The Getaway: Black Monday

fair
key review info
  • Game: The Getaway: Black Monday
  • Platform: Playstation
  • Show system requirements
  • Gamepad support: N/a
  • Reviewed on:

Gameplay is the most important thing about a game. Evidently, you don't need me to tell you that. Why is it then that so many developers fail to grasp such a basic concept? Why do they still not get it that visuals, sounds and story in games ought to be simple means to an end, not the goal itself? The developers of The Getaway: Black Monday fall into this category. In their attempt to deliver a "cinematic experience" they seem to have forgotten they were developing a game, not a motion picture, which is all the more puzzling since their previous game was a failure for the exact same reasons.

Story Black Monday's strongest asset is the story and the way it is told, which, despite having no connection to that from the previous game, has retained the same Ritchie-esque flair. The setting is once again London's shady underworld, but this time the convoluted plot revolves around three characters - Ben Mitchell, a police officer with a burdening past, Eddie O'Connor, a famous East End brawler and small time thief, and a young girl named Sam, one of Eddie's accomplices on a robbery attempt - whose tales weave in and out of one another throughout the game, and are inevitably sent on a collision course near the end. The story is superbly told by means of excellently written and directed (CG) cinematic cutscenes (which can't be skipped over), but it's the gameplay where the game truly falls apart.

Gameplay You get to take control of all three characters as the story progresses, and all have distinct gameplay elements that are supposed to add diversity to the game, but none of these mesh together in any particularly cohesive fashion and do nothing to enhance it, on the contrary.

You start the game as Mitch and you're dumped right into the middle of the action without any sort of tutorial or on-screen guides to tell you how to play. Why would you need a tutorial when you can play with the manual on your knees, right?

From the very beginning it becomes brutally apparent that none of the major problems that plagued the original were fixed over the course of two years. How this is possible is beyond me. Black Monday is every bit as stiff and difficult to control as ever, and the camera... ah, the camera. Instead of allowing you the standard full 360 degrees of freedom, you're only given a few degrees to the left and right, as if to prevent you from shooting yourself in the foot. Not only is it remarkably limited, but it also fails to automatically swing around your character, often leaving you stuck staring at walls, and you're constantly presented with the awkward task of repositioning your character every time you need to see what's ahead. Next to these, its not allowing you to peek around corners like in any other third-person game is practically a minor issue.

Like its predecessor, in order to achieve the goal of making the game a more cinematic experience, a lot of the gaming conventions we've become accustomed to were thrown away. There's no visual display for health or ammo, and instead, you have to rely on verbal or visual clues, like how much your character is bleeding to judge how close he is to dying, or listening to your character when he's low on ammo. It's certainly an interesting concept on paper, but the developers failed miserably in its execution, and any traces of the immersivity it was meant to achieve slowly vanish with annoyance after annoyance. Take the absence of a targeting cursor for instance. This essentially makes the manual aim useless because you have absolutely no idea what you're aiming at, and you have to rely solely on the inconsistent auto-targeting system that often refuses to acknowledge a clear target and turns situations when fighting against multiple enemies into gambling acts.

Luckily, the AI is dumber than a bucket and the enemies seem completely lost in that alien environment, so your inaccuracy won't hurt you all that much. This could explain why the poor wretches won't notice the deaths of their comrades from two feet away, miss from point blank range and have suicidal tendencies. And who could blame them.

Both Mitch and Eddie play rather similarly, the sole difference being that Mitch can only use the standard police weapons even if the ground is littered with weapons, while Eddie is not that handicapped and can make use of his fists for some uninspired melee action. However, Mitch isn't as much at a disadvantage as it seems, for you see, he has access to a special super power: "the roll 'n cuff". Even in the midst of the heaviest shootout you can handcuff any of the assailants with the push of a button, while the rest will politely stop shooting until you're finished with the routine and patiently wait their turn. Isn't that lovely.

Sam has no attacks whatsoever, so all her missions involve stealth of the most rudimentary kind, and god, are they horrible. They basically break down to avoiding the line of sight of the opposition through some old fashioned trial and error, and when you are detected, choosing between an immediate death or a cheap exploitation of the brain-dead AI. Evading enemies is as simple as leaving their field of vision for a few moments, and they'll forget all about you. Not to mention how dumb it is that all guards shoot an unarmed young woman on sight, or that non-guard characters run away from her screaming, like she's some kind of armed terrorist.

Most levels are your typical brainless routines of shooting bad guys who pop from behind objects, with a few driving sequences chucked in for a brief respite. The driving portions of the game are less frustrating then those from the previous game, albeit not by much. The cars take a lot more damage than before, and the game has a map now, although it can only be accessed via the pause menu, so you're still stuck with the inaccurate turn signal indicators and radical lack of information as to what you need to do. But driving still feels more like steering a motorboat than a wheeled vehicle, while the suicidal traffic is back with a vengeance, as is the occasional failing such missions owing to the game's not recognizing your having reached the destination.

There are a few bonuses you can find, in the form of key chains located throughout each level, that unlock the Taxi, Race and Free Drive missions, as well as a variety of vehicles, but considering the state of the gameplay, I don't see why anyone would want to bother.

Video and Audio The only interesting aspect about the game's visuals is constituted by the superb cutscenes, and there's nearly an hour of them. The graphics during gameplay are very uneven. The external graphics and the cars look better than before, but the characters are really lacking in visual detail, and their animations fare no better. As for Mitch, his head is a wee bit big for his body, the poor sod.

About 25 square miles of London were more or less faithfully recreated for the first game (if you can ignore the fact that most buildings look like cardboard cut outs), and 17 new locations have been added with the sequel, including rooftops and portions of the tube (subway). The main problem is that, apart from the Russian gangsters that seem to populate every street of London, the whole city just doesn't feel alive, but considering the scope of the game, that's hardly a surprise.

The voice acting is superb, and it's being filled to the brim with nearly impenetrable British dialogue (I really needed to activate the subtitles), with region-specific slang and a continuous "F" bomb onslaught go a long way to lending authenticity to the title. The sound effects are nowhere near exceptional, but the dynamic jazzy musical score really helps set the mood.

Conclusion The only thing worth mentioning about Black Monday is its story and presentation, and the whole gameplay bits felt like endless commercial breaks during a great movie. My advice: unless you're a fan of the original, go watch a movie instead. You're much better off, trust me.

story 8
gameplay 5
concept 6
graphics 7
audio 8
multiplayer 0
final rating 6.3
Editor's review
fair