Gangters 2: Vendetta

Pros • Taking over rival gang territory is fun the first few times • You get to carry out mindless gangster violence • Graphics are simple but effective • You get a cool mobster name: Joey Bane • Newspaper articles about your activities add nice atmosphere to the game • Setting up illegal businesses and expanding your territory is fun the first few times	Cons • City level view is crowded and difficult to use effectively • Gangsters have character, Gangsters 2 does not • Interface has a high learning curve and is continuously frustrating to use • Tries to incorporate RTS, simulation, and role-playing game elements but fails to be successful at any of them • Mob violence is mindless, repetitive, and mundane • Most of the game is played on the map screens, which resemble old Atari 2600 graphics • Driving and parking your car is so difficult you will end up walking almost everywhere • Like playing a real time strategy game that only has one unit
Bottom Line Gangsters 2 is a lot like a drive-by shooting; the excitement is over way too fast. You watch a movie or TV show about being a cop and all you see is a life of excitement; high-speed car chases, shoot-outs, and explosions. Then you talk to an actual police officer and he/she reveals to you that none of that movie stuff really happens, or at best happens rarely, and that the job is mostly driving around, dealing with mundane calls, and filling out paper work. You watch a movie or TV show about being a gangster and the same applies, you watch a world filled with endless car bombs, drive-by shootings, hits, and other nasty behavior. Then you play a game like Gangsters 2 and you discover that while the gangster life is actually filled with all these things, they just repeat themselves over and over again, until it seems just about exciting as working in the grocery store. Gangsters 2 is a fun game for a while, then it just sucks all of the excitement out of being a Godfather.

Gangsters 2 is the kind of game that you have fun playing, but when someone asks why, you can't provide a clear explanation. At first, I enjoyed playing Gangsters 2. Making my way from city to city and taking out rival gangs along the way was fun, and at first felt strategic. I would observe my opponents daily patterns, look for openings, and then plan out multi-stage hits in order to eliminate my opposition as effectively as possible. For the first five or six levels (and after getting the hang of the cumbersome interface), I truly enjoyed the experience. However, after playing Gangsters 2 for the next few nights, and finally sitting down to write this review, it became clear that Gangsters 2 will never hold a permanent place in my gaming library, and will most likely end up sleeping with the fish (concrete shoes not required).

To begin positively, the game provides some simple, but attractive and functional graphics that do a good job of recreating what I imagine a city in the 1920s would look like. Lots of brick buildings, classic cars driving around, people dressed in big hats and pinstriped suits, and trolley cars chugging by on their tracks. The game's atmosphere is presented well, but basically enough that gameplay is never slowed down due to the graphics causing your system to strain. Unfortunately, while playing Gangsters 2 you will rarely have an opportunity to see these visuals because functionally the city level view is almost impossible to use. There just isn't enough in-game area covered to be useful, and there are so many buildings around, it is hard to keep track of the action. This results in most of the game being played from the overhead map view, which lacks all of these atmospheric graphics, and resembles the colored dots, and blocky shapes of a high-tech game from the early '80s.

However, this overhead map view is extremely functional, too functional in fact, as this screen provides far too much information, and removes a great deal of strategy from the game. Most RTS games these days use a game mechanic called "fog of war" to mask the movements of your opponents and keep you guessing on where you will be attacked next. Gangsters 2 lacks any fog of war type mechanic, and switching to the overhead map view allows you to track all of your enemy's movements, either by identifying the enemy's yellow colored dots, or holding your mouse pointer over sneaky gangsters (grey colored dots) and having their name appear. This ability to see all of your enemies all of the time removes any need for strategic planning on your part. Wondering where your enemy will attack next? Simply switch to the overhead map and watch the yellow dots running towards one of your buildings from across town, then pile a bunch of your thugs into a car, and cut the bad guys off at the pass. Gangsters 2 is a real time strategy game that most times lacks any need for strategy, making it a real time game, woohoo!

But, the most disappointing aspect of Gangsters 2 has to be the game's combat engine, and when we are discussing a game that is based on the fast and violent lives of mobsters, this isn't a good thing. Mob combat brings up images of subtle hits made with silenced pistols, Tommy gun ambushes, car bombs killing your enemy's wife and kids, and fast paced drive-by shootings that are over before your enemy can react. If this is what mob combat is all about, then Gangsters 2 has people like Al Capone rolling over in their graves, since fighting in Gangsters 2 is the exact opposite, anti-mob combat if you will. A standard combat goes something like this: you select your gangsters, you select some targets, your mobsters run up to the target, stand right in front of them, and shoot it out toe to toe from a distance of about three feet. There are no special abilities to activate (well some gangsters have bombs), no different units to provide support, you just click and watch the most uneventful mob hit in the history of mob hits take place.

Even worse (in a laugh until spaghetti comes out your nose sort of way), are the drive-by shootings. By definition (look it up into any mob-to-citizen dictionary) a drive-by shooting is a quick assault on your enemy in which you fire as many bullets as possible, hit as many people as possible, and hopefully hit your target. In Gangsters 2 a drive-by consists of a car filled with gangsters driving by a target, shooting, turning around, driving by again, shooting, turning around, and repeating until your target--who never thinks to run--is dead. If you carry out a drive-by hit on another car, things get even worse, as the two cars continuously circle each other and shoot, like some poor 1920s imitation of a medieval jousting tilt. If real mob warfare was like this, any self-respecting wise guy would have quit just to save himself from the humiliation.

Overall, Gangsters 2 also suffers from repetitive gameplay. Flipping through the manual reveals all sorts of different commands, business options, and items to buy, but once you are playing the game none of them really matter. Every scenario breaks down into a simple formula: move into a new territory, open up pre-set illegal businesses, protect your businesses, steal your opponent's businesses, kill your opponent, repeat. Now, to be honest, most real time strategy games can be said to follow a similar formula, but these other games (Warcraft, Command & Conquer, Ground Control for example) use a wide variety of units, different building options, the ability to upgrade units, terrain, and challenging AI to make up for the familiar RTS formula. Gangsters 2 is lacking all of these other important game mechanics, which makes the repetitive nature of its gameplay far too obvious, and far too boring to play. The other big problem with Gangsters 2 is that in many of the game's scenarios, you can skip most of the above formula and break the game down into an even more basic form. Move into a new territory, recruit the maximum number of gangsters and muscle possible, walk into your enemy's headquarters, kill enemy boss, end scenario. This strategy works, bypasses most of the mundane gameplay you otherwise have to deal with, and reveals just how shallow Gangsters 2 really is.

Being a virtual mob boss should be fun. Running an illegal empire filled with booze, women, gambling, bribery, and violence should be exciting. Playing Gangsters 2 is fun, but not in a good way. In the end playing Gangsters 2 is like watching a really bad B-movie. You enjoy yourself not because the movie is well directed, or acted; you watch the movie because parts of it are so bad it makes you laugh. Gangsters 2 is a fun game for about the first five scenarios, after that the game's simple combat, basic business model, and repetitive scenarios are amusing to play in a "ha ha", not a "this is a really good game" sort of way.

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