just wanted to reccomend Gangland(my review inside) to anyone...

rohbshop

that might be looking for something to hold them over until WoW, EQ2, etc. come out.  Well, if your into gangsters and rts's.

I picked this up about a week ago and i have to say i'm pleasantly surprised.  Luckily, i picked it up after a major patch that addressed the inability to save games of which there were many complaints about and poor reviews as a result.  After having played it i can understand why.

I was very skeptical at first since the graphics seemed dated, and the missions seemed too simple and straight forward, but after a dozen or more missions the game got more complex and difficult.  You move units like any rts, and i wouldnt necessarily say the game takes alot of strategy.  Whats great about the game though is that you can extort businesses or buy them out and put them under your control.  You can hire muscle in the form of brawlers who basically throw punches while stunning, thugs with revolvers or tommy guns, and prostitutes that spray mace stunning the enemy also.  They can be hired at strip clubs you run.  On top of this there are special units that you have to unlock through missions like snipers, bombers, old grannies that heal and use a shotgun, thieves that can carjack and steal from ally safes, and a few more that i havent gotten to yet. 

You play as 1 of 4 brothers, the storyline has you coming over from Italy i believe and your supposed to take them out as your main longterm objective.  You can be the thug going around and shooting up people or sit behind a desk being the 'Don' answering phone calls that offer you all kinds of deals for resources, while using your hired henchman to do the dirty work.  You get resources by taking over distilleries(alcohol), pawn shops(stolen goods?), garages(car parts), and warehouses(valuable crates?).  Most of the phone calls you get will revolve around deals for those resources, in exchange you can get stuff like money, bullets, med kits, or special units.  You'll receive phone calls to purchase all types of cars   Also, you can even take a wife, knock her up, have a kid, and he'll grow up to help you run your business.

Now i dont want to give the impression it does all this perfectly, because it doesnt.  Theres a limit to the depth of everything i described above and its a shame because this game could've been GREAT if only they fleshed it all out.  You can only upgrade your weapon depending on which boss you choose to play 2 times(only 3 weapons).  The cars you get arent really useful or practical, since the roads are very narrow and you cant drive off them.  They get shotup easy even though your supposed to be able to do driveby's with them.  So more or less you'll probably end up just running around instead of driving.  But they are cool toys to have since there is a decent variation of cars in the game.  Furthermore, the businesses you buy are the same over and over again, so when i say a strip club or pawn shop, they look the same from scenario to scenario so dont expect alot of uniqueness to everything. 

The official reviews i read before buying this seemed to give credit to the game for being pretty fun, but gave it really bad scores due to the inability to save games.  And thats partly why i'd call this a 'sleeper game'.  Its VERY underrated imo, especially if you could see yourself into a Grand Theft Auto gangster style rts, its definitely abit hardcore in theme.  Its different than most rts's which is refreshing.  I'm not playing any mmorpg's until WoW and EQ2 come out, i dont really want to commit myself to anything currently on the market so i'm stuck fishing for single players.  If your in the same boat as me, i strongly reccomend this game.  I'd caution there are more bugs to the game that havent been fixed, one somewhat major one i ran into involved not being able to progress in the storyline if you have a kid before killing a rival gangster, which evidently was a bug caused by the patch to save games.  Other than that, i've run into very few if any. 

I think there is a demo available, but the game does get better(difficulty-wise and complexity) later on so take that into account.

Forgot to add that this game is more or less like a Gangster style version of Fallout with some RTS style gameplay.

NeoKyosuke18

hmm.. I've been holding off mmorpg's with Gunbound and Survival Project.. *awaits patiently for WoW*