Nick762
07-09-06, 09:46 AM
The first and so far only game I picked up for the PSP, that I have actually finished and kept is GTA: Liberty City Stories (although I have around 40% still to go I appear to have finished the story based element) so needless to say I'm eagerly awaiting Vice City Stories later in the year.
I'd seen a couple of previews of Gangs of London, a follow up to the PS2 game "The Getaway" which I haven't played but it looked promising and when I saw it in Game earlier this week I snapped it up.
Impressions so far - no discernable bike content therefore of no further relevance to this forum...
OK, if anyone's interested...
GTA without the humour.
Like GTA, it is mission based but it's a lot more linear. You can't apparently just wander round doing your own thing. While GTA has its rages, taxi driver and other side quests, GOL has sub-games but it looks like you have to quit the main game to play them. For example there is a free roving game where you just drive around avoiding other gangs, the “Knowledge” driving a taxi to various places within a time limit, a variant on Shaun of the dead where you have to take out zombies against the clock and a murder and mayhem option which is just kill and blow up anything that moves (and some things that don’t.) There is also “The Pub” where you can play pool, darts, skittles and a rather fiendish snake video game – at one point you are controlling two snakes with different hands… (there’s got to be a double entendre there somewhere)
You don’t play a single character but can, depending on the scenario, jump between up to four gang members. If the gang member survives the mission their attributes increase, if they don’t all survive but you complete the mission, only the survivors get the experience bonus. You could find yourself singly sneaking into an enemy gang’s hideout armed only with a knife to persuade a former pole dancer turned PA to the opposition leader to defect or have a full blown shootout in Parliament Square with all your mates. At times like this there is an elementary command system to give simple instructions to the others.
You can take the part of a number of different and competing stereotyped gangs, the Cockneys, Tongs, Russian Mafia, Yardies and a few others, the main differences being player characteristics, the Cockneys for example drive big slow cars but are tough can take a lot of punishment. I’m not sure how different the missions are between gangs but I get the feeling that they are pretty similar. I’ve only tried the Cockneys so far, they are led by an evil old git called Morris Kane and you get to play at various times his sidekicks Benny, Mad Mick, Ron and Dave, like I said direct imports from central casting.
The controls are not in my opinion particularly intuitive and the vehicle handling is lumpy. The sound effects are pretty generic although the graphics may be a tad better than GTA but the downside of this is that it makes the machine work harder and even in a sports car there is never the impression of driving at speed.
One nice effect is the cut scenes. It’s done as a semi animated (i.e. panning and zooming) comic strip with voiceovers which is probably more economical on memory than full blown animations.
London is recognisable but large areas seem to be blocked off, you can't for example get out of your car a Waterloo and explore around the London Eye, it seems to be in a big walled off area that is inaccessible, shame.
All in all not as bad as “From Russia with Love” which I completed and sent back in disgust in under 48 hours but I’ll probably trade it in for Vice City Stories when it arrives.
I'd seen a couple of previews of Gangs of London, a follow up to the PS2 game "The Getaway" which I haven't played but it looked promising and when I saw it in Game earlier this week I snapped it up.
Impressions so far - no discernable bike content therefore of no further relevance to this forum...
OK, if anyone's interested...
GTA without the humour.
Like GTA, it is mission based but it's a lot more linear. You can't apparently just wander round doing your own thing. While GTA has its rages, taxi driver and other side quests, GOL has sub-games but it looks like you have to quit the main game to play them. For example there is a free roving game where you just drive around avoiding other gangs, the “Knowledge” driving a taxi to various places within a time limit, a variant on Shaun of the dead where you have to take out zombies against the clock and a murder and mayhem option which is just kill and blow up anything that moves (and some things that don’t.) There is also “The Pub” where you can play pool, darts, skittles and a rather fiendish snake video game – at one point you are controlling two snakes with different hands… (there’s got to be a double entendre there somewhere)
You don’t play a single character but can, depending on the scenario, jump between up to four gang members. If the gang member survives the mission their attributes increase, if they don’t all survive but you complete the mission, only the survivors get the experience bonus. You could find yourself singly sneaking into an enemy gang’s hideout armed only with a knife to persuade a former pole dancer turned PA to the opposition leader to defect or have a full blown shootout in Parliament Square with all your mates. At times like this there is an elementary command system to give simple instructions to the others.
You can take the part of a number of different and competing stereotyped gangs, the Cockneys, Tongs, Russian Mafia, Yardies and a few others, the main differences being player characteristics, the Cockneys for example drive big slow cars but are tough can take a lot of punishment. I’m not sure how different the missions are between gangs but I get the feeling that they are pretty similar. I’ve only tried the Cockneys so far, they are led by an evil old git called Morris Kane and you get to play at various times his sidekicks Benny, Mad Mick, Ron and Dave, like I said direct imports from central casting.
The controls are not in my opinion particularly intuitive and the vehicle handling is lumpy. The sound effects are pretty generic although the graphics may be a tad better than GTA but the downside of this is that it makes the machine work harder and even in a sports car there is never the impression of driving at speed.
One nice effect is the cut scenes. It’s done as a semi animated (i.e. panning and zooming) comic strip with voiceovers which is probably more economical on memory than full blown animations.
London is recognisable but large areas seem to be blocked off, you can't for example get out of your car a Waterloo and explore around the London Eye, it seems to be in a big walled off area that is inaccessible, shame.
All in all not as bad as “From Russia with Love” which I completed and sent back in disgust in under 48 hours but I’ll probably trade it in for Vice City Stories when it arrives.