This is the story of the platypus:

The divine creator phoned down to the head of the mammalian-avian team at the end of a grueling seven day creation project and asked for a status. After being told that the new creature could still use some work, the Lord asked if it was functional. "More or less," said the angel in charge of the team. "Well then,” boomed the voice from heaven, "Ship it."

Or maybe that’s what happened with The Getaway, a game that’s actually an experiment to see what happens when you sew the face of movies onto the body of games.

At least one thing is certain--both The Getawayand the platypus will remain cousins of the half-done hybrid, glorious in their jammed-together natures and doomed to the eternal status of curiosity.

It’s not hard to see why someone would have thought The Getaway was a good idea. Because it is a good idea--make a game that pushes the limits of the videogame medium in an effort to deliver a fully interactive experience that looks and feels like a film. "Wouldn’t it be great," the premise argues, “if you could jump into the action of a film—just like you were there?”

You can almost imagine the game executives jumping out of their seats to sign-off on this blockbuster concept.

To bring this dream creature to life, start with a team in London, steep them in the drama of the "East Enders" and especially, this is important, in the films of Guy Ritche. Then tell them—"Make me a movie that you can play as a game. And make it gritty. The kids love gritty."

Since this thing has to work as a film, it can’t be silly, filled with furry animals and plump plumbers. You’re going to need real actors to base the digital characters on. And it can’t be fake. At least not videogame fake. It can be surreal and over-the-top according to the standards of film fantasy. But it has to look real.

Now, wait anxiously for a couple of years while the team works. It’s gonna take longer than expected. But look at the results! The team has really delivered. The most impresive feature is 40 square kilometers of central London rendered in a level of detail no one has seen in a game. Steal any car in the city and see for yourself. You can drive by landmarks—look, there’s Trafalgar Square! The traffic signals work. People wander the streets and you have to dodge FedEx trucks as you tear through the city. You can even find that Starbucks you stopped into the last time you were tramping through Europe for Chrisakes!

With this chunk of London as its set, the team had poured in a nifty crime story. And this is where the hours spent deconstructing Ritchie pay off. Start with an ex-con, a petty crook with a heart of gold who’s gone legit and now lives up to his responsibilities as father and husband. Then, set things in motion by having a ruthless mob boss abduct the ex-con’s kid and kills his wife in the process. Motivations abound. Revenge! Rescue! Survival! And the basic game play falls into place as well. The player takes on the role of Mark Hammond, and the goal is clear—find your little boy.

All the pieces of this film-game are now in place. You have a gorgeously dreary London set. You have a character with an urgent motivation and unlike most games, you’ve even got some emotional depth forced out of the cracks this potboiler scenario. And since this is a game, a few interactive elements get tossed into the mix. So, the mobster doles out missions in trade for the boy’s life, and you, now the player and not just the watcher, have a reason to put up with an ever escalating series of extremely violent encounters with people. These "missions" require, for the most part, you kill most evyerone to get what need. And just to make sure that everything works according to the master plan, take every onscreen videogame device ever invented to keep the player on track—maps, health bars, ammo counters, whatever—and throw them away. To find the location of the next objective, the turn signals on the cars blink with a Gnostic purpose, pointing you toward your goal. And as the final touch, the digital characters are all modeled on real actors, who also provide the voices. It’s a masterpiece. It looks an awful lot like a movie. But it’s a game.

The trouble is, while it’s a reasonably fun interactive experience it’s not a breakthrough. Players constantly feel like they are playing a bit part in a B-film. Instead of putting the player into the center of the game’s story, it’s closer to having the person on the other end of the controller show up on set as a stuntman. The actors spout lines and emote. And when it’s time for a car chase or a shoot-out, then you take over—mow down some guys in as violent a manner as possible, drive through town as recklessly as imaginable—then turn the events back over to the actors while you take a break for a hot towel and something to drink.

Meanwhile, on the movie side of things, there’s a sneaking suspicion that this story just doesn’t add up. Sure, Hammonds wants his son back. And he’ll do anything to get him. But by the time he’s sneaking into a police station and shooting his way out, you have to wonder if the guy has a single bit of sense. Surely, as desperate as he is, he would rather have 20 policemen helping him find his kid rather than bleeding to death in the cop house.

Don’t blame the project team, though. They did a remarkable job of shoving the game format into a film canister. And "The Getaway" shows a lot of promise for setting games in places less fantastic than an alien world, a dragon-infested realm or even in generic "Every City" of titles such as Max Payne or Grand Theft Auto III.

The flaws in The Getaway are, ultimately, unavoidable. As obvious as it seems, videogames are good at things that the cinema can’t manage and vice versa. The immersive qualities of a film come from the submission to the flickering image on a screen while you sink passively into your theater recliner, sucking on soda, grazing on tub of popcorn. Videogames require both hands on the control, eye flicking across the mosaic of image and action compressed on the TV. The Getaway asks you to be the player and the watcher simultaneously. And it’s aggravating. Just ask the platypus.