Phil
01-23-2003, 06:29 PM
As Jim has said, The Getaway has become one of the largest gaming controvises of recent times. I'm bored of seeing so many posts on other forums about "is this better than GTA?" and "sony spend 3 years and gamespot only gave it 6.9!"...
So, you fall into one of three catagories: 1) I think it's brilliant 2) It's good, but nothing special 3) It's terrible
I gave The Getaway 10 out of 10 in all three catagories and the Game Of The Year Award. Obviously I sit firmly in the first catagory of people. I think it's awesome, but more on that later. Thunderbolt's score is the highest rating on the internet that I've seen, with the lowest being 5. My scoring is justified - just read the review, the feature and what I've written here to find out why.
I think we should try to settle the arguement here, away from all of the <insert console name here> fanboys.
Anyway, here's my case for The Getaway:
Let's forget about GTA for now. Wipe it clean from your memory. Now take a deep breath and think of all of the aspects of The Getaway:
A whole city at the tips of your fingers
That's right, a whole city. OK, it's not perfectly re-created, but if you learnt the city from the game, you'd be able to navigate it fairly well in real life. The scale of the level is immense. Never before has this been tried, not in a real city anyway. They could have stuck with a fictional city, but they opted for a challenge; to make this game run on PS2, to make it work, to prove the critics wrong. And they have. I expect that other developers may follow and that we'll see more of this in the future. That's just one of the groundbreaking features of The Getaway though; yes, there's more:
There's no HUD!
No health bars, radars, ammo counters, timers, text boxes. Nothing. It's such a simple thing but it makes a huge difference. It feels like you are playing in a movie, an interactive one. I'd love to see this in other games - it makes developers think of new ideas; ways to communicate data to us without using numbers and words.
New motion-capture techniques and facial details
Watch any of the cut scenes and you'll be amazed by the realism of the character's faces, the way they move and interact with each other. It's the most realistic cut scenes I've ever seen and I think we'll see more like this in the future.
The on-foot gun battles
On foot you will experience the most viceral gun battles you've ever seen. Duck behind a crate, then roll out, shoot one guy, grab his mate and use him as a human shield as you take the others down. Finish him off by brutally snapping his neck then move on for more. You can't help but want to play them again and again. The Getaway also allows you to auto-aim or manual aim. Ok, it's another small detail, but details like that are what makes this game so good.
The driving sections
Oh my God! The cars don't handle exactly the same as another famous game in this genre! Ok, but it's not trying to be another game, is it? The driving sections show us just the type of gameplay that made Driver so damn good. Proper Police chases through the back alleys of cities, dodging the cops left, right and centre. Your heart will be pupping as you just get away from the cops as you thunder past Buckingham Palace....it's such an exhilarating experience that you're likely to forget quickly.
The rest
What's left? Well, there's the DVD style menu and many visual options that you'd usually see in a movie, a great plot and excellent voice acting. There's also the free roaming mode so you can go off and explore and the ability to replay missions, which you will do once you've played through some of them.
It's OK, you can think about GTA now. I could go on, comparing them, but at the end of the day, they're two completly different styles of games. I'll quote someone on the GameFaqs forum here, "The Getaway is to Vice City as Gran Turismo is to ATV Offroad Fury". That's so true that it just sums it up really.
I think The Getaway is the most under-rated game of recent times and it deserves to get better recognition. As I've said before, "The Getaway is a glimpse of the future, a taste of what's to come. Play this, and you won't think about games in the same way again." You have to recognise the revolutionary features and concepts that Sony have put in The Getaway, and how they will affect future games. Do this and you will see why I and others rate this so highly.
So, you fall into one of three catagories: 1) I think it's brilliant 2) It's good, but nothing special 3) It's terrible
I gave The Getaway 10 out of 10 in all three catagories and the Game Of The Year Award. Obviously I sit firmly in the first catagory of people. I think it's awesome, but more on that later. Thunderbolt's score is the highest rating on the internet that I've seen, with the lowest being 5. My scoring is justified - just read the review, the feature and what I've written here to find out why.
I think we should try to settle the arguement here, away from all of the <insert console name here> fanboys.
Anyway, here's my case for The Getaway:
Let's forget about GTA for now. Wipe it clean from your memory. Now take a deep breath and think of all of the aspects of The Getaway:
A whole city at the tips of your fingers
That's right, a whole city. OK, it's not perfectly re-created, but if you learnt the city from the game, you'd be able to navigate it fairly well in real life. The scale of the level is immense. Never before has this been tried, not in a real city anyway. They could have stuck with a fictional city, but they opted for a challenge; to make this game run on PS2, to make it work, to prove the critics wrong. And they have. I expect that other developers may follow and that we'll see more of this in the future. That's just one of the groundbreaking features of The Getaway though; yes, there's more:
There's no HUD!
No health bars, radars, ammo counters, timers, text boxes. Nothing. It's such a simple thing but it makes a huge difference. It feels like you are playing in a movie, an interactive one. I'd love to see this in other games - it makes developers think of new ideas; ways to communicate data to us without using numbers and words.
New motion-capture techniques and facial details
Watch any of the cut scenes and you'll be amazed by the realism of the character's faces, the way they move and interact with each other. It's the most realistic cut scenes I've ever seen and I think we'll see more like this in the future.
The on-foot gun battles
On foot you will experience the most viceral gun battles you've ever seen. Duck behind a crate, then roll out, shoot one guy, grab his mate and use him as a human shield as you take the others down. Finish him off by brutally snapping his neck then move on for more. You can't help but want to play them again and again. The Getaway also allows you to auto-aim or manual aim. Ok, it's another small detail, but details like that are what makes this game so good.
The driving sections
Oh my God! The cars don't handle exactly the same as another famous game in this genre! Ok, but it's not trying to be another game, is it? The driving sections show us just the type of gameplay that made Driver so damn good. Proper Police chases through the back alleys of cities, dodging the cops left, right and centre. Your heart will be pupping as you just get away from the cops as you thunder past Buckingham Palace....it's such an exhilarating experience that you're likely to forget quickly.
The rest
What's left? Well, there's the DVD style menu and many visual options that you'd usually see in a movie, a great plot and excellent voice acting. There's also the free roaming mode so you can go off and explore and the ability to replay missions, which you will do once you've played through some of them.
It's OK, you can think about GTA now. I could go on, comparing them, but at the end of the day, they're two completly different styles of games. I'll quote someone on the GameFaqs forum here, "The Getaway is to Vice City as Gran Turismo is to ATV Offroad Fury". That's so true that it just sums it up really.
I think The Getaway is the most under-rated game of recent times and it deserves to get better recognition. As I've said before, "The Getaway is a glimpse of the future, a taste of what's to come. Play this, and you won't think about games in the same way again." You have to recognise the revolutionary features and concepts that Sony have put in The Getaway, and how they will affect future games. Do this and you will see why I and others rate this so highly.