds like a douchebag crime boss and plays it very well but truth be told everyone does a good job here from the main characters and onwards. The dialogue in game is acted great and delivered convincingly (two examples being Mark Hammond yelling “You fucking muppet” when he kills people sometimes in a way that makes me giggle as well as certain drivers yelling “Stop, I need your details” in a way that makes me want to crash into his car further) and further add to the atmosphere of the game.
I guess my final finishing point about this giant ramble is that I like The Getaway, in fact I LOVE The Getaway; it’s funny and brilliant yet frustrating and jank, like a shiny gem covered in thick layers of nasty smelling mud just waiting to be cleaned up and shined. The gameplay being somewhat frustrating, everything else really hit well for me and I ended up loving the game to the point that I’m gonna come out there and say it: this series deserves better than what it got. It got this game and its sequel, Black Monday (which a friend says feels more like an expansion pack than a sequel) but there wasn’t much else after that. There was a PSP spin-off called Gangsters of London which is technically not related but was made by the same team and with some of the same assets/personality and THEN there was The Getaway 3: the legendary sequel that was rumored to be canceled but not canceled multiple times in a state of development hell/limbo due to the studio focusing on games like SingStar, which admittedly I couldn’t give a fuck about but other people do I guess and that’s perfectly ok. That being said, I’m gonna come out and say this; this janky fucking game deserves not only ports of the whole series, but honestly it deserves a remake and it also deserves the fucking sequel. But since then, Team Soho and Bizarre Entertainment (another UK studio) were turned into Team London and all they’ve been making were these SingStar games and other titles related to it except ONE that points out: a VR FPS made for PS4 titled Blood & Truth going back to its roots in London gangsterism. Now I didn’t buy a VR headset, nor am I going for the PS4 but there’s this hope that maybe one day, ONE DAY, they will sit down and do more with this series because behind this confusing contraption is a shiny gem waiting to unearth it’s true potential. I love this game a lot, but keep in mind if you’re playing this most likely it’ll be on PS2 hardware only, I picked up my copy for like 20 dollars or so, so it shouldn’t be that bad to get but it’s a shame it’s trapped on older hardware that sadly will eventually die out. It deserves better.
The gameplay consists of going from mission to mission (of which there are 24 overall split between two playable characters), and set piece to set piece with mixed up bits of shootout gameplay, driving sections and a couple of stealth/precise dodge rolling bits here and there. You have a HUGE area of London to explore, and keep in mind that this map is as I say, fucking HUGE. Like I haven’t been there (yet), but what I will say for its limitations it’s amazing what the developers achieved in scope here without resolving to loading screens (unless it’s cutscenes or the like), though I’m sure that stuff like this is really the main reason why the game was delayed so long (along with probably getting the license to everything related to real life companies because holy shit there are A LOT of brands from FedEx to Burger King to Ted Baker amongst other ones along with basically every car brand in existence at that time except for BT because they didn’t want their brand to be associated with violence). With this stuff in mind, the game has a sort of unique presentation in the fact that it’s very dedicated to being as “realistic” as possible; there are no health bars, for the most part there are no loading screens which is amazing considering the scope (view GTA: Vice City as an example of how their world was programmed, sections of the map being blocked off by loading screens), there’s none of that. However, it can also lead to really confusing or frustrating moments; the first mission even being one of them; you have to chase a car across the city to a hideout and shootout with a bunch of dudes in a warehouse, cool right? The driving part, while confusing as hell (which I’ll explain in a bit), can be done intuitively if you for the most part know the right controls for most open world driving games. Once you get on foot? Ohhhhh fuck you have no tutorial on how to do anything, you’re basically just kind of thrown in and expected to wing it, which is a bit mixed for me but I managed to get through it with the help of a buddy telling me what they are and without that I might have been stuck on the first mission for longer than I would have wanted. Let me explain some of these on foot controls:
The X button is to take cover/roll depending on where you are or your speed/direction, apparently it can be used to grab an enemy from behind which I wish I knew before beating the game
The Square button is to pull out your gun (often with R1) and shoot/attack people in close distance
Triangle is to put it away/drop any big guns
Circle is to carjack people from their cars
R1 is to auto aim
R2 is to manual aim
L2 is to reload your guns
Again they don’t tell you any of this so you’re kind of just forced to wing it with no direction and it’s kind of jarring. When you aim down your gun with manual aim there’s no reticle which if you’re not used to it can be frustrating; for example in Mission 6 I’m escaping a police station and there’s an option to shoot the mechanical thing that controls the gate so I can escape, an option I always missed considering I can’t aim for shit. If you get damaged, since there are no health bars, you actually have to position yourself at the correct angle next to a wall to heal yourself, where you are put in a vulnerable position where you can’t make any movement of any kind, and you just kind of slowly breathe in and out as the blood on you magically disappears. Now this can be a mixed bag it’s arduous waiting for your health to come back up (nor do I know if it’s a limited thing keeping in realism), but I like how tense it makes it because you always have to watch for enemies coming around any corner waiting to pop a cap in your ass because they WILL charge you for the most part. What I can say about the gunplay is for me, unlike the driving, I actually got used to it and you kind of get into the groove of it fairly quick. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel stiff as hell sometimes because it certainly can, for example get caught on the stairs and it’s kind of a deathwish because your character trots up the steps like an old person just waiting to die of cardiac arrest and if people with guns are nearby you can’t really shoot them up from the steps so then you gotta go one direction or the other and shoot them and it’s really kind of annoying though if you shoot and kill one on the steps I enjoy their little tumbling down animation as it’s kind of funny. I think the worst example of anything on foot related for me had to have been Chapter 11 because dear god, on foot they have you moving through lasers while also having a companion behind you. Keep in mind, look up a guide and see how others do it because it took me try after try, and a decent hour or two to get past this ONE section, arguably the worst in the entire game. You fail to do a roll correctly or shimmy past a couch you’ll get gassed, sometimes there are multiple laser rooms in a row and you will be frustrated going through trying to dodge all of them while also dealing with goons in gas masks and a stupid companion who just kind of gets shot and dies. And the worst part is that this mostly has to do with the camera angles and slightly awkward moving controls, they’re awful in figuring out distance and it’s an actual struggle to move your character up to position without overshooting and hitting a laser to do a roll or shimmy into another area and often times due to the awkward player positioning I’d just knock into some lasers anyways, especially if I’m free aiming to get a grasp on my position. But then other times you’ll feel like a fucking badass, shooting through twelve goons with an AK just lining themselves up for you in the hallways of a hospital. It’s a strange genius but a very jank and sometimes frustrating dichotomy that honestly you’re gonna have to get used to playing this game. Again there’s nothing that can really tell you how much ammo or health you have, for the sake of immersion you are given nothing but your main character in the middle of the screen and told which direction to go.
But that’s only one of many things this game just kind of throws at you. Driving for the most part is normal except using the right thumbstick helps you do drifts, but how you get any direction is strange: you have to follow the blinker lights on the back in order to navigate to your next objective. Keep in mind, if it’s blinking to the right or the left it means the first right or left you should take, if it’s blinking really fast it means you just missed it I’m pretty sure and if both are blinking at the same time you’re in the right spot. I guess for the most part in almost every game, and in real life, I suck at driving; so I will always crash into everything and fly past traffic going the opposite way (in game only of course) because that’s just how I’m wired. These missions kind of need you to do all of that, navigating through the use of blinker lights while also simultaneously (not all the time, but a decent portion) going under a time limit that doesn’t show itself except for some rings and a faster speed in the music when you’re almost out. This has also led to some frustrating moments like in Mission 14 where you have to get to an area in four minutes from a decent distance before you run out of time; the direction the blinkers are giving me mixed with the fact that I can’t seem to shake off random cars of gangsters who just happen to see me and want to fuck me in the ass with no lube who just like to crash into me and throw off my progress non stop; this is mixed in with the fact that it’s realistic, take a crash and for the most part you will start seeing smoke. Go on for too long, it turns black, slows down and the engine dies; sometimes it happens immediately depending on how hard other cars hit so it’s kind of a “Shoot these guys or run to another car while they shoot out my tires and etc” and truth be told during this mission I swear to god Team Soho must’ve collaborated with Sony to release this game in an attempt to boost controller sales because I literally broke a controller in frustration during this mission, not proud of it but it can get really fucking annoying real quick; but then in other cases I’ll do a really good drift or the controls feel functional enough to dodge a bunch of cars and lose my pursuers like it’s Fast & Furious and I don’t understand how the hell that happened. I’ll be more than willing to say I suck eggs at games but again it happens to jump around between janky/frustrating design choices and then it switches to genius in a second and my mood switches immediately. I know some people kind of throw out that this is a Grand Theft Auto clone but truth be told the similarities kind of stop at a certain point as this game focuses way too much on immersion and not holding your hand to differentiate itself from everyone else. I’m going to go to the story because the rest of the game shines there and the design around the gameplay.
The story revolves around two characters: former gangster Mark Hammond and Detective Frank Carter of the Flying Squad, a special unit inside London Police. Mark Hammond’s wife gets shot and his son gets kidnapped by members of the Jolson gang, led by one Charlie Jolson, a brutish right wing old head dusty crime lord who hates the multicultural presence the other gangs have taken in London and being a bit salty about the old days plans to take the reins back. Using Hammond to commit acts of terror in exchange for his son, Hammond is blackmailed into acts like shooting up members of his old gang, the Collins gang; starting a gang war between the Yardies (a jamaican gang) and the Triads, shooting up a police station to assassinate a police captain and all sorts of shit. Meanwhile Frank is trying to figure out what the hell is going on, trying to arrest the Jolsons while simultaneously dealing with police corruption due to his police captain (the one shot by Hammond) having ties to Jolson; both of their stories and actions intersect with each other and it’s nice seeing what each one has in context with the other. I love the characters, I love the noirish plot they have going, there’s a lot of stuff going on (a lot of which I don’t want to spoil here to be honest because it’s that good but if you want to look it up on Youtube) that frankly to me even though it’s simple in its plotting is great in it’s execution. The only thing I personally could say is that although starting as Hammond is a strong opener first, I feel like they should’ve let you play as Carter first simply due to the fact that both it’s a lot easier than Hammond’s missions so it slowly rises the difficulty level of the game in a better way while also delivering the plot in a way that feels a bit more satisfying. After all, the idea that you’re a cop with no clue as to why all this shit’s going to hell, thinking that Hammond is some psycho only to learn that he’s doing this under blackmail feels more satisfying to me personally as it gives context to what Hammond’s stuff is later. However for what it is it’s good, and honestly again I love the plot. I also personally like the writing, for the most part you get a feeling for what the others are about motivation wise and personality and such; ESPECIALLY the Jolson gang. They’re a funny bunch, in the sense that they’re psychopathic racist gangsters with a clear love for each other and a hatred for everyone else, writing that could only be really accepted in 2002 with its constant mentions of racial stereotypes that are clearly satire on old gangster stereotypes. Another funny bit is when Hammond throws a duffle bag at a group of gangsters, only for it to go full black comedy as they unleash an angry cat and spend the next five seconds just shooting into the void as you escape into a warehouse only to hear loud screams, gunshots and smoke in a moment reminiscent of that one scene from Boondock Saints. Though to me nothing beats the final mission when Charlie Jolson finally loses it inside of a ship about to blow up; that monologue had me cackling over how fucked it was and how out of his mind Charlie was. Keep in mind that everything around the story is surrounded by stuff that is also immaculate and helps bring up the story even more. Basically, the game plays out like a Guy Ritchie crime movie and I love it. I’m just gonna post an example of some of the dialogue here from IMDB so you can get my point:
Jake Jolson: Oi Hammond. What are you doing?
[to Eyebrows and Walter]
Jake Jolson: Oi, boys, in here!
[to Mark]
Jake Jolson: I thought I told you to stay put.
Mark Hammond: What do you think I'm doing, moron? I'm looking for my kid.
Jake Jolson: [to Eyebrows and Walter] What did he call me?
Big Walter: A Mormon.
Jake Jolson: What the fuck's that?
Eyebrows: You know, Mormon - them bible-bashers that come round knocking on your door telling you that Jesus is a fucking Yank.
Jake Jolson: [to Mark] You must be losing it, Hammond. I've just been talking to Charlie about you and your little boy. Very touching. But now you've got a job to do for us. You're gonna run this geezer over to Chinatown. It won't take long.
Keeping with that in mind, again graphically the game for 2002 is graphically impressive and I can’t really complain because I’m sure it was great for its time. The art design is mostly just realistic 2002 London City so I can’t really say too much about that. The soundtrack however is amazing and uplifts everything around it; performed by the London Philharmonic along with composers Andrew Hale and Shawn Lee; personal favorites include the Main Menu theme, the song that plays in the Yardie’s crackhouse, and the chase theme going in between missions with a sort of sixties crime movie vibe that I really like. It helps bring the game to a more cinematic level, making the tense scenes more fucking tense and honestly just sounding great in general, like I literally downloaded the soundtrack online so I can listen to it offline. The voice acting is great as well, with my particular favorite being Richard Hards (heh) as Charlie Jolson, he sounds like a douchebag crime boss and plays it very well but truth be told everyone does a good job here from the main characters and onwards. The dialogue in game is acted great and delivered convincingly (two examples being Mark Hammond yelling “You fucking muppet” when he kills people sometimes in a way that makes me giggle as well as certain drivers yelling “Stop, I need your details” in a way that makes me want to crash into his car further) and further add to the atmosphere of the game.
I guess my final finishing point about this giant ramble is that I like The Getaway, in fact I LOVE The Getaway; it’s funny and brilliant yet frustrating and jank, like a shiny gem covered in thick layers of nasty smelling mud just waiting to be cleaned up and shined. The gameplay being somewhat frustrating, everything else really hit well for me and I ended up loving the game to the point that I’m gonna come out there and say it: this series deserves better than what it got. It got this game and its sequel, Black Monday (which a friend says feels more like an expansion pack than a sequel) but there wasn’t much else after that. There was a PSP spin-off called Gangsters of London which is technically not related but was made by the same team and with some of the same assets/personality and THEN there was The Getaway 3: the legendary sequel that was rumored to be canceled but not canceled multiple times in a state of development hell/limbo due to the studio focusing on games like SingStar, which admittedly I couldn’t give a fuck about but other people do I guess and that’s perfectly ok. That being said, I’m gonna come out and say this; this janky fucking game deserves not only ports of the whole series, but honestly it deserves a remake and it also deserves the fucking sequel. But since then, Team Soho and Bizarre Entertainment (another UK studio) were turned into Team London and all they’ve been making were these SingStar games and other titles related to it except ONE that points out: a VR FPS made for PS4 titled Blood & Truth going back to its roots in London gangsterism. Now I didn’t buy a VR headset, nor am I going for the PS4 but there’s this hope that maybe one day, ONE DAY, they will sit down and do more with this series because behind this confusing contraption is a shiny gem waiting to unearth it’s true potential. I love this game a lot, but keep in mind if you’re playing this most likely it’ll be on PS2 hardware only, I picked up my copy for like 20 dollars or so, so it shouldn’t be that bad to get but it’s a shame it’s trapped on older hardware that sadly will eventually die out. It deserves better.