E3 06: Gangs of London Hands-On

LOS ANGELES--Sony had a version of Gangs of London for the PSP available through game-share download at its pre-E3 press conference, as well as on the show floor at E3, and we took the liberty of warming up our PSP and trying our hand at playing a rather dapper thug in gritty London-town. Though the game has dropped The Getaway name since it was first announced, it definitely still retains much of the same felonious feel of Sony London Studio's criminal action series for the PlayStation 2. However, the gameplay in the demo of Gangs of London that we played seems much less free-roaming, focusing instead almost exclusively on close-quarter weapons-based combat.

A key feature to the downloadable E3 demo of Gangs of London is the fact that the level we played was generated based on our PSP's unique serial number, which is also said to be how the game-sharing feature will work in the final retail version of the game. As the playable demo started, we found ourselves in our own personal, randomly generated London subway station, complete with turnstiles, ticket booths, elevators, escalators, and plenty of commuters. Our bleached-blond, black-suited thug was wounded, with only a silenced pistol to defend himself, and there was no shortage of other heavily armed thugs intent on doing him grave bodily harm before he could make it to the subway platform, which represented the end of the level.

When we said that we only had a silenced pistol to defend ourselves, that wasn't entirely accurate, as we could grab any of the other pedestrians that were wandering the corridors and use them as a human shield, absorbing shots from enemies while simultaneously slowing us down. Though most pedestrians wouldn't put up much of a struggle when used as meaty flak jackets, simply cowering and running off when released, rival hooligans would regularly try to break free of our grip, so we would have to occasionally knock them upside the head to keep them in line.

Gunplay was generally the focus of the action in the demo of Gangs of London. Movement was controlled with the D pad or the analog stick, and we could hold the left shoulder button to strafe, and the right shoulder button to aim, which would give us better control over the gun and would also bring up a laser sight on our silenced pistol. There was some loose auto-targeting at work when we were in aim mode, and the aim mode also made it easier to tell who our enemies were, since any innocuous pedestrian would produce a faint gray outline when targeted, while enemies would give off a little red glow.

Like most pre-Quake first-person shooters, there's not much of a z-axis in the Gangs of London E3 demo, which is to say that you can't aim up or down, though you can tap the square button to quickly duck behind cover. The gameplay we experienced felt a bit stripped-down overall, as pedestrians would often not react at all to our violent gunfights, and it was disappointing that enemy corpses would almost immediately disappear without a trace, especially since most of the enemies we encountered were far better armed than we were, brandishing shotguns, automatic weapons, and on a few occasions, hand grenades.

Still, it's worth keeping in mind the fact that this demo was transmitted to our PSP in about 20 seconds over the air, and likely isn't indicative of what the complete Gangs of London experience will feel like. Taken for what it is, though, this was definitely a pretty cool experience, especially when you imagine how these randomly generated levels might make single-UMD multiplayer action fun, easy, and unpredictable. We'll have more on Gangs of London as it develops.