Gangstar: Crime City
Street, guns, cars, babes... you' ve got it! This mobile game review will give you an idea that would bring you to another level of excitement. The first thing you get when loading is a nice little message saying how the game is fictional and you shouldn't try any of it at home. And I guess the things that you shouldn't try are drive bys, messing with rival gangs and generally causing a nuisance of yourself. Yes folks, you guessed it, this is Gameloft's answer to Saints Row which is a GTA style game.
And being a typical Gameloft game it doesn't disappoint. The graphics are nice and colourful and have a very street look about them. There are several districts which have their own distinctive buildings and even though you have a top down view, the main character and people walking around (I need to go to a place where women walk around with bikini tops!) look nice if a little small. The cars are not bad either although they definitely have a 2D SNES look about them. However, this is great as my car is in there! A red looking car with two white stripes (no, not a mini!) so I defintely enjoyed going out for a cruise. Another thing is the little effects like the tyre marks when you're skidding around and the jumping and sliding around the cars, Dukes of Hazzard style or the switches from day to night.
Sound is good too with a very "street" sounding tune when you load the game up, and some funky beats during the game. This isn't always on, but you do hear it during missions and you get a few different tunes when you complete them. There are sound effects too for when you fire your gun and when people die (with a grunt, not a scream) so the sound has not been left out.
Controls are simple, use the D or key pad to walk around. The main button will autotarget and fire your selected weapon and you use the * and # keys to cycle through them. Press 0 to get into cars, shops etc although you have to wait a little bit for the car jacking. In the car there are lots of control methods, I preferred the one where up and down is accelerate and decelerate and left and right rotate your directions. Press 5 while in the car to do a driveby.
The game is fun to play as the missions are not too long and there are plenty of things to do. It's a nice plot as you help out different bosses and your loyalty gets divided sometimes. The missions vary between killing people (normal and sniper), escorting people / picking things up, and getting to a certain place in time. To be honest, when doing the missions where you have to take out rival gangs I preferred to just run them over in my car :) You can carjack like GTA and there are plenty of cars in there from police ones (no use of the sirens though) to sports cars. There are also drag races in the city which are fun but not too hard to win. The money can be spent on a number of things like weapons (even a bodyguard) or in the candy shops where you seem to be able to buy or trade sweets. The blurb does talk about running your own businesses like a restaurant and music label but I played this game for quite a while and didn't get that far, so the lastability is good. One thing though, it may be commonplace in the US, and even though I listen to rap and hip hop music, reading some of the gangster language during the plot made me laugh or cringe. However, you do meet a variety of characters and even have the notoriety bar which looks suspiciously like GTA. I haven't been up to more than two stars (you get one for just driving into a police car!) but at least when you get busted you start again at the mission you just left minus your weapons.
The game is pretty large and there are loads of missions to do. The map shows quite a big area to explore and you'll encounter more than one boss as you work your way up to get to the guy who's trying to take over the gangs. The game will suspend and resume and autosaves at the end of each mission whether you succeeded or not. The races are fun so there may be some replay value there and it's also amusing to go around and just kill people. Which sounds horrific when I write it and we don't condone any violence or reenactment in real life but you know what I mean. One thing which would have made it really good would have been if you could jack and store cars, and upgrade them, but there's always one around so you never encounter any problems. And worst comes to worst you could just run there!!
One for the GTA enthusiasts out there, fun to play with plenty of missions.
No comments:
Post a Comment