Gangsters 2 Preview
Does the sequel manage to improve on the original? Find out in our detailed preview.
Crime may not pay, but you would have had a hard time trying to convince the Prohibition-era mob bosses of that. When the taps ran dry under the 1919 Volstead Act, organized crime made sure the liquor would continue to flow. Between bootlegging and racketeering, mafiosi like Al Capone and archrival George "Bugs" Moran garnered vast wealth and power, plus more than a little notoriety. In a nation founded by dissenters, revolutionaries, and individualists, criminals who openly scoff at the law have seemingly always had a certain dark appeal.
With its 1998 release of Gangsters, developer Hothouse Creations tried to tap into the mystique of 1920s gangsterism with an interesting, if flawed, blend of turn-based empire builder and real-time strategy game. Your goal in that game is to is to create a criminal empire in the fictional, Chicago-like city of New Temperance. By analyzing a large array of message windows, graphs, and charts, you plan the coming week's strategy while keeping an eye on your competition across town. You issue orders to your thugs, telling them to recruit new hoods, extort local business, or take out enemy mobsters, all with the goal of raising profits and gaining territory. You then switch from this static planning phase to a real-time mode, where you watch and aid your thugs at "work" in an animated 2D city.
While the fundamental concepts behind Gangsters are rife with potential, many players feel the game suffers from a cluttered, confused interface and inadequate instructions. Trying to follow your nefarious activities in the city during the real-time segments also prove overly difficult at times. With its upcoming sequel, Gangsters 2, Hothouse hopes to build on the ideas behind the original Gangsters, while avoiding its pitfalls. We played an incomplete alpha build of the new game, and based on what we've seen, it looks like Hothouse may well hit its target.
If even a virtual life of crime might not seem appealing to you, the game offers a good hook to reel you in. The character you play may be a crook, but he's a sympathetic one. Joey Bane returns home from the army to the fictional state of Temperance just in time for tragedy to strike. His father, trying to make ends meet, gets killed while working for the mob, and his uncle is badly wounded. With revenge in his heart and mentoring from his uncle, Joey proceeds to track down his father's killers, eventually squaring off against the state's most powerful mob boss, Frankie Constantine.
Prohibition-era president Calvin Coolidge declared, "The chief business of the American people is business." Gangsters 2 takes that dictum to heart: For you, it will mean a lot of shady, violent--and fun--business. The game is played as an episodic campaign, with each of the 20 missions introduced by a black-and-white animated cutscene, followed by a description of your mission goals, and some tips for accomplishing them. The campaign begins with your trying to avenge the death of your father by sending one of your henchmen after his killers. Naturally, one vendetta leads to another since the mobsters in the game take the "eye for an eye" policy seriously. Gang wars escalate, and your power will grow as you proceed through each of the missions, moving from city to city and county to county. In addition to the solo game, Gangsters 2 will also offer a full multiplayer mode, which lets you challenge other players via Internet, modem, or serial connection. You'll then be able to check rankings to see how you've fared compared to other players.
Gangsters 2: Vendetta Quick Links
Summary | Reviews | News | Previews & Features | Images | Videos | Downloads | Answers | Hints & Cheats | Forum
- GameSpot Score5.4mediocre
Content you might like…
-
Gangsters 2: Vendetta Review
If the business elements were deeper, or if there was some sort of strategic combat in the game, Gansters 2 could have been a much more interesting game.
- Jun 8, 2001
Users who looked at this article also looked at these content items.
Images
- Eidos Interactive
- Hothouse Creations
- Strategy
- Release: Jun 5, 2001
- ESRB: Teen
Games you may like…
-
Gangsters
(PC) -
Mob Rule
(PC) -
Mob Enforcer
(PC) -
Urban Empires
(PC) -
simGangster
(PC)
Users who looked at content for this game also looked at these games.
See More Similar Games
1 Comments