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The Getaway: High Speed II review

Game: The Getaway: High Speed II
Platform: Game Boy
Genre: Casual (Pinball)
Developer: Unexpected Development

Reader review by pickhut

February 02, 2005

I like pinball, I think it's an enjoyable genre. Stay on the board for as long as possible and rake up as many points as you can. Yeah, I consider that entertaining. Now, pinball as a video game is a different story; trying to replicate the real deal into the digital form has been hit or miss. Sometimes developers nail it, while other times they fail miserably. Unfortunately, The Getaway: High Speed II falls into the latter category. Add to the fact that someone thought it was a brilliant idea to recreate an actual pinball game on to the Game Boy, of all places, and you can already tell this will be one craptacular product.

Put a Williams Pinball in Your Hand!

Don't tease me, Williams, don't tease me. If I knew how badly this game would turn out, I would've gladly accepted the pinball. I could surely do a lot more entertaining things with it, like poke someone's eye out. Seriously, the moment you see the layout of the table and hear the out of place James Bond-ish music, you know you're in for a disappointment. It's one of the most generic looking boards I've ever seen: a couple ramps, some jet bumpers, 1-2-3 targets, and a "reward" hole, all the necessities of a pinball game. And...... that's it. The Getaway doesn't offer anything different or exciting that'll make you wanna play it, which is quite a ripoff when you think about it. You're paying twenty dollars for a craptastic port of a pinball machine, a machine that's probably light years better and only needs a quarter or two to play.

Now, before I pollute the air with more of this negativity, there's at least one mildly enjoyable feature in the game: Video Mode. When you enter this mode, you'll switch to an OutRun-ish type mini game. The goal here is to steer your car through the oncoming traffic without getting hit. Your score will vary depending on what gear you're in; stay in first gear and you'll be taking in minimal points, but being risky with the top gear will score you big points. It's fun...... for the first two times. After that, it becomes repetitive as your car ends up crashing into the traffic eighty-percent of the time. You're probably guessing why I put so much emphasis on this particular mode if it's just average. Well, in a sucky game like The Getaway, it's like a gift from heaven. It gives you an opportunity to escape the horrible confines of the table for a few seconds to have a bit of enjoyment. But after it ends, you'll become depressed when you realize you're gonna get thrown back into the main game once again. At this point, you're just about ready to turn off the game in disgust.....

Multi-Ball!

What? Can it be? An actual challenge?! Could this be the game's saving grace? It just mi.....wait, what the hell is going on?! No!! Damn you!! You screwed it up, you screwed up multiball!! Argh. This could've been the highlight of The Getaway, but it ends up being the final nail in its coffin. The moment you start multiball, the screen will stay at the bottom until all three balls leave the lower part of the table. Yes, this sucks. While the other balls fly all over the place, you can't see where they're going because the screen sticks to the bottom due to one ball staying there. This renders the whole challenge unplayable since you can't tell what the hell's going on. You'll try to deal with it, but you'll just lose two balls on purpose so that everything will get back to normal.

There are other problems, like the clumsy ball physics, unreliable tilting, easy extra balls, confusion etc., but I'll spare you the extra two paragraphs. All you need to know is that you should avoid this embarrassment to pinball. Though, after hearing what the game was attempting to do, you'll probably be smart enough to skip it for something else. Spend your money on something better, like the actual pinball machine or an N-Gage game.

Rating: 2/10

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