Saturday and Sunday are normally associated with fun and play - or at least for the younger generation who don't know the real meaning of work yet. Mondays however are associated with doom and gloom - Monday mornings in particular. Getting up, getting dressed and going out to work, or if you don't work, just getting up can be a farce! It's not good. Some people would even go as far to call these days Black Mondays - presumably because of the dark cloud that hangs over your head after that lie-in you had yesterday - it's a shock to the system! The sequel to The Getaway is called The Getaway: Black Monday. Don't ask me why, because in all honesty I do not know. Is the title a giveaway? Is the game as bad as a 'Black Monday'? Well that's a question that I can answer.

Most of the game revolves around the coppers. Set in Soho, London, you'll be asked to do various missions in a Grand Theft Auto fashion. Already we have one main contender - the high and mighty GTA: San Andreas. But if you compare it to GTA then I might as well end the review here. Now, those above 20 that live in England please correct me if I'm wrong. Aren't coppers supposed to be targeting motorists? Don't they hide around corners, waiting for somebody who goes 5 miles over the speed limit? That's what the police are for, right? Spotting drivers who are on their mobile phone? What, they are supposed to bust criminals too?

The police I've come into contact with tend to go after innocent drivers, which is not the case in Black Monday. Mitch, the main character of the game, goes on lots of exciting missions that rarely involve going after innocents. No, our friend Mitch goes after drug dealers, murderers and an assorted range of other thugs and criminals. You'll find yourself in the game and controlling Mitch before you know it. There's no tutorial and no HUD - there's not even any option to see what the controls do. Not a sausage. I had to figure everything out on my own - but at least I can say that I was self taught! It's a more difficult process to teach yourself, but a more rewarding and personal one. Is Black Monday difficult? Well, yes, it is actually.

Sorry, but we might as well get the niggles out of the way first! The first thing that makes this game difficult is the fact that there's no radar - which makes both driving missions and on foot missions frustrating. The driving missions are the worst though, because the only way to get to your destination is by carefully looking at the indicators on the car. If the left winker starts to faintly flash, then you'd better turn left. However, if you get lost, don't expect to get back on track with ease. The fact that there's no radar can be overcome and you could say "there's no radar in real life," which is true. But in real life you'd generally know where you were going or have a map to consult.

What I really can't overcome is the fact that there's no health bar on the screen! I know, that's there's no health bar in real life either but I think you'll be able to tell when you're on death's door [Every time I get the flu! Hey, I'm a man after all! Ed]. With Black Monday though, you aren't properly informed when you're about to snuff it, so you don't know whether to take a risk and go in guns blazing, or take it slow to save on energy. The next thing that frustrates me is the fact there's no cross hair with your gun, which makes aiming a pain in the neck. Sometimes it will automatically aim for you, but still, you feel lost without one! Not only this, the automatic aim seems to think that you'd much rather whack a person with your gun when you are close up, than shoot them instead. Well, no, I don't want that to happen, especially when he's shooting at me!

Unfortunately this list of niggles goes on. The camera can be very hard to work with - especially in corridors. I know that the camera and corridor problem exists in many games, but here it really is terrible. You can't look around a corner without actually walking around it - neither can you look behind you by swinging the camera around. On one hand they are trying to be realistic by scrapping the radar but on the other they are being unrealistic providing a camera that you can't look around corners with. The last time I checked, I could peer out and look around corners - so why can't my realistic Mitch do that? Something else realistic Mitch can't do, that I can, is crouch. I could not believe this and I still don't believe this. Maybe there is an unfriendly button combo that makes you crouch, but I have pressed every single button and I can get the stubborn, ugly copper to crouch! Must be all those doughnuts!

With all these niggles, it makes you grateful for the poor AI found in the game - because while you're faffing around adjusting your camera and trying to aim, the AI at times won't shoot you unless you dance around in front of his face. On several occasions I was stood in front of an enemy that was supposedly a threat and he didn't shoot. He was looking straight at me, unless he was cross-eyed - if this is the case, then I can forgive the AI. But to my knowledge he was perfectly normal. It made it easy on my behalf, because I had all the time in the world to assume a comfy headshot position but I had a sneaking suspicion that he wasn't supposed to stand there, while I pointed a gun at his face. But, if like a horse, you can jump over these hurdles without batting an eyelid, then you'll find plenty of things here to entertain yourself for a very long time.

The driving is excellent; all the cars handle perfectly, just as you'd expect them to. The level of detail where cars are concerned is also very high - all the cars are endorsed, so you can see the real deal when driving around the city. For some reason there seems to be more Citroens than any other car - but Citroens are a good motor anyway, I won't have anything bad said against them! You can go at a fair old speed down the highway without crashing into anything, because the handling stays smooth for most of the time. Motorbikes on the other hand… they are a different kettle of fish. I can't go over 30 without spinning out and going over the handlebars or crashing the bike and flying off at a high speed - give me a car any day.

Most people will really enjoy the story offered right from the start. The story in The Getaway was its strong point and once again in Black Monday the story shines through, with excellent dialogue and voice acting that is spot on. F this and F that, this is just one of the reasons why the game is rated 18. As you'd expect from a game based in Soho, the accents are really authentic. There are a few Cockney rhymes to be heard, which kept me entertained for a long time, too! The best thing is the FMV's though, where the voice acting becomes even stronger, combined with the movie-like cut scenes. Some of the dialogue between the coppers is fantastic - their conversations are explicit and they are always talking about things to do with nitty gritty life - something you wouldn't expect regular police to talk about. One of the coppers is going out with a renowned 'man eater' (I suppose that's the only way I can put it, just in case the kiddies are reading) - and once the other coppers are aware of this, they give him some real grief over it. How I laughed!

When you combine an industrial strength story like this one, with great FMV and audio it makes you wonder why this wasn't an animated film instead. It would actually make a lot of sense! Look at hit films like Snatch, Lock-Stock and Layer Cake; they are all set in the same scene, with the same 'daan saaf' accents - except Black Monday looks at the story from the police's perspective. I could just imagine it now! For the most part, the missions in the game are entertaining - of course, the glitches mentioned above often distract you from the actual gameplay but there is some fun to be had. I like going into a building with my other police chums, arresting the suspicious people and opening fire on the guilty ones - that never gets old. You can arrest and disarm anybody on a mission and when you're free roaming for that matter. Simply walk up to an old women, press the circle button and you'll slap those cuffs on her straight away - but you wouldn't be as cruel as to arrest an elderly would you?

These missions could be made infinitely better though. I love going in buildings and raiding them, I even try to be stealthy - but this is almost impossible because you can't look around corners! There are plenty of things that could be improved upon, but unfortunately we aren't going to see improvements here. It's a good thing that the strong story drives you through the more mediocre missions.

If you want to free-roam like you do on GTA then you'll have to save and access the special features menu. There are a few special features to be played and later on you can even select your character - but for the time being, you are stuck with Mitch. The first feature available is a racing mode, where you race a few other cars in the street, like Midtown Madness, except it's not really 'madness' as such, because the indicator problem persists in most of the modes like this. You've got to be constantly looking at the indicators and as soon as it winks right, you have to turn right. More often that not the winker will only come on at the last moment, which is a real pain, especially when you are trying to win a race!

Other modes include a Black Cab mode, which is similar to Crazy Taxi - minus the 'crazy', because of the winkers! I will say that in all the driving missions' favour you can access a map by pressing pause - but this isn't ideal, because you have to stop driving every time you want to see where to go. People who are used to looking at a friendly map on GTA will be sadly disappointed, like I was. My favourite special mode is Chase, because you don't really have to look at the map to do this - you just chase after the speeding motorist (yes, that's right, motorists!) and bring them to a halt by crashing into them! It's by far my favourite mode and a really good one for the game's replayability. However, I tried to bring one of the motorists to a halt by driving in front of him and barricading him. I managed to pull it off, but the game wouldn't let me win until I had destroyed the car with mine. I had stopped the car though, so in theory I should have won.

The last mode on offer is free roaming, which is a good one if you just want to drive around and mess about. There's less for you to do in free roaming than there is in GTA but its nice to drive around and look at the detailed shop windows. There are plenty of well-known shops around the high streets, which is nice to see - and this definitely adds a familiar feel to the game and also helps to determine if you've driven down the street before. "Oh, I remember that phone shop, I've obviously been here before!" Another funny thing has to be the authentic adverts on buses, billboards and taxis - again, adding familiarity, but a clever way of cashing in when it comes to advertisements. GTA could easily get a list of sponsors as long as their leg, but they choose to make fake radios, adverts and shops - most of which are comical; I think I know which one I prefer.

Graphically, the game engine itself is pretty good - there are a few niggles though, such as the slow down when you are on foot and the ugly main character Mitch - and I'm not talking about ugly on purpose either, they've tried to make Mitch a handsome young man but his body seems out of proportion to his head, which spoils it for me a little! Fortunately you only get to see the back of him for the most part, so you're ok. The city is very detailed, with bus lanes, pelican crossings, authentic looking cars and shops. In fact, it's without doubt a truly impressive and authentic recreation of a real location, with an unprecedented level of detail.

The audio shines through in all areas, with the various sound effects for everything imaginable, right down to the forward roll you can perform when you're in a gun flight! I particular like the engine sounds when it comes to driving and the comments your chums shout in the heat of battle. There's also some entertaining music that runs in the background when you are playing most missions. The music always seems to change when you are doing different things, slow, sly music for sneaking about and dramatic music when you're bursting into a building - it's fantastic. I can't really fault the audio, because everything here is great. The only thing missing is a radio station for those dull moments in the car.

The Getaway: Black Monday is quite a good game with a strong story, beautiful FMV's to tell that story to its full potential and an excellent script, authentically acted with real style. The recreation of Soho is excellent and whilst the missions vary from driving to on-foot and are generally well-designed, both have their fair share of technical problems that can really frustrate and significantly mar the gameplay. If you can get past this then you'll enjoy this game a lot, but if not it could just kill the experience deader than one of Mitch's perps.

Reviewed by Dexter Pearson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).