Customer Reviews

The Getaway: Black Monday

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

When the first Getaway came out, it was naturally compared to the revolutionary Grand Theft Auto 3. It was the first game similar in the city re-creation aspect to follow GTA3. After years of creation, it was released with much fanfare and a lower price of $39.95. While it wasn't a failure, it sure did not live up to the hype.

Now the sequel has been released in a much more subdued launch, with much lowered expectations, and though it is extremely flawed, it's an enjoyable game. It's a strange game. In terms of gameplay, in terms of problems, and in terms of wasted potential, this game should be terrible. Despite all that though, for weird reason, I couldn't put it down.
Even though it has the City of London to traverse through, the game is mostly a third person shooting game with just a smaller part consisting of driving or chasing missions. You play as three different character in 22 chapters, a cop and a criminal, and a teenager.

First, the bad. The most glaring problem are the camera angles. In many missions, the camera is the toughest enemy. Close quarter angles are just terrible. This is mostly an indoor shooting game, and much of it relies on stealth and looking over corners . The camera just doesn't want to cooperate. It's just bad. I can't stress that enough.

This brings up the stealth missions. Now, with the camera described above, it makes it annoying. While doable, you'll be spotted, but you'll never see who spotted you. While a nice change of pace from the constant gun firing, the camera ruins it as you can't see half the stuff you need to. It's also sometimes pretty unintuitive to figure out where you need to go.

The game is short, which is what I prefer, but the reply value is virtually non-existent. You get to roam around London, go back to missions to find keys to I guess unlock more stuff, race, or drive a cab. I had no inclination to do any of those except drive around London, and that was dull after twenty minutes.

Finally, what good is reproducing London if it's really just a gateway to the missions? In the original GTA 3, the city was always an integral part of most missions. In this game, it's just a place to drive through. There is a lot that can happen, but Team Soho didn't bother to take full advantage of their years of work. I can only imagine a shootout in Hyde Park, or snipers on the Tower Bridge.

Now to the good. As with the first game, the graphics are great. London is as, well, Londony as ever, the graphics for the indoor parts of the missions are smooth, polished, and capture the ambiance of warehouses, office buildings, slums, etc. Unlike the first game though, the map is really useful, as it tells you where you are and where you're headed, so there is no need to rely on those horrible blinkers from the first game. Even if don't use the map, the blinkers actually perform much, much better than the first game. Team Soho saw the weakest part of their previous game and tackled it.

Though I think most cut scenes are usually game filler with no redeeming value, the cut-scenes compliment this game very well. They're much shorter than the first game, and describe a particular event from three different perspectives. They intermingle well with the game and add to the gameplay, not detract from it.

Finally, it's just addictive. I got it Wednesday, thinking I would have something to play over the weekend. I finished the second half of the game in one sitting on Friday night. A game has great flow and is addictive when someone like me, who can't sit still for an hour straight, can play this for almost five hours straight without even realizing it.

Don't expect miracles, in fact, expect some flawed gameplay. But still, it was a fun game.

Pros:
Could not put it down
Story and gameplay splicing is perfect
Improved map and handling was a drastic improvement
Great flow with little frustration
Great graphics
No backtracking and little repetition

Cons:
Camera is perhaps the worst I've seen on PS2
Stealth missions don't work
Up close aiming not as fine tuned
Doesn't really use the city of London
Extras are useless

Time to Complete: 10 hours

Frustration Level: Low

Difficulty Level: Low

Getaway - Black Monday is the sequel to the Getaway game. This is set in an almost photorealistic version of London, with cops and robbers trading bullets.

For better or for worse, everyone is going to compare this game to GTA - San Andreas, as well as to the first Getaway that came out several years ago. So it's a strange situation in that the game is truly amazing in its own right - but it is very weak when held up to the standards of today's gaming.

First, the amazing parts. You literally are driving around the actual streets of London in this game, in real cars. If we had shown this game to gamers 5 or 10 years ago, they would have been blown away. Every detail of the streets is paid close attention to. If you played this game for a few weeks and then visited London, you would know your way around. That is an amazing achievement.

The game is very much like an interactive movie. Often the cut scenes almost seamlessly merge into your action. The shadows and movements in game are quite impressive. Some say the cut scenes are too long - but again this isn't a game about blasting away. It's about being drawn deeper and deeper into the story.

The graphics are very impressive, with tons of details. For example if you pick up dropped ammo, you actually stoop down and pick up something that looks like ammo. If you're in a car that is hurt, it goes more and more slowly, and the smoke obscures your vision.

The sound equally draws you in, from the various accents of the characters to their dialogue and background sounds. Also, unlike most of the games of this style on the market, you're actually playing 'good' most of the time. Instead of just killing people for fun, you are able to handcuff them and only take out the truly bad guys. That's a refreshing change.

Now, for the not-so-great aspects of this game. The one that really drives us crazy is the camera angle and controls. There are ALL sorts of times that the camera actively impedes your gameplay. Maybe we've been spoiled by Splinter Cell - but interpersonal combat is very clumsy here.

Next, gameplay is *incredibly* short. With games existing that take months to solve and explore, you could literally finish this game in a day or two. Now, if this had been the first release, I might have understood that. After all, building the incredible map of London was quite a task! But this is the *sequel* - meaning all of that hard work was done. All they had to do was maybe enhance the graphics, and add new missions. To add on missions that were so quickly solved seemed a shame.

I really love open ended missions, but this game makes it border on the edge of truly annoying. Sometimes you can kick open doors - but other times you can't - and there's no rational as to why. I love the no-health-meter interactive aspect - but you lean against walls to insta-heal? How about carrying a health kit at least? You don't have an ammo meter - again to make this immersive - but you can't actually see your gun's ammo levels.

I appreciate greatly that you can handcuff bad guys instead of just killing everyone in sight - but for some reason you just tap a guy and he dutifully lets you cuff him without a fight, and everyone else nearby pauses in their shooting until you're done. I would rather have some sort of mini-game that lets you cuff them in more of a challenging fashion.

A LOT of this game requires an intimate knowledge of the streets of London. Of course if you played the first game, you're pretty set here. If you aren't, make sure you take as much time as you can to learn them. It often spells the difference between success and failure.

And finally, as much as every game in modern times seems to involve swearing, this one goes over the top. The cops and bad guys seem to swear every third word. Sure, half of them are "English" swears so maybe don't carry the same weight in non-English countries. But it is still pretty incessant.

This really could have been an incredibly excellent game, but the combination of bad camera and short gameplay make it more of an exercise in frustration. You get periods where you really get into things - and then periods where you are swearing as much as the characters on-screen are. Maybe if they get around to a Getaway 3, they'll finally find a good balance.

The reason I liked the first Getaway, other than the fact that you're operating in the realm of a real city, is the way the game flowed. The game wasn't too fast paced, the storyline was engaging and suspenseful,and the missions were original and cool and actually gave you a tourist's view of London.

The tempo of Black Monday started off so fast that I didn't get to absorb the storyline or the ambience of the game. If you are looking to buy this game you should really do it with the knowledge that you'll actually enjoy this game more once you've completed it. The game pace was too fast and I didn't understand the storyline really until the end and even then I didn't buy into it. Plus I thought the missions were either boring, unoriginal or too drawn out, except for level 17 & 18 I believe (the ones with Eddie).

The first Getaway was a little better because there were more high speed driving missions, stealth missions, major gang shoot-outs in places like an art museum, a hospital, a multi level car park, and a huge ship. There were cool objective missions like setting fire to a building, dropping off a dead body, asassinating the police chief inside the police HQ, going into different gang hide-outs and searching a booby trapped house. You also knew what the main characters were about, and the difficulty level was a little higher. The originality and methodical pace is absent in Black Monday I believe. But the movement of the characters and visuals were slightly improved from the first one.

There are also annoyances with camera problems, movement, AI, and glitches. There is also no "London experience" like there was in the first game. The other thing about this game is that it is full of huge glitches! There was one mission where Levi was somehow stuck in the top subway car in the junk pile where I couldn't arrest him, and I had to restart the mission. In the next mission, where I was chasing Levi by car, he hit a car and got jammed in between the car and a street pole and was unable to get to the building I was supposed to follow him to! Also, in the subway level the other cop on the mission with me was standing at the top of some stairs and a bad guy was standing a few feet next to him and neither of them started shooting at each other until I reached the top of the stairs.

But, on the positive side, the great thing in this game is the free roaming mode and I don't think some people understand why.

I played the free roaming mode for about 2 hours before I realized that there are actually cool hidden side streets behind wooden planks and objects where cool cars are and there are car ramps also. And these are for each character in each section of the city. So once you find these hidden areas you can go from alley to alley for about 20 minutes (for each character) discovering these new cars. And you can store a car in hidden garages all over the city, only one car though.

At first I was annoyed by the fact that the cops are on your tail for everything in free roaming, but after a while I thought it was cool because it takes away the monotonous aspect of just driving around, and the cops can't really do much to you or chase you, unless you start hijacking a lot of cars, then beware!

Also you can venture into the buildings that were featured in the storyline but there is no real point to it and you don't have access to the entire building. The motorcycles are cool too especially when they hit another car at high speed and the bike and passenger go flying...sweet! There are more sweet cars in this game also. The hand to hand combat part comes handy when you don't have a gun and have to get one from a cop. But no gangs to beware of in free roaming mode. Also if you play as Mitch the cop you can subdue and arrest people. I'd like to figure out if you can get into the subway somehow also. If they ever make a third rendition maybe they can make use of the tower of london and other points of interest. I wish the taxi mission part was longer also.

I don't know what these people are talking about. This is a great game but is a little short like my review.

Played the original Getaway? You won't be surprised here. The camera angles are still dreadful. The swearing flies thick and fast, this is gangland London after all. And the story is a cracker. If these guys could get their script writers together with a better development team this series would be up there with the GTA series.

Again the scene is central London. It's amazingly detailed. I was astounded to spot individual shops and cafés in the game that I saw when in London last year. It's that accurate. If you've driven around London you'll know exactly what to expect around the next corner.

How does it play? In a word, easily. The driving part is still good, but the only change from the original is that now you can shoot while driving. When on foot, it's fairly easy. To shoot at the bad guys you just need to hold one button to aim (automatically) and another to shoot. Too easy. The camera angles are infuriating - you spend a lot of time looking at walls.

The story is again great. An interwoven piece with multiple playable characters and storylines. The cut-scenes are well played out too, with professional actors providing the foil for animation and the voices. I guess they don't have a swear jar in their sound studio though - this title isn't for kids, with all the "effin' and blindin'" as the Cockney's say.

Overall, it's OK. The gameplay (when on foot) really lets it down though. The driving and the story are fantastic, but it's just not enough.

I have to admit that I really enjoyed playing this game. But, having said that, I have to admit that it is way way to short. If they had added a few more missions, I would have been much happier. I don't know if they didn't have the time or the space on the disc, or what. The game just flew by. To give you an idea, it took me about the same amount of time to beat this game as it did to beat Katamari Damacy. Maybe that means I was really bad at Katamari, I don't know. On the city, it's amazing. Sure, they made a few mistakes. I can point out that the pub and the Oddbins on the Seven Dials have been flipped. And they got rid of a street off Soho Square. But, by and large, its a great rendition of London. You could use it to plan out a trip, if you really wanted to. Just don't expect to find the Tate Modern gallery, they blocked off the bridge. I am going to stop mentioning mistakes in geography now. The addition of taxi mode is a nice touch, as well as race and chase mode. They definitely add to the value of this title. In free roam, where you can just ride around and site see, the police have have a weird way of coming after you if, say, you ride your bicycle (yes, bicycle!) into a lamp post. But they can't knock you off the bike very easily, and if you get off it and walk around a corner they lose you. I had the experience of hearing the police say "We found the car, he's nowhere to be seen," while I was standing right next to the car and shooting at the police. Having said all that, I really did enjoy playing the game, I just wish I hadn't paid full price for it. Better AI and a longer story, and I probably wouldn't be so disappointed.

That pretty much sums it up. The first Getaway was fantastic in my opinion. It was original enough to be great. Shooting around walls was awesome. Getting lost was fun in itself because I could marvel at London. Say goodbye to that.

Black Monday is flat out terrible. There were some problems with the original Getaway, but I could overlook them as I fell in love with the game. Black Monday fixes nothing, it actually has caused a ton of problems itself.

The first apartment you raid is absolutely stupid. The main problem is that the camera is jerky. You can always see what you need to see, but when you move the camera jerks to follow you. You will notice this right at the start of the game.

Another problem is how easy this game is. Enemies can't hit anything. Even at point-blank range, the enemies don't seem to be able to hold their gun straight. I walked up to about 30 dudes and just handcuffed them. While I was handcuffing them everyone stopped and politely waited for me to finish. The fighting in the game is stupid as well because you just walk up and punch dudes. Occasionaly you can grab them, then turn them around and snap their necks. It is so unbelievably boring.

The worst idea was putting in the crappy stealth missions. They are horrible. EVERY GAME WANTS TO DO THIS NOW! Almost every game I play puts you in a stupid stealth mission that just drags. STOP MAKING STEALTH MISSIONS! I just played Shadow of Rome, and the stealth missions are pure crap. I love Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell, but honestly, those are the only times I appreciate stealth. The stealth missions in this game consist of you walking around, occasionaly hiding until a guard leaves. I don't think they tested this game with real people. Had they of done that, they would of been told to take out the stealth missions and kill themselves for making such a horrible game.

London is recreated perfectly. The only problem is, I don't care. Now you have a map option. To me, this is a terrible idea. The whole concept of the original Getaway is realism. Sure, you could buy a map. When you're driving alone though you can't freeze the time continum and take a break to see what road you need next. You will use the map function only to finish this game so you can take it back. I only got 17 dollars for it. I'm surprised they even took it back, seeing as how horrible it is.

The graphics are terrible. Blah blah blah. Everything about this game is bad. I'm just so mad I spent fifty dollars on it. Truthfully, this game is flat out terrible and I don't think they will be creating another Getaway anytime soon. If they do, I think it will be the first game in history to sell zero copies.

Despite the poor critial reviews this game received, I had wanted to try it since it was released since I thoroughly enjoyed the first Getaway. In fact, I would say that 'Getaway' was one of my favorite titles released on the PS2 (at the time, anyway). Well, what can I say? This one didn't live up to the franchise at all.

I decided to give it a shot when I got a new PS2 last year in order to play all of the great games I had never had the chance to try after my original 'fat' PS2 conked out. While the story is fun and a lot of the great things that the first game gave us are present in this sequel, the story is nowhere near as enticing as the with the first game which is one of its major downfalls. I just didn't get into the characters or story at all and wasn't even compelled to finish the game. The controls and camera are horribly frustrating as well. This was an issue in the First game as well, but in this one they try too push the envelope more and included things like climbimg up walls / buildings and the result is pretty awful.

Sorry. I really wanted to like it, but this game bites.

I don't know anything about the game. I bought it for my nephew and he loves it. He's 14.

I loved the first Getaway and was very skeptical of all the bad reviews I'd been seeing. Unfortunately, many of them are correct. I just got Black Monday a few days ago and its already quickly losing much of my interest. While the first Getaway was gritty and griping, the sequel is comparably bland. The story in the first was simple and made sense without getting too complicated, but in Black Monday I often don't know or don't care why the characters are being asked to do certain missions (much of this has to do with the fact that the interlude movies are annoyingly long). There are a few upgrades - you can ride a motorcycle, etc - but these really seem like minor issues. The game is also too easy. Its too bad - I was looking forward to Black Monday. My advice: if you really want to play it wait a few wait a few months until you can buy a cheap used version. At least you won't feel too let down this way.