“She’s not the slightest bit squeamish about a bit of claret.” Outside my penthouse flat, a gang of mercenaries are squabbling about how to kidnap my son. As I get to the window, I see them shoot my wife and snatch the kid before bundling into a red Jensen Interceptor. My wife dies into my arms, gasping a dying request: “Get our son back.” Fight and flight fuse together and I jump into my green Alfa Romeo, in hot pursuit of the Jensen. Pumping techno soundtracks the chase, sounding for all the world as if Luke Slater had done the soundtrack for Goldeneye.
And so The Getaway begins. Set in central London, the PS2 game follows ex-con Mark Hammond enacting his revenge on mob boss Charlie Jolson. It’s basically a Guy Ritchie film, but you’re the playable main character. The game was originally slated for a 2000 release, to coincide with the launch of the PS2 console. But setbacks led to it being pushed back until December 2002. It sold decently, with 300,000 copies shifted within two weeks and it even bodied Grand Theft Auto: Vice City off the top of the charts. According to Next Generation, it was the 53rd best-selling game released between 2000 and 2006. But while Next concluded that it “did seem to strike a chord,” the game ultimately didn’t deliver the lasting impact of a knockout hit.
Now, though, a reappraisal is gathering speed online. Three years ago, it attracted attention when Tom The Taxi Driver, a cabbie and YouTuber, revisited the game and described it as “bang on” in terms of its accuracy. It’s this rendering of early 2000s London that makes The Getaway so special. The game projects a hyper realistic simulation of the capital’s streets into your living room, from Michael Ball posters in the West End to Dixons, The Link to Virgin Megastore, old Routemasters to retro police cars. It’s basically a perfectly preserved snapshot of a particular London era. Somehow, though, I’d never played it before. So, a few weeks ago, I managed to procure a copy of The Getaway for a tenner on eBay. I slotted it into the dusty drive of my old PS2 and kickstarted the story mode.
It turns out that it’s fucking tough being Mark Hammond; whizzing between Soho and Shoreditch (while evading the rozzers), the retired gangster is forced by Bethnal Green Mob boss Charlie Johnson to carry out an increasingly dangerous series of missions. The collateral to blackmail? His son. There are scraps in crackhouses, brothels, art galleries and nightclubs to come. But first, I spent about 15 minutes trying to reverse my way out of a head-on collision with a Ted Baker sponsored taxi, before slamming straight into a WHSmith.
The first thing I’m struck by is how immersive the game is. It’s made to feel like a movie, with no health bar or map. The only way to know where you’re going is to madly follow your car’s flashing brake lights. And if you’re low on health, you start to pant and blood soaks your shirt (to heal yourself, you have to comically prop yourself up on the wall, with an incredibly climactic sound signalling a return to ill health).
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