Great concept. Too bad the devs had no idea where to take it.
Like Rebuild, Omerta lets you explore and discover new buildings. After discovering what the building is, you can take it over by buying it or scaring off the owners with guns. And once you drove the people out of the building you have a choice of what to do with it.
Like Rebuild, you have a few options to turn two types of property into multiple types of buildings with different benefits.
Now, here is the sad part about Omerta and why the devs turned a game of possibilities to a game of disappointment.
After you play the game for few hours, you get the hang of the game. You search, you find, you plan and you either take the property by force or dirty money. You would think "oh you probably can take over the WHOLE town and make it your playground". At the moment when you force the people out of the last property, you look at residence and think I'll buy out the whole block and BUILD A GIANT CASINO OR A HOTEL! But, you come to the realization that it DOESN'T HAPPEN! Excitement crushed, hopes lost and desire to play gone. Dreams of being like Knucky Thompson from Board Walk Empire, GONE.
This is where I have nothing good to say about the developers.
1. There is no end game. No desire to continue when there are only limited amounts of building to take over in a game. And once you take it over, you have nothing to look forward to. A street block that I take over, is useless when I can't keep upgrading to the point of building a Giant Casino or a Hotel with shows by the board walk.
2. No replay value. I tried to play in the sandbox mode, thinking it must offer some game play mode which offers hours of fun. But I got bored within 1 hour after realizing its worse than the campaign mode.
3. No challenge. While playing, there were NO AI controlled mobs/gangs that put up a challenge. The game features a "turn" based combat which I rarely saw outside of the campaign mode. They should of utilized this, to enable battle for turf from one mob/gang from the other. Even a police raid here and there that caused combat would of been a nice touch.
4. What they should do. They should talk to the developers of "Rebuild 2" and ask them to borrow their game concept and really study Rebuild 2. I think if they turned Omerta game engine into full game of Rebuild 3, I think they could possibly have a hit in their hands.