The Getaway: Black Monday Feature Preview

The original Getaway was a promising experiment from Sony's UK-based Team Soho that married Grand Theft Auto III's free-roaming gameplay with a gritty cinematic presentation that complemented the offering's dark story. The end result was a flawed game that didn't quite live up to the potential of its premise. Fortunately, strong sales afforded Team Soho the opportunity to try its hand at a sequel, The Getaway: Black Monday. We recently had the opportunity to visit Team Soho for a look at the upcoming game to see firsthand how it's all shaping up.

While The Getaway: Black Monday is billed as a sequel to the original game, it isn't (as has been revealed previously) a traditional one. The game is set two years after the events of the first game, and the characters from that story, former crook Mark Hammond and police officer Frank Carter, are out. Meanwhile, a trio of new faces has stepped into the spotlight. Eddie O' Connor is a jack-of-all-trades who specializes in "muscle." One half part-time fighter, one half part-time bouncer--and occasional hired muscle--the Eastender's strong sense of family and loyalty lead him to tread down one of the dark paths that make up Black Monday's narrative. The second member of the game's cast is Sgt. Ben Mitchell, a policeman with a checkered past who should be a success story. Once a juvenile delinquent and drug user, Mitchell turned his life around after a stint in the army and then joined the police force. Unfortunately, after shooting a teenager in the back, he was suspended for two years and only recently rejoined the force. Ben's return to the force isn't what you'd call triumphant. In fact, his return is marred considerably following a raid on a council estate that goes bad in a truly epic way. Finally, 19-year-old Sam is a problem child with a brilliant mind. A troubled young girl who has drifted in and out of juvenile detention for years due to her computer-hacking habits, Sam gets pulled into the game's dark narrative by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

You'll become intimately familiar with this trio of characters, as well as with each member's story, as Black Monday's tale unfolds. You'll eventually come to control each of the three members--each of whom has unique abilities that are best suited to the levels you play them on--for varying amounts of time. Eddie's specialty appears to be hand-to-hand combat, which is obviously in keeping with his background. Ben is more well rounded, offering solid hand-to-hand skills, as well as a high level of proficiency with firearms, thanks to his police background. Finally, Sam is a lithe stealth expert who's good for sneaking about and hacking computers. Eddie appears to be the game's center, so he'll be the character you play the most. Meanwhile, Sam will turn up considerably less often, and Ben will clock in somewhere in the middle. How the three characters' stories mesh will present a decidedly "six degrees of separation" touch, because each character is tangentially connected to the others in one way or another, which will become clear during the 48 hours over which the game unfolds.

As with the first game, the story will evolve via more than an hour's worth of cutscenes. While the story's key points will obviously be structured in a linear fashion, the development team is attempting to address some of the criticisms of the original game by building in some elements that will keep it from being quite so rigid. One of the key elements appears to be a limited-branching system that will affect your path through the game based on your actions.

London Calling

As far as the actual gameplay goes, Black Monday relies on the same basic structure seen in the original game. Your time in the game will be spent controlling the trio of characters in third-person action sequences that will have you sneaking around, engaging in hand-to-hand combat, shooting, and driving. There have been some alterations made to improve how the game handles. Just like before, you still won't have a traditional heads-up display, so you'll have to rely on visual cues to both get information on your character and know where to drive. The navigation system that made use of your car's turn signals to let you know where to go has been considerably tweaked. This time out, the cues will adjust on the fly if you miss a turn to your destination. Alternate routes to your destination will then be offered instead. The driving segments have also been tweaked to let you shoot while driving, which is a welcome addition to the game's experience. Driving has also been expanded to include a broader array of vehicles that range from hatchbacks, saloons, sports cars, taxis, and even motorcycles. When you're on foot, you'll make use of a tweaked targeting system that attempts to tighten up the original game's mechanic.

All of the above worked pretty well in the levels we tried, and even the driving segments, while still not quite as tight as we'd like to see them, felt better. The enhanced navigation system is a welcome improvement that takes the tedium out of driving. Targeting still needs some tweaking, but it feels better already. While we weren't able to try all the characters, Eddie and Ben both handled well, although one didn't handle too differently from the other. The big perk we saw in the levels we played involved the fact that Ben has the cooler gun of the two men.

The graphics in the game are looking good and improve on the original game's. Team Soho has refined the various motion capture and scanning techniques used in the first game to bring Black Monday's virtual cast to impressive life. The game still has a distinct look that mixes photorealistic elements with more-stylized touches. There have been some tweaks and enhancements made to the engine, resulting in a cleaner look overall and assorted visual improvements. You'll notice a higher level of detail on character and car models, in addition to more detail in various aspects of the environment. You'll notice graffiti and other little touches that stand out more, which adds some flavor to the gritty look of the game's locales. The camera has been tweaked some to offer a better viewing angle, although the work-in-progress version we played still had a few quirks that resulted in some bad angles that will need to be ironed out. The game's frame rate hitched up some during our playtime, but the game is obviously far from done.

The audio in the game looks to once again be one of the strong elements of its presentation. The standout component here is the voice acting, which results from Team Soho's careful selection of actors. These players bring the game's colorful cast to life. The strong performances from the actors do a fine job of bringing the rich dialogue out in a realistic fashion. Equally strong are the sound effects that have been beefed up some from their real-life counterparts. Another more subtle component that adds to the game's atmosphere is the ambient sound that helps flesh out the streets of London. Additionally, the music we've heard so far does a good job of complementing the game's action, though it does so without smothering it, which is good.

Based on what we've played and seen, The Getaway: Black Monday is shaping up to be another unique entry in Sony's burgeoning franchise. At the moment, the game still demonstrates some of the same foibles as its predecessor, but the fact that the development team is conscious of these foibles bodes well for Black Monday, because some effort will more than likely be made to smooth out its rough edges. At the same time, the game also shares some of its forerunner's strengths, which namely include a rich story, a gritty presentation, and an engaging look at London's criminal scene. Hopefully the team will strike a balance between tweaking Black Monday's overall gameplay and retaining the look and feel of its antecessor.