Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Keith Schleicher

Ever since GTA3, there have been games clamoring to be the “GTA-killer.”  However, about the only GTA killer is a new GTA game.  Most of the games that have been tried to tread on GTA’s turf have usually been panned   Saint’s Row on the Xbox 360 is probably the closest to knock GTA off its throne. 

While the PSP isn’t made to handle something on the scale of GTA, Rockstar refined the GTA gameplay formula with the “Stories” line of GTA games.  Gangs of London (GoL), developed by the people who brought you the “Getaway” series, attempts to take down the GTA series with their unique blend of British culture and violence.

Your characters in GoL have a distinct look to them depending on which gang you are fighting for.  The Zakharov gang looks a bunch of thugs, the Steele Associates look like businessmen, while the EC2 Crew has a Jamaican bent to them.  Their outfits also reflect that difference.  There isn’t much detail to their clothes though, and your gang members look very generic.  There are some differences with the faces of your gang, but they are mostly interchangeable without any real distinguishing features.

The cars are modeled well so that they don’t quite look like a refrigerator box with wheels, and when your car is damaged so badly that the car is unusable, flames slowly engulf it.  While running into an object doesn’t cause any kind of dents or scratches on the vehicle, some indicators like cracked windows and broken taillights appear.  The textures on the vehicles look rather plain as well.  There aren’t any decals on the vehicles, giving everything a generic look.

Some of the character animations are well done, like running or entering a vehicle.  Swinging a bat or sledgehammer could be a bit smoother.  When the characters seem to skate across the area instead of actually walk or run, it is incredibly distracting.  When someone is holding a hostage, the skating effect is really evident.

You wouldn’t expect the game to have the music that it does.  You can feel the gang influences to it, but it’s not a hip-hop soundtrack.  Instead you have a jazz feel with a laid back piano and strings providing support.  A simple percussion instrument similar to a tambourine drives the beat.  As the strings get louder you can hear the minor chords raise the tension.  Unfortunately this music only happens during the menus.  The music during the actual gameplay is practically silent.

The mission briefings are told in comic book like panels.  The dialogue in the cutscenes is voiced incredibly well.  The accents all sound authentic with what you’d expect to hear from the different mobs.

The missions do have a few sound effects.  The blinkers have a slight sound.  Tires squeal, especially when going around corners.  The vehicles do have slightly different sounds to them.  The guns don’t seem to have the depth that they should.  It’s disappointing that all of the speech during missions shows up in text bubbles instead of being spoken.

While on foot, movement is handled with either the D-pad or the analog nub.  X fires, Triangle performs an action, and Square moves in and out of stealth mode and reloads your weapon when held down.  Circle brings up a tactical menu that selects actions using the D-pad.  Hitting R lets you strafe and move into an aiming mode.

Driving is done similarly.  Steering is done with the D-pad or analog numb.  X accelerates and Square brakes and goes into reverse.  Circle honks the horn.  Triangle exits the vehicle.  R uses the handbrake and lets you turn ninety degrees quickly or pull a full one eighty quickly.

The controls do take some getting used to.  Since you don’t have the control over your character like you would in a first-person shooter, the R key aiming mode does make killing your enemies go more quickly.  Strafing takes some getting used to though.

The driving definitely isn’t Need for Speed, but it doesn’t need to be.  The cars could accelerate a bit faster though.  The handbrake takes a little getting used to, but it’s not bad.  The vehicles do seem to slide a bit easily.  These take some adjustments so the controls don’t feel as tight as they could be.

Gangs of London emphasizes the “gangs” portion of the title.  When you start the mission mode, you select one of five gangs to reign over.  They are the Morris Kane Firm, the EC2 Crew, the Talwar Brothers, Zakharov Organisation, and the Water Dragon Triad.  Each of them has different default vehicles and weapons, all with different statistics.

Once you select a gang, you are able to complete a tutorial mission if you want.  The tutorial is basically the same for each gang, you just control a different team.  However, it’s a good idea to complete it at least once to get a feeling for the controls.

After selecting one of three difficulty levels, a map is shown.  Areas where you can accept a mission have a red circle.  The lower left corner shows which gang you’ll be facing off against, and the lower right corner shows the kind of mission objective to complete.

Missions on foot generally have you going from point A to point B and killing everyone in your path.  Most on-foot missions have a gang to assist you.  You can give individuals orders or you can order the entire group.  You can command them to move forward or stay put.  You can even switch to the other members of your gang.  If you get injured during a mission, you can rest for a little while and most of your health will return.  If your current character gets killed, you switch automatically to another member of your gang.  Having control of others adds a lot of strategy to the missions.  These also seem to be incredibly linear, so you won’t be moving around and looking at the scenery.

When the mission involves driving, you start out in the default vehicle for the gang.  Often times you need to deliver some package to a specific spot, whether it’s a rival gang member or a pet dog.  Other missions involve ramming another vehicle off the road before it can escape.  Since this is Britain, they drive on the wrong side of the road if you are used to driving on the right side of the road.  You’ll need to weave your way in and out of traffic to make sure that you reach your objective in time.  Don’t worry about running over pedestrians though.  There aren’t that many and they seem to slide out of the way Crazy Taxi style.

In the lower right hand corner a mini-map shows where the objective for your mission is located.  The map is big enough that roads are visible without being so large that it obstructs your view of the game.  This is really helpful for all of the missions in the game.

After completing a mission another short cutscene shows the implications of what happened in the last mission.  Once that is completed you see which members of your gang survived the mission and how much their stats improved.  While this is nice, you can’t select which members to send on a mission, so it doesn’t matter as much as it could.

All of the missions are rather short, with most taking under five minutes to complete.  At first I felt that this was a negative for the game, but after thinking about the portability aspect of the PSP, I realized that this was an excellent design choice.  Given the fact that the missions load quickly in GoL, the game is a great option for those who only have a few extra minutes to play on the go.

Each campaign lasts a while, as you have several missions to complete on the map to take over the city.  With five gang campaigns to play through, you aren’t going to think that GoL is too short.

While Sony London could have just created five gang campaigns and not provided any more gameplay, they have gone beyond the call of duty with the number of extra games that you can play.  A free-roaming option gives you the option to drive around the city, take pictures of famous landmarks, drive away from cops in a speed trap, control a riot, drive above a specific speed until the timer counts down a la Speed, fight against zombies, or drive a taxi around town.

The gang battle is kind of like a simplified version of Risk using the London Map for the areas to conquer.  In the game you purchase extra thugs and cards that can change the momentum of the game.  You attack the areas by moving a specific number of gang members from an area you control to another area.  You can only move three groups during a turn, so make sure that they count.  Winning involves capturing the highest number of home turn areas.

Finally there is the pub where you can play all sorts of games, such as 501 Darts, Skittles, UK 8-ball, US 8-ball, and the arcade.  The arcade uses vector graphics and aren’t anything more than variations on the game “Snake.”  Some of these games even have the ability to play with a friend.

Gangs of London has a lot going for it.  The length of the missions works well for a portable game, and having relatively short load times helps.  Yet there are still a few issues that prevent it from being a great game instead of a good game.  The missions on foot and in vehicles are varied well, even if they have similar objectives.  If you want to get into some mob action for your PSP, this definitely fits the bill.

Gaming Trend Score

80

1. Graphics: 72
2. Audio: 74
3. Controls: 80
4. Gameplay: 82
5. Value/Replay: 90
6. OVERALL:80