The Italian Job

Take to the streets of LA to steal a fortune in gold.

NA release: 15th July 2003
EU release: 12th September 2003
JP release: N/A
Developer: Climax Brighton
Publisher: Eidos
NGC Magazine Score: 45%
Mods Used: Widescreen Hack

Based on the 2003 remake, The Italian Job is about a heist that takes place in Los Angeles. This means driving around in Minis. However, while Minis were an iconic choice in the first film, the reasoning for them in this game is sketchy. They need cars can can get around LA during a girdlock, so they ditch their classic Mini that they already have and opt for the rather bulky 2003 Mini instead.

Throughout the story, someone mumbles everything interesting that happens while you stare at stationary cars. Any of the cool stunts or action sequences are missing, instead this is a game about casually driving from own point to another. You can perform stunts and get airtime for pointless arbitrary points, but for the most part it really is just driving at a moderate pace due to lenient timers.

The map itself is open world (but small) and there is a radar that shows a dot as to where you need to go. The only difficult part of the game is finding the entrance to a location. There are some police chases which just means cars are attempting to hit you (poorly) as you casually drive – you don’t need to lose them, just slowly drive to your secret location with the police behind you. There are also some trailing missions, which is the low effort “drive really slowly at a distance from the other car” one.

The final chase – a mission called – payback highlights the games problems a lot. You’re chasing the main villain and it’s obvious that he’s going up and down every road in the game (some more than one) because the city clearly isn’t big enough for an actual chase. But don’t hit him, as if you manage to slow him down or stop him (which is easy) then you can actually fail the mission due to running out of time. What you have to do is slowly drive behind him for six minutes until he stops and you’re told what happens.

There’s some extra modes like a race, stunt mode and free roam but the driving itself is so boring and floaty that there’s not really any reason to play any of them. It’s a really dull game. The PS1 got a game based on the original film and it’s better in every way: there actual chase sequences, traffic jams, driving down thin walkways and even pedestrians – all stuff missing from this game. It even has a more impressive open world, on a previous generation console. Impressive stuff, unlike this game.