Gangs of London
Holy hell, this game is huge. First details and hands-on impressions are just a click away.
Published: April 24, 2006
For more than a year now, Sony has been touting the strengths of the UMD format as a platform for serious console-level gameplay and depth in a portable space. And for nearly that long, we've been waiting for games to actually make good on such a promise. It's starting to happen; Daxter showed that you can incorporate nearly all of the elements from a big-name PS2 franchise into a pocket-sized adventure without losing the scale and animation.
But what of the less successful or overlooked franchises? What of the games that were so ambitious that the time and effort spent replicating, say, the whole of London with painstaking detail left the rest of the game somewhat lacking? For that, we have Gangs of London, a sort of re-imagining of all that hard work put into digitizing London for The Getaway without all of that wussy cop stuff.
As the title would suggest, Gangs of London is a simulation of what it's like to be a tourist in London and get lost on public transit. Actually, that's only part of the game (yes, we're totally serious, that's how all-encompassing the game is); the main section of the game is indeed all about the various gangs of London -- the Yardies, the Triads, the Russian Mafia, and so on. Specifically, it's about them all trying to take over London.
Gangs goes beyond a fitting title, though, as it's the core of the game. When we first started the story mode, we had to choose a gang based on a couple different factors. Since much of the game is based on foot, you'll need to pick a gang that has weapons that suit you (each member can carry a different, specialized gun, rife and so on, making all of them somewhat unique), but also that can handle themselves in hand-to-hand combat plus how they can deal behind the wheel. In a fun twist on The Getaway's... interesting vehicle controls, your ability to guide a car through the choked streets of London will depend primarily on how good your gang's skills are.
After picking a gang, we were treated to a graphic novel-style set of cutscenes, much like was seen in Max Payne or perhaps more appropriately [umd=72]The Silent Hill Experience[/umd]. Voices still had yet to be added, but the art style was already perfect for the game, and when it finally launched into the mission proper, we were impressed with how detailed the world is. Obviously some concessions had to be made with the texture detail and the models, but we were still taken aback by how massive the game world really is.
Of course, we were snapped out of all this by the sound of gunfire. Apparently a real-life Spanish pop star wanted to be in the game, so Studio London threw him in there... as our target. He and his cronies apparently didn't like that, so we had to gun every last one of 'em down. It's a family game, y'see. Interestingly, you can swap to each member of the gang and the AI will take over for the rest. It was a little lazy in handling this, but it also kept the rest of the gang alive as we charged in from room to room and started gunning people down.
The developers are promising a massive amount of content for just this storyline mode alone. Your actions will determine how it unfolds (and, we're guessing, which gang you pick will help you see the same story from different perspectives and different lead-ins or motivations for them), but the storyline actually stretches across some 60 missions with heavy driving and shooting mixed in.
As we mentioned before, though, the game has a ton of content beyond the gang-fueled storyline. If you do want to kick back and explore London through the law-abiding eyes of a tourist, you can, taking in landmarks and major sights all over the city while riding around on the Underground, all while snapping pictures in a whole subgame of its own. If that's not quite your thing, you can slip into a pub to play a handful of game there, including darts, pool and skittles (the precursor to bowling, not the delicious candies).
If that's still not your thing you can always just run around in free-roaming or kick on Four Weeks Later Mode (a take-off of [umd=25]28 Days Later[/umd] that we sadly wasn't finished yet so we couldn't check it out). The biggest non-story chunk of the game appears to be the Risk-inspired Gang Battle mode that lets you pick an area of London and set out taking over other parts and recruiting other gang members to build your army. Interestingly enough, this isn't a Wi-Fi-compatible game -- you actually hand the PSP off to other players and take turns.
The Getaway may not have been able to fully realize the storyline and themes that it tried to accomplish, but that doesn't mean all those poor digital cameras and gigabytes of data that were collected for use in the Guy Ritchie-infused game world can't still be put to good use. Granted, we'll likely see the full fruits of Studio London's labor when we get a proper PS3 Getaway sequel, but if this is what we're stuck with in the mean time, we certainly won't complain.
But what of the less successful or overlooked franchises? What of the games that were so ambitious that the time and effort spent replicating, say, the whole of London with painstaking detail left the rest of the game somewhat lacking? For that, we have Gangs of London, a sort of re-imagining of all that hard work put into digitizing London for The Getaway without all of that wussy cop stuff.
As the title would suggest, Gangs of London is a simulation of what it's like to be a tourist in London and get lost on public transit. Actually, that's only part of the game (yes, we're totally serious, that's how all-encompassing the game is); the main section of the game is indeed all about the various gangs of London -- the Yardies, the Triads, the Russian Mafia, and so on. Specifically, it's about them all trying to take over London.
Gangs goes beyond a fitting title, though, as it's the core of the game. When we first started the story mode, we had to choose a gang based on a couple different factors. Since much of the game is based on foot, you'll need to pick a gang that has weapons that suit you (each member can carry a different, specialized gun, rife and so on, making all of them somewhat unique), but also that can handle themselves in hand-to-hand combat plus how they can deal behind the wheel. In a fun twist on The Getaway's... interesting vehicle controls, your ability to guide a car through the choked streets of London will depend primarily on how good your gang's skills are.
After picking a gang, we were treated to a graphic novel-style set of cutscenes, much like was seen in Max Payne or perhaps more appropriately [umd=72]The Silent Hill Experience[/umd]. Voices still had yet to be added, but the art style was already perfect for the game, and when it finally launched into the mission proper, we were impressed with how detailed the world is. Obviously some concessions had to be made with the texture detail and the models, but we were still taken aback by how massive the game world really is.
Of course, we were snapped out of all this by the sound of gunfire. Apparently a real-life Spanish pop star wanted to be in the game, so Studio London threw him in there... as our target. He and his cronies apparently didn't like that, so we had to gun every last one of 'em down. It's a family game, y'see. Interestingly, you can swap to each member of the gang and the AI will take over for the rest. It was a little lazy in handling this, but it also kept the rest of the gang alive as we charged in from room to room and started gunning people down.
The developers are promising a massive amount of content for just this storyline mode alone. Your actions will determine how it unfolds (and, we're guessing, which gang you pick will help you see the same story from different perspectives and different lead-ins or motivations for them), but the storyline actually stretches across some 60 missions with heavy driving and shooting mixed in.
As we mentioned before, though, the game has a ton of content beyond the gang-fueled storyline. If you do want to kick back and explore London through the law-abiding eyes of a tourist, you can, taking in landmarks and major sights all over the city while riding around on the Underground, all while snapping pictures in a whole subgame of its own. If that's not quite your thing, you can slip into a pub to play a handful of game there, including darts, pool and skittles (the precursor to bowling, not the delicious candies).
If that's still not your thing you can always just run around in free-roaming or kick on Four Weeks Later Mode (a take-off of [umd=25]28 Days Later[/umd] that we sadly wasn't finished yet so we couldn't check it out). The biggest non-story chunk of the game appears to be the Risk-inspired Gang Battle mode that lets you pick an area of London and set out taking over other parts and recruiting other gang members to build your army. Interestingly enough, this isn't a Wi-Fi-compatible game -- you actually hand the PSP off to other players and take turns.
The Getaway may not have been able to fully realize the storyline and themes that it tried to accomplish, but that doesn't mean all those poor digital cameras and gigabytes of data that were collected for use in the Guy Ritchie-infused game world can't still be put to good use. Granted, we'll likely see the full fruits of Studio London's labor when we get a proper PS3 Getaway sequel, but if this is what we're stuck with in the mean time, we certainly won't complain.
