can
occasionally look decently cinematic, with characters rolling behind liquor bars
only to pop up with dual pistols or a shotgun, but it's not that fun to play.
The weapon selection is limited and characters pick up weapons automatically,
based on power, which can be annoying. Guns can be swapped out by pressing the
right control stick down, but it feels awkward to do so. All the characters tend
to move fairly slowly, as well, especially when climbing or descending flights
of stairs. The belabored movement luckily doesn't ramp up the difficulty, though
there are some stealth segments that would have benefited from tighter controls.
I did have a little fun during the combat segments because of some of the odd
things the game lets you get away with - like handcuffing innocent civilians and
bopping them on the head - but I didn't really enjoy playing them, all-in-all.
The driving is a bit better, as Getaway's virtual London has nice,
wide roads perfect for irresponsible swerving and a general disregard for public
well-being. Unfortunately, as the main game isn't a free-roaming affair, any potential
the driving portions exhibit is stunted by forcing players to perform specific
tasks (drive to a certain destination, chase another car, etc.) rather than cutting
them loose in the city to go on reckless misadventures. There are also some design
hitches in the driving, as characters being escorted tend to dawdle around the
car, rather than getting in immediately. This would make fleeing from the cops
impossible, if all the enemies in the game weren't such lousy shots or bad drivers.
Many of the cop cars that pursue the criminal protagonists can be lost through
pretty mundane trickery. For example, one need only slow to a stop, wait for the
pursuers to hit the brakes and get out of their car, and then accelerate again.
The city itself is also rather drab and lifeless compared to those found in its
Rockstar-developed forebears. It doesn't exist to be explored and conquered; it's
only there to give players a place to drive around in. There's no real color or
lighting, no day/night cycle, no real nooks and crannies - just plain streets
and alleys. It's forgettable.
In both the on-foot and driving sections,
Team Soho made some design choices in order to facilitate a cinematic realism
that I don't personally agree with. There's no health or ammo display and no waypoints,
outside of the map, to show where the player should be going. I found it odd that
the more helpful videogame touches were omitted, yet far less realistic elements
were included in their place. Since there's no health bar, for example, a character's
well-being is measured by how many bloodstains appear on his or her clothing.
Now, one way in which health is recovered is by simply idling near a wall to "rest."
As an indication that it's working, the resting process, quite miraculously, will
clean off any stains, be they on shirt or pants, like some sort of magic cure-all.
I have to wonder what the aim is, really, when the presentation is struggling
to be so movie-like and yet the game is so completely illogical. One mission puts
the player in the shoes of a boxer working as muscle for small-time thief. His
job is to escort a ragtag team of robbers up a large building to eventually get
something out of a safe on the highest floor. Almost all the initial guards (those
on the first few floors) approach the boxer unarmed… intending, I guess, to box
him. I don't mind stuff like that; I just don't see the point in eliminating all
the more accommodating videogame staples when characters still find themselves
in very videogamey situations.
These kinds of choices also make driving
a little rougher than they should be. Here, instead of, say, giant blue cylindrical
lights telling you where you ought to be, players instead follow the subtle directions
given to them by their own characters, who activate turn signals or throw on the
emergency flashers as an indication that a turn is coming, or that a stop needs
to be made, respectively. This puts players on a pretty short leash. There's a
map, so alternate routes can be taken, but it's rarely worth the trouble, and
the indicators themselves occasionally come on just a little too late, leaving
players to guess at their next move. Sometimes, a right-turn signal would kick
in after I had already begun a left turn, or vice-versa, and I driving fast to
be needlessly agitating because of it.
Things are also a mite buggy in
virtual London. During the game's fifth chapter, I was tasked with escorting a
girl back to police custody and, as I was being pursued by some nasty Russians,
I decided to veer off somewhere along the way into what looked like a fire station.
As I turned a corner at a pretty high speed I noticed the entrance into the station's
parking lot was blocked off, both by a contextual obstruction and by an apparent
invisible wall. I was going too fast to brake effectively, so I went right through
the barricade. I didn't shatter it, though: I merely phased through it like a
ghost. Half of the game world then became grey sky as my car hovered well above
the ground, slowly moving forward until it finally came to a dead stop wedged
between the tops of two brown buildings. It was a glitch, of course, but it's
not the only one I experienced.
To the development team's credit, though,
the story and the voice acting aren't half bad. The plot is basically B-grade
TV stuff about cops and robbers - not really my thing - but I could see some people
enjoying it and the voices are solidly and professionally done. I took some issues
with the dialogue itself, which tries a little too hard to be tough, mature and
otherwise x-treme, but, again, it's really just not my taste. Still, I usually
didn't find the cinematics compelling enough to sit through and, much to my chagrin,
they're quite mandatory. This grew especially irritating after saving mid-chapter
and loading later on, as the previous inescapable cutscene plays again when you
do this.
The visuals, both during cutscenes and regular play, strike
me as a little flat. Characters and their animations aren't as fluid as they should
be and everything looks pretty similar to everything else. Nothing really stands
out, save for a few well-done settings here and there. The sound is similarly
lacking; though the voice-acting is fine, as I've already pointed out, the rest
of the game can be rough on the ears, especially the music. It's mostly repetitive
electronic beats and most background tracks seem to kick in randomly, and then
new, equally aggravating tracks simply start up whenever the previous ones are
finished, rather than building off cues or trying to match the moment.
Though I didn't find incentive to unlock anything, myself, I understand there's
a decent amount of bonus material in the game. There are keyrings hidden throughout
the city to collect, alternate chapters and endings, and a few bonus modes. One
of them is actually a free-roaming mode, but as the game lacks GTA's polish,
exploring the city isn't all that enticing.
Overall:
4/10
Grand Theft Auto 3 had a healthy
share of mechanical and technical problems, but the basic "sandbox" concept that
allowed players to do essentially whatever they wanted, within limits, made the
game immensely entertaining. The latest Getaway keeps the basic, stiff
play of GTA and strips away the elements of freedom and exploration. As
a result, it's just a very plain action game, with bugs and nothing extraordinary
to offer.
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