Gangs of London

Stevie tells Sony their fortune...

Videogames that offer weapons-filled and crime-oriented third-person missions interspersed with vehicle-based segue pace changers are fast becoming ten-a-penny - almost to the same degree of popularity (or saturation) as first-person shooters. Whether it’s the massive scope and ambition of Grand Theft Auto or the shoddy jack-of-all-trade delivery of True Crime: New York, this particular brand of hard-hitting and (often) foul mouthed game content is proving uncomfortably popular with the gaming masses.

What little story there is in Gangs of London involves the usual glut of territory wars, revenge attacks, murderous infiltrations, and police evasion that are par for the course concerning this sort of game. Players get to choose from a selection of rival gang organisations, which are: the Morris Kane Firm, EC2 Crew, Talwar Brothers, Zakharov Organisation, Steele Associates, and Water Dragon Triad. Each gang exists as a fairly two-dimensional representation of a specific racial group - with character dialogue occasionally tottering on the borders of dangerously stereotypical - and it’s not difficult to figure out who’s who from the aforementioned gang names. Naturally, all the gangs have differing statistics spread across both car handling and weaponry allocation, which in some way is supposed to differentiate one from the other in terms of strengths and weaknesses. It generally doesn’t make a blind bit of difference as each gang feels equally as savage, just with a different selection of weapons. For example, when it comes to ‘close-up work’ the Water Dragon Triad are particularly fond of the meat cleaver, whereas the Talwar Brothers much prefer the cutthroat razor, and the EC2 Crew enjoys cracking kneecaps with the sledgehammer. Whatever the player’s eventual preference, be it blades, handguns, or assault rifles, the violent outcome is generally the same.

The outward presentation in Gangs of London is initially pretty slick stuff, and its foot-tapping main theme and stylised photographic comic book mission preambles are very nicely produced. The same can be said of the game’s environmental detailing - especially when throttling a car through busy London streets while chasing enemy gang members or avoiding police attention (cracking a smile while zipping past Buckingham Palace or the Houses of Parliament). However, the actual meat on the bones of that aesthetic presentation is shockingly deficient.

Each mission undertaking, regardless of the gang selected for use, is appalling low on atmosphere, challenge, and immersion, and most can be completed in a matter of minutes; leaving absolutely no sense of progressive difficulty developing from mission to mission. The gameplay presents players with the opportunity to cycle through multiple gang members (usually four) in certain missions, which allows for a wider variety of on-screen firepower and security in numbers. Plus, there's also a basic squad control system open to the player, which involves sending in the boys to deal with rooms of enemy gang members, or telling injured party members to hang back while everyone else gets blood on their hands. Sadly, the need to use the squad control is minimal due to shamefully simple enemy routines and walk patterns, and some staggeringly bad A.I. when in close proximity. Therefore, simply crouching to lessen noise emission and sneaking behind dumb enemies to deliver that special brand of sickening death is likely all players will ever need to perfect in order to ensure success. Indeed, you know you’re in the presence of something truly unimpressive during those rare occasions when an enemy catches sight of movement and opens fire with whatever portable howitzer he's carrying - only for you to dispatch him with an equally ear-shattering clarity - yet the aurally-impaired bad guy in the room next door merely continues with his set patrol path. It really is that bad.

Oddly, the game’s sporadic driving levels are a thoroughly welcome break from the monotony of the narrative core (which usually isn't the case with this style of gameplay), and the vehicle missions at least create a fairly convincing sense of urgency as enemy cars must be run off the road before reaching their destinations, street races must be won, people must be delivered to safe houses without attracting the police, and pesky tails must be lost. It’s nothing especially awe inspiring, but it’s head and shoulders above the fractured monotony of the third-person death-fest. There's even a smidge of innovation to be seen too, as vehicle indicators cleverly flash to let the player know which turns to take as they hurtle through traffic - there’s a standard on-screen mini-map and directional arrow to use, but the flashing indicators are still a nice touch. As is the ever-decreasing handling of vehicles as they incur damage from crashes, mashed pedestrians, and bullets, etc. The driving aspect is so much stronger than the third-person section that it almost feels as though the two halves were developed separately.

So, back to the on-foot stuff. Character animation, movement, and targeting is also somewhat substandard and certainly not befitting a system as powerful as the PlayStation Portable. While the environmental design is certainly nothing to grumble at, human animation is often so staccato that characters appear to flash up from the street to the curb instead of stepping smoothly, or they simply blink from one pose to the next when exiting a vehicle and adopting a walking position. Things are similarly bad when controlling a mobster of choice during attacks; and struggling to form any kind of accurate movement when aiming is all-but impossible. The game automatically puts the character into an extremely un-dynamic locked pose when their weapon is raised, which amazingly isn’t open to swivelled movement left or right through the hips, which means the only way to aim is directly forward while relying on an imprecise auto-aim feature. If players wish to manually shift their aim, they must release the lock, move the character left or right accordingly, and then re-aim, all while waves of high-velocity death is turning their collective gang into Swiss cheese.

The central narrative aspect of Gangs of London is pitiful and, ironically, outside of a worthless strategic mini-game, the most valuable part of the content exists in its separate pub-based games. Those players not wanting to indulge themselves with mindless acts of violence all the time (and most of you will feel that way), will find more fun in The Pub than anywhere else on the game’s sprawling London streets. When in The Pub, which can be freely accessed from the main menu, players can waste plenty of time playing graphically competent and admirably responsive UK or US versions of pool (eight ball) against various game characters. Or, if pool isn’t your style, then why not try a game of traditional pub skittles, or a spot of darts, or a spell on the archaic arcade machine. Seriously, folks, this throwaway gameplay distraction easily proves to be the strongest element in Gangs of London and soon renders everything else null and void in terms of appeal and longevity. Furthermore, the convenience of simply stopping off at the pub while on the way to work, or college, school, etc., is perfectly suited for the hardware’s portable ethos - while the core story component clearly isn't.

More than anything else, Gangs of London is a blatantly shallow excuse to create yet another exercise in brutality and abhorrent language. The game lacks any form of motivational justification, and setting it in realistic surroundings, force feeding an uninteresting cliche-riddled narrative across truly banal missions, and then relying on violence and blood-spattered cursing and imagery to pad the gaping holes, makes the '18' certificate assigned by the BBFC ('M' for Mature in the US) seem sadly insufficient. While the game is based conveniently around 'gangs of London' it simply does not merit the constant and pointless torrent of tasteless and poorly executed guff that exists for nothing more than perverse shock value.

If the review isn’t clear enough at this juncture, allow for a censored statement more apt to Gangs of London, and know before reading it that this is not an exaggeration of opinion or the game’s insulting content: "Don't be a stupid c**t, take the f***ing advice given in this b*****d review and don’t waste a f***ing penny of your money on Gangs of London!"

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By Stevie Smith