Gangsters: Organized Crime
1998
Audio: English
- strategy
- action
- single player
The story
Gangsters is played by alternating between turn-based and real time gameplay. At the beginning you give orders to the gangsters (or 'hoods') under your control, which are then played out in front of you during the real-time aspect of the game (the working week). To have any chance of winning the game, you must begin expanding your territory by giving your hoods the order to extort businesses into paying protection money to you every week (which must be collected). You will also have to begin recruiting more hoods for your gang as soon as possible by giving your hoods the recruit order. Additional hoods can be recruited from gyms, pool halls, cafés, the docks and the unemployment office. The hoods have many different attributes such as intelligence, fists, knives, etc. which make them suitable for different missions. A hood with high knife skill and low fists skill may inadvertently kill someone he was merely sent to beat up, for instance. Hoods can be promoted to lieutenant, which gives them the ability to lead teams of hoods. It is also possible to hire a lawyer and an accountant. There are different automobiles and weapons that can be purchased to aid in carrying out missions.
What it’s like
Clipped, dry, and quietly tense, with the feel of a rainy weekday spent at a desk and a city that hums beneath it. Planning happens in still, turn-based stretches, like a board laid out in a smoky back office, and then the working week plays out in real time as small figures move through streets and storefronts in a bird's-eye view. The pace alternates between patient deliberation and brief, scrambling bursts of activity, so the mood stays steady rather than spiking. Its vibe is methodical unease: a cold, transactional calm with the occasional jolt when a mission goes wrong. Violence is present and abrupt, with fights that end quickly and deaths that often come from a bad order rather than lingering spectacle, so it lands as consequence more than horror. Emotionally it is detached and wry, with little interest in personal drama beyond the rise of a crew. It suits a late evening alone, a long strategic session, or anyone who likes slowly building something from modest beginnings. It is for people who enjoy management games with a grimy, period-flavoured underworld and don't mind a steady undercurrent of threat.
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