The Getaway

Development

The game took almost three years to make. The development team recreated 40 square kilometers (about 25 square miles) of central London, in which the game is based. Over 500,000 images were taken by the developers of the London streets and locations featured in the game.

Interface

The game did not feature any on-screen indicators as to how much health, ammo, or time you had left:

When you got shot/hurt in the game, your character would bleed through their clothing and limp, holding their chests. The amount of blood on your clothes and speed you moved at indicated how much damage you'd sustained. When you rested against a wall (there are no health kits in the game), you regained your health.

Your character could use 2 pistols or 1 machine gun/shotgun at a time. When the machine gun/shotgun emptied out, your character would drop the empty gun and pull out their pistol(s). When you ran low on pistol ammo, your character would drop one pistol, indicating that you were running low on ammo and that you need to find ammo fast!

On timed driving missions, the in-game music would indicate how much time you had left to finish your mission. The music got more and more urgent as the mission progressed until you either finished the level or passed the time limit and it was time to try again.

An interesting little touch in the driving missions, instead of an arrow on screen telling you which way to go, as with Crazy Taxi, before you came up to an intersection, the indicators on the car would flash telling you whether you needed to go left or right. If no indicators were flashing, you were headed in the right direction. If you were headed in the opposite direction, one would flash until you turned 180 degrees. When you got to where you were supposed to be going, both would flash (your hazard lights) to indicate you should stop, exit the car and explore.

Ratings

The Getaway was initially rated as MA15+ (restricted for ages below 15) by the OFLC (Australian rating organization) for medium violence level. Five weeks later, the OFLC revised their initial rating. While still being classified as MA15+, it was now for high violence level. But that’s not all. Only 5 days after the revision, on November 27, 2002, the game was revised a second time. Now the rating classification changed, from MA15+ to RC (Refused Classification). That means: from this day on, it is illegal to exhibit, rent or sell this game in Australia. This includes adults, because the Computer Game part of the OFLC is lacking a true Adult-Only category, such a category is only in the two other parts (Film and Publications) available.

Sales

On August 31, 2003 has The Getaway (PS2) won the Gold-Award from the German VUD (Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland - Entertainment Software Association Germany) for selling more then 100,000 (but less then 200,000) units in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Information also contributed by Xoleras