24 August 2012

Review: The Getaway (Playstation 2)

Winter 2002. I had just turned seventeen and gotten some money as a birthday present - from which I spent around $70 on a pre-order on The Getaway. I had read that it was as close to reality as it gets, with real cars, marvelous graphics, no distracting HUD and a interpretation of reality more convincing than the Grand Theft Auto-series. After an hour of intense swearing I put the game away, biked to a friends house and drank melon punch until we puked. The game was destined to remain on the shelf for nine years...

Present time. The controls are as frustrating as I remember and the graphics... no, the graphics have actually gotten old with a certain form of dignity. We're getting to the games pros and cons as we go along, but I'm going to start at the beginning.

Mark Hammond is an ex-member of the Collins gang, which owns the Soho area of London. He is just out of jail and is trying to get his life in order when his son all of a sudden gets kidnapped by a gang called Bethnal Green Mob and his wife gets murdered trying to prevent the kidnapping. Of course Mark gets a tad upset by this but he soon recieves a phone call from a Charlie Jolson - who makes it painfully obvious that Mark has to do what he is told if he ever wants to see his son alive again. The revenge has to wait in other words, while Mark throws himself in one suicidal mission after another to make Charlie a happy camper.

Most of the missions is of the type "go from point A to point B" with the killing of everyone on the site as a final. It's easier said than done. For some strange reason one has to drive mostly on one way streets with the traffic going the other way. When another car is being bumped into, it turns into glue and never seems to want to let go if you don't back up and carefully drive around it. Realistic, some might say, frustrating says I. Add to that that in every sharp turn, there is a oncoming car. Almost as magic.

As I said before there is no HUD, which is pretty liberating in a sense, but in this case it is again only frustrating. You navigate yourself through the streets of London only with the blinkers of your car, which blinks in the direction you should go. Because of this there is no real oversight on where to go, no notion of how far it is and when hit from behind the blinkers breaks rendering you virtually blind. There is also no way of knowing how much time is left until it is too late, should there be a time limit. When you at last reach your destination the next test begins. The controls at foot is not all that bad as long as nothing advanced is required, but as soon as it gets tight or hectic you are doomed. The camera never shows you what you want to see, the controls become mirrored on and off, the auto sight chooses enemies at random (which makes you sometimes focus on some random guy in the background whilst being shot in the ear by someone three centimeters away). The ammo runs out at any time without warnings since there is no HUD. Because there is no clear indications of... well, anything, you often reach a standstill where you have no idea what needs to be done or where it needs to be done. A lot of time consuming missions had to be done from the beginning a few times in spite of me arriving at the site in time because I honsetly had no idea what I should have done. You have to completely rely on what is being said in the cutscenes for mission briefing. And now we are reaching one of the biggest strong points of the game. The voice acting.

The accents are just right, the voices are believable and engaging. I had no problems what so ever to imagine myself being in the middle of the story with these characters - and what a story it is! Very entertaining and exciting. What will happen to Mark? Will he see his son again? What is Charlie up to? Who is the mysterious cop that comes in out of the blue and wants to help? When you arrive at the ending it turns out you are just halfway, the next half is taking place in the same time frame as you just played through - but through someone elses eyes. The mysterious cops eyes, to be more precise. Now you get to see what he has been up to and how the story really ends. A grip I am usually very sceptical of since it has habit of becoming rather repetetive, but here it is being done just right - with new views of the whole story and almost completely different settings and missions. The feeling of a movie that Team Soho wanted to give us is present in spite of all the weaknesses in the controls and the "bugginess" in general, and you really want to keep playing. It is the voice acting together with the story, and the execution of it, that makes me praise the game. It is truly superb. But they completely missed the mark in all other aspects. As closure I would like to say that The Getaway is a diamond in the rough - so if you read this blog you should absolutely look this game up.