Getouttathaway!

For those of you who always wished that the movie Snatch existed in video game form, “The Getaway” is tantamount to manna from heaven.

If, however, you’re not a fan of shooting dozens of British cops and innocent civilians at one time, you might want to look for another place to spend your $49.99.

All in all, this game is basically a British version of Grand Theft Auto, with some minor improvements and some major detractions.

For instance, the game’s simulation of close quarters driving and combat situations is second to none, but significant drawbacks make these steps up negligible: manually aiming your gun at enemies is next to impossible, and the auto-aim function seems to target automatically the enemies that are the least danger to you, as a brawny thug sneaks up behind you with an assault rifle.

The game begins with a lengthy introduction, in which one of the playable characters, Mark Hammond, sees his wife brutally killed and his son kidnapped. Your first mission is to chase down the kidnappers and kill a bunch of them, which is fun. But just as you are on the verge of killing all the goons and avenging your wife’s death, control of the mission is ripped from your hands as another lengthy movie is shown, during which a henchman sneaks behind you and knocks you out.

Now this is just frustrating. If the end of the mission was such a fait accompli, why bother with playing it? I tell you, these limeys really don’t know what they’re doing. Leave it to the Yanks, boys, you’re out of your element.

So for the entire game, you are forced to run errands for the mob leader that kidnapped your son, and there are some legitimately fun stuff you can do, like take hostages at gunpoint and then safely shoot coppers, since they won’t kill innocent civilians. In fact, there’s probably no better game than The Getaway on the market for budding psychopaths.

There’s also a point in the game where you get to play the role of a vigilante cop, but I am a terrible video game player and haven’t reached this level. It looks good in the manual though.

At the end of the day, as Richard Quest would say, The Getaway is a jolly good romp of boosting cars, slaughtering people en masse, and risqué objectification of women. Because of that, though, you probably shouldn’t buy this game for kids. They shouldn’t know that life is filled with violence, death, and meaningless, casual sex. Not yet, anyway.