The Getaway

The Getaway took players to a faithfully recreated London, where the story unfolds from two points of view — Mark Hammond, a former gangster searching for his kidnapped child, and detective Sam, pursuing the criminal world from the inside. The game combined open-city driving with third-person on-foot action and had no traditional in-game HUD, which was meant to heighten the cinematic, raw feel of a London gangster underworld inspired by British crime cinema. Realistically portrayed characters, gritty dialogue, and a naturalistic depiction of violence pushed the game closer to a mature gangster drama than to lighthearted action entertainment.

Firefights relied on a cover system and manual aiming, while the driving sections used realistically modeled streets of the British capital that could be driven through with near-documentary accuracy based on the city's actual layout. The absence of a map and HUD indicators was a bold design choice meant to deepen immersion in the story, but it also made the game harder for many players and complicated orientation. The atmosphere was rounded out by dark music close to British action films, voice acting with pronounced accents, and terse, hard-edged gunfight sound design.

At release, The Getaway was praised especially for its technical rendering of London and its cinematic atmosphere, though its raw difficulty, stripped-down controls, and confusing navigation drew more mixed reactions from critics and players alike. The title from Team Soho showed Sony's ambition to create its own answer to Grand Theft Auto-style gangster action games, with an emphasis on realism instead of open freedom and humor. Today the game is an interesting reminder of London's underworld as captured by the technology of the PlayStation 2's early era. It's still talked about as a bold, if not flawless, attempt to offer an alternative to the American open-world action games that dominated at the time.

Why play it: For a cinematically rendered London and a bold, if not flawless, attempt by Sony at its own gangster alternative to Grand Theft Auto — just expect stripped-down controls and higher difficulty.