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Running Riot Films ******
Sharpshooter is offline
Join Date: Feb 13, 2006
Location: USA
Age: 17
Posts: 1,080
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Gangs of London-Psp
Although they are often flawed, none have looked or played as bad as spiritual successor Gangs of London. Nearly every single aspect of this game has either been botched, is completely buggy, or painfully repetitive and boring. When playing through this game, it’s almost as if you are playing a game filled with every single criticism the series has seen all at the same time. The only thing that this game has going for it is the sheer amount of stuff you can do, although finding something that you will actually enjoy playing may prove a greater challenge than mastering the control scheme.
But before I begin taking my jabs at this title, let me first introduce you to the particulars. Gangs of London focuses on exactly that; different gangs through the London underground are vying for dominance and you get to conquer the streets as the leader of one of the five rival crews. As you select a mission, you are greeted with surprisingly excellent comic book-style cut scenes accompanied with equally stylized dialog that describes your gang’s meteoric rise. Each of the five selectable gangs has their own unique if all-too-typical storylines so the replayability potential is huge. Unfortunately, across all five scenarios you’ll run into the same four or five mission types. These include driving from point A to B, running from the cops or rival gangsters, killing your enemies in and around a certain building, or any combination of the three, and none of them are really that much fun. After you’ve ran from the cops or cleared an entire building with a shotgun your first time you’ll feel like you’ve done it a thousand times.
If it wasn’t bad enough that the missions are repetitive and boring after the first couple times through, the controls are frustrating enough to turn even the most patient gamers away in anger. The best way to describe the control scheme would be “an even buggier scheme than The Godfather, but without specific body-part aiming or wall cover moves.” Like The Godfather or Grand Theft Auto, Gangs of London relies on lock-on aiming as a crutch for the lack of a second analog stick. Unlike those other games, however, Gangs is wrought with buggy aiming that will just as often miss the target than hit. You would think with words like “lock-on” you could score solid shots, but fugetaboutit. Oh, but don’t worry, because half the time you will be spending aiming at the wrong person anyway as there are often innocent bystanders getting in the way and confusing the lock-on even more. And don’t get me started on the “stealth” moves, which basically just put your guy into a crouching pose and often get you smacked in the head with a discharging shotgun.
So if the actual single-player game is completely unplayable, then what remains? Well, for starters, you can tinker around with the fully-modeled city of London in Free-Roaming mode and start as much trouble as you want. Since you will want to avoid playing the actual on-foot action or driving as much as possible, the only thing left are the Pub Games and the Gang Battle mode, both of which are enjoyable diversions and little else. The Pub Games consist of Darts, Skittles, 8-ball, and an old-school/new-school version of Snake. Snake in particular was a clever little game that often challenges you to use both hands to move two different snakes at the same time, while the other three games were easy to pick up and fun to play as well.
Gang Battle is another “Divide and Conquer” mini-game that models itself along the lines of Risk, but instead of putting players in little missions to conquer a map section like in The Godfather, players instead only deal with the strength of their forces in that district. If one side has a considerable number greater than the other, then that side wins. The only real strategy comes from how you spread your men out across the two or three battlefronts that you will develop over the course of the game. With only three moves available to you per turn, its tough to keep all of your men mobile and in the immediate fight when you are also attacking in a different area. After learning the game on easy, I bumped it up to the highest difficulty level and was easily dispatched by the fourth turn. The structure deserves a little credit for taking Risk and applying it to a mini-game, but a little more player involvement in the numbers game would have gone a long way to keep this mode interesting.
In the past couple of months, we have begun to see a movement in PSP games from Sony. Packaged along with the actual games are a ton of mini games that act as a distraction and little else. NBA 07 from a couple weeks ago did it with the Carnival games and now Gangs of London does the same here. The difference between the two is that NBA 07’s core gameplay was sound and enjoyable, while Gangs of London is as close to broken as it gets. Anyone looking for a virtual 8-ball or darts simulator will find it here, but they certainly aren’t worth the 40 dollar price of admission.
Features:
Choose from 5 different gangs bosses and witness the plot unfold in a series of graphic novel narratives
Control a team of gangsters and swap between them on the fly while engaging in explosive urban combat
Over 60 missions that offer a mix of shooting, tactical battles and various driving challenges, all in a living breathing photo realistic London
Free roaming city allows you to explore some of the most dangerous areas of the Underground
Play a series of mini-games which includes a unique Strategy Card game, Tourist mode, British pub games (pool, cards, darts, chess, skittles) and more
GameShare allows players to beam playable missions to a friend via your PSP™ system
overall 2.2 poor
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