Gangland

by Whiptail

Product Features

• Offers a unique blend of RTT/RPG/SIM
• Experience a living city with 800+ citizens per map
• Interact with 500+ npc's with individual behavior
• Make your own family from 20+ unique characters
• For 1 or more players

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0001DB3HK
• Item Weight: 15.4 ounces
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: April 8, 2004
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #28,700 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Game Informer Review

It irks me when a developer innovates within a genre and fails to tighten up the final product to the point where its creativity can be enjoyed to the fullest. Gangland is chock-full of great new ideas, but I couldn't get into its world of violence, wealth, and power.

The idea behind this title is brilliant: Captain an organized crime family to dominance through clever strategy, shrewd business dealings, and plenty of violence against those who oppose you. These elements fit snugly together, and impact one another in logical fashion. Ignore any one facet of your criminal empire, and it'll all come crashing down around you – the mark of a well-conceived strategy game.

Although its core concepts are well executed, the little things bring Gangland down. In particular, the AI leaves a bit to be desired. Regular civilians to whom I'd done no wrong would frequently open fire on me, completely breaking the game fiction. Also, combat feels more like a slugfest than an intense tactical experience; not once was I able to recover from bad odds through strategic expertise.

If your desire to be a criminal mastermind isn't enough to get you over a steep learning curve and overlook some flaws, you'd be well-advised to look to other, more polished titles for your strategy fix.

Concept:
Become the godfather of Paradise City through an odd RTS-style interface

Graphics:
Smooth and flavorful. Seeing the same 20 or so character models gets awfully old, though

Sound:
I had no idea that mobsters listened to both nü-metal and techno

Playability:
For a complex game, nothing is explained particularly well – the learning curve is a bit much

Entertainment:
It's definitely unique and interesting, but somehow fails to really come together in the end

Replay:
Moderately High

Rated: 6.5 out of 10
Editor: Adam Biessener
Issue: May 2004

2nd Opinion:
Whiptail Interactive envisioned Gangland as a blend of the real-time strategy, role-playing, and sim genres. On paper, this sounds quite amazing. However, there are just too many flaws that detract from Gangland's admittedly cool concepts. Too much of your time is spent in transit between jobs (the vehicles, which do help save time, are abysmally difficult to control), and the combat itself doesn't really have much in the way of depth or strategy, a problem that's exacerbated by the lack of unit variety. Like so many Mafia epics, Gangland reaches a predictable conclusion: great concept, spotty execution.

Rated: 7 out of 10
Editor: Matt Helgeson


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Product Description

Trouble in Paradise! Product InformationGang Land takes you to the seedy underworld of Paradise City where you will needto extort bribe steal and kill in your quest for mob supremacy!  Enter areal-time strategy environment that includes action and role-playing andcompete with other gangsters (and players) in a bid to work your way up thefamily career ladder for ultimate gangland control.  Featuring explosive action-laden environments Gangland delivers fast-pacedaction and offers you an opportunity to live out the life of a true Mafia boss!Product Features Gang Land offers a unique blend of RTS/RPG action Build your own family from 20+ unique characters Assemble a business empire based on gangland activities Solve 26 conquests and challenges Engage in thrilling action-driven combat environments Compete with other playersProduct Reviews"A truly enteraining game"     - Gamespy"Gangland delivers where it counts"     - worthplaying.comWindows Requirements Windows 98SE Me 2000 XP Pentium III 600 MHz processor 128 MB of RAM 700 MB available Hard Disk space DirectX 8.1 or higher DirectX 8.1 compatible Sound Card 64 MB DirectX 8.1 compatible Graphics Card 8X CD-ROM drive Onboard/Integrated graphic chipsets and laptops are not supported. Supported Video Cards: GeForce 2/3/4 and FX Series. Radeon 7000 or higher  

See all Product Description

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Seriously disappointing, January 13, 2005

By 

TrezKu13 (Norfolk, VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gangland (CD-ROM)

People talked about this game like it was a cross between "Grand Theft Auto 3," "Gangsters," and "The Sims." Believing that, I went out to acquire this game. I regret spending my money.

Here's how gameplay is: you play a campaign, following a storyline. However, this is not like GTA3 where you can follow a certain storyline/story arch and still go out and do your own thing. Each mission is an isolated level, like a normal video game. Before I completed a mission, I went out and acquired a large portion of the city that I was allowed to go in, as well as raising my own personal army. Then when the next level was loaded...BAM! All of it was gone. I was heartbroken. Everything I had done was thus undone, as if the game only wanted me to have so much power. Imagine earning a lot of money, weapons, and vehicles in GTA3 and then suddenly losing all of it come the next mission, and you'll understand me better. What you come to realize is that while the game designers had a great concept, they presented it terribly. I got tired of doing the missions, and I didn't feel like I was in any great sim like the advertisements claimed. I think "Gangsters" was more like "The Sims" than this was.

The gameplay is also annoying. Moving the camera was awkward, though that wasn't my biggest complaint. The voice acting in this was incredibly awful. Every character says something in an attack, and its usually in a bad Italian accent. This is even worse for the girls who pepper spray people, and every time having to say something out loud. Imagine someone saying "How do you like my new piece?" and "You're goin' down!" every SECOND and you will understand just why I quickly turned down the volume.

There are other serious issues with this game however. The main reason I have given it one star as opposed to the original two I was going to give it is this: the patches. I downloaded the patch after a crash-to-desktop when the game first loaded...only to realize I had to download the other patches beforehand. Problem is...those patches apparently no longer exist. I couldn't believe it. I went to the company's website and searched all over, with just the recent patch available. I searched online, and though I found some earlier patches the game couldn't accept them, because it first had to accept the other, MUCH earlier patches. So all in all...I couldn't patch the game. This is inexcusable.

This game is not what I would recommend to other people. I hope in some ways my words have helped other gamers make a decision, or prevented them from making a serious financial mistake. Though the scars are too deep in me, I can exert my pain for the better good of mankind. Don't buy this game.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Game You Can't Refuse, February 22, 2004

By 

Alex Josef "aalexx3" (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gangland (CD-ROM)

I just played the demo after reading some of the reviews here and on some other sites - to say I'm impressed just doesn't do justice. This is by far one of the best action/strategy games to come along in years. I wouldn't compare it to GTA because they are completely different styles of gameplay, but I would DEFINITELY say that this game is as good as GTA in terms of quality and fun. Multiplayer is seriously going to ROCK!

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Beware: Absolutely Horrible Game, April 17, 2004

By 

Michael (LA, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gangland (CD-ROM)

When the game first came out, it did not have the save game feature & had many performance problems. Then after a long delay Media mobsters came out with Patch 1.2.1 which had a checkpoint save feature not the save feature where you can save the game when ever you want. Also Patch 1.2.1 had lots & lots of bugs leading to occasional crashes & performance problems. You can read all about this in the official forum: http://www.forumplasma.com/gangland/.
Almost all the forum members at the official forum had requested media mobsters to correct these issues but they responded back saying that right now they are concentrating all their resources in developing a localized version of the game for different countries. What kind of software company is this? Instead of solving the bugs in the game first and improving the game's performance, they are concentrating on making more money & fooling customers in different countries by making localized versions of the game. I wonder how far greed will take media mobsters.
I am giving the game a rating of 1 since the lowest in Amazon is 1. If there was something less than that I would have given that.

Anyway If you are interested in trying this game, just wait for 10-15 days as I am sure that lots of disgusted game players will be selling their cd's at less than $10 at ebay. Today I sold mine at $11 and I am happy that atleast I have earned $11 for this disgusting buggy game