You buy blocks or take over those controlled by your enemies. The business element of Gangsters 2 is just as plain as the combat. It's done in probably the world's worst Joe Pesci imitation, and it's bad enough to make you say, "yes, you are a clown." You'll rarely have to make meaningful strategic decisions. The monologue is read with little inflection, and seems like the narrator is reading his lines for the first time. But the narrator, who runs you through the game's light tutorial and gives you mission briefings, is another story. The music is unobtrusive, and the ambient city sounds are authentic if sparse. Because of this, Gangsters 2 becomes a game of sending green dots over to the yellow dots, and hoping the yellow dots disappear before the green dots. You can issue orders from this view, and you'll spend most of your time doing so. The most useful view is the map view, which shows the important buildings as icons and the gangsters as little colored dots. The game is almost unplayable on the city level, if only because the visible area is so small that there's no real indication of which buildings are visible. The cities you'll take over are obviously modeled on 1920s Chicago, but you won't spend much time looking at them. The graphics in Gangsters 2 are simple but appropriate. The problem is, the whole game seems to be centered on these altercations, and in the beginning you have only a handful of gangsters at your disposal. Never mind that there are no living witnesses to a crime-simply killing enemy gangsters in your territory will increase a gangster's notoriety. What's more frustrating is that your gangsters will earn notoriety, and if it gets too high the police will come after them. At times, Gangsters 2 is like playing a simple real-time strategy game that only allows you one type of unit. Combat involves nothing more than getting them near the opposition, at which point your forces will fight to the death or flee, depending on how high you set their aggression level. You have very little control over your gangsters. The fact that areas like this are so obtuse seems to be at odds with the overall simplicity of the game. It's unnecessarily complicated, and there's no strategic reason why you can't simply hire a manager from the building screen. Then you switch back to the business and tell the newly hired manager to go there. You must first set up the business, then switch over to a newspaper screen and skim the paper to find someone to run it. For one thing, hiring business managers to run your operations is difficult. There are many frustrations packed into this seemingly simple setup. The scenarios don't offer much variety, though they'll get bigger, and the enemy will get stronger. Then you either take over the objective location or kill the guy you're supposed to kill. Once you're set up, you send your guys to their territory and take key places. Some enemy gang members will inevitably come in and try to wreck your buildings, and your guys will kill them. Then you send gangsters out to protect your investments or hire local muscle to guard them. There are a few illegal businesses already set up or a few predetermined locations where you can set them up yourself.
There isn't much depth to the game, and neither the business simulation nor the combat elements are very interesting.Ī typical scenario will go something like this: You begin with your territory established. You hire gangsters and the muscle to protect them, and you send them out into enemy territory to wreak havoc on your rivals' establishments, kill their henchmen, and take over their operations.Īs the game goes on, you'll be able to open your own illegal businesses, hire more gangsters, buy more equipment, and that's about it. You begin in the city of Buffalo Falls, where you must hunt down a few of the men responsible for your father's death and establish a foothold for your operations.
In Gangsters 2, you play as Joey Bane, a small-time mobster looking to avenge the death of his father and become big-time in the process. The overhead map view is where you'll spend most of your time. And the interface, though easier to understand, is still problematic. It's repetitive and confusing in some areas, and too simple in others. Unfortunately, the company also removed much of the detail, and the resultant game doesn't offer you much to do. The interface has been streamlined, and the game has been simplified. For Gangsters 2, developer Hothouse Creations has attempted to remedy the problems of the first. There was potentially a deep strategy game hidden somewhere beneath its convoluted interface and strange artificial intelligence problems, but finding that game was a chore. Released in 1998, the original Gangsters had a promising premise, but it was marred by the fact that it was more complicated than complex.
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