Sting a good strategy game
You can begin by playing the tutorial. After the tutorial you get yourself directly into the game. After collecting your tools you move out of your home to meet your old acquaintice Bruno who will give you all the information about the changes that have come to the town fortune hills. You can know from him about places where you can buy tools,sell your loot,buy/sell cars,how you can get new accomplices and other sorts of stuff. You can ask him to guide you to places also. You can ask him to join you and after that you will hear a harp like sound and he has become your first accomplice. From here on the real fun begins.Bruno will guide you to the place a gas station from where you can begin your exciting life again. This is the first mission or place from where you have to steal. You can peek through the windows and see inside the building to gather enough information about the valuable things such as paintings,objects,safes,desks etc..Just move the mouse over different things while you are peeking and which are highlighted are those which are your possible loots or objects containing them. Also you can walk around the building to see if there are more safer and less watched entrances. Now you can get back to your home and from the desk there, is where you plan your missions, edit them and execute. This is the fantastic part of the game which makes it exciting. You can begin a new plan upon which you will see a interface where you can select your target building, getaway car, your accomplices to accompany you in the burglary, tools for you and your accomplices etc.. Choose everything carefully as it matters a lot. For eg:- each person has different capabilities, Matt may be good in locks but not in safes, carrying capacity differs from person to person and also cars. Tools also differ in their abilities like a crowbar can be used for windows but not for safes etc...You have to select your tools,accomplices etc..according to the needs for a particular building so that you can steal from all possible objects like safes and return with maximum loot possible.After selecting all these you can begin to create your plan on which you will find yourselves and your accomplices standing near your best possible entrance.You can begin recording your plan. You will have to evade all securities in the buildings and adjust your timing wisely, open objects with tools that dont make much sound etc,,, and create a plan such that you can get out with maximum loot and unnoticed by the guards or others in the building. You can save your plan after you have finished and replay it and see if you have got it perfect. When you are satisfied you can execute it and enjoy your plan evolving to success. The winding option allows you to fast forward your plan in execution so that you can avoid wasting time watching it taking place in normal pace. On each and every location/building you will be given a minimum loot to get. At first you will find it easy as you need only Matt with simple tools already in his possesion but with succeeding buildings you 'll find the difficulty increasing a lot. You will have to evade more guards and persons, get more loot, alarmsystems come into play, you will have to use more accomplices and better vehicles to increase your teams abilities and carrying capacity and you will have to use them wisely in your plan too.You will be given a set of buildings at a time.On completing them you will be given the next set which will have increased complexity. After a successful burglary in a building you can go to the pawn shop where you can launder your stolen money, sell the valuables etc.. and get cash in return for your mmm.. hardwork. You may find others who will trade for more money if you are lucky. You can go to the cardealer to buy cars,trucks etc with more speed or carrying capacity ,sell a car etc...Dont forget that moving around in the town is also important as you have to gather information about the buildings before you steal from them.You can move to distant locations using taxis which saves a lot of time than walking to them. The most important thing is you get accomplices from the town. Sometimes people standing in the street may be interested in joining you and also there are locations which are sure bets to get them like Brazil bar, Old brazil bar, Bully's pub, Sammy's pub and the harbour. You can use the tool trader to get new tools where you will see more sophisticated ones with time.Also you can sell your worning out tools here and buy new ones. These are the all the main things about gameplay.
The game controls are very easy and the tutorial is damn good that within no time you can learn the controls and other things. Just follow the guidelines carefully. The important things are: You can move to a place by double clicking there.Hold the right mouse button pressed and move the mouse to rotate and change the angle of the camera.Turn the mouse wheel to change the zoom and to move the camera closer to or further away from Matt. On the bottom of the screen you can see three different symbols. N with the arrow is the map which shows you all your targets.The map is very useful as you can make Matt walk to a locaton by double clicking on it. Other areas of interest are marked in blue. The cash symbol shows your cash balance and the backpack contains all your tools and loot. You can interact with any person or object in the game as follows. Move your mouse over the person or thing and they will be highlighted. Press the left button and three symbols will appear. Keep the button pressed and move on to the symbol you want. !? is to talk, hand to pickup objects or operate doors etc.. and lens to look into tables,estimate values or peek through windows etc..
The graphics are good for a game of this genre but you will have a feeling of gloominess as the town seems to be darker than you expect. The game has a good view distance adjustment and you can reduce delays for tool tipping (which shows details about tools and persons in your planning interface) as suited for your system. The graphics requirements are not at all a problem just a DirectX 8, 16MB graphics card and 64MB memory.
The sound is the only drawback i see in this game as I couldnt hear any background music although the readme mentions about it. I downloaded the game and maybe some files are missing. The game has many plus points. The gameplay is exciting and you seem yourself engrossed in it for hours. Also its uniqueness makes it stand out from the other games in its genre. Another main important aspect I was really impressed with, is that you will find no target buildings similar which is a main reason for making a game boring. This was very much needed in a game like this and makes it very challenging. You will find nothing similar in two buildings everything differs from the rooms to the guards style in rounds etc..
The exciting gameplay and uniqueness covers up for any drawbacks in the game but anyway I will mention some I 've noticed. Rarely the characters may not go to places where you click and these maybe in very time dependent situations while creating your plan. This is due to mainly the camera angles at some places that you cannot entirely see the place where you want to move to. Another main problem is there are some bugs in the plan creation but they do not repeat often. You may encounter most of them only once.
Overall I enjoyed playing the game very much and I 'm sure anyone who likes strategy games will be thrilled with the gameplay and mainly the uniqueness of the game.