''Gangland'' is a video game created by Danish studio Mediamobsters. It has the premise of mixing

real-time strategy Real-time strategy (RTS) is a subgenre of strategy video games that do not progress incrementally in turns, but allow all players to play simultaneously, in "real time". By contrast, in turn-based strategy (TBS) games, players take turns to p ...

, role-playing video game and

simulation game Simulation video games are a diverse super-category of video games, generally designed to closely simulate real world activities. A simulation game attempts to copy various activities from real life in the form of a game for various purposes such ...

Story

The player takes the role of Mario Mangano, whose four brothers, Romano, Angelo, Sonny, and the eldest Chico, are

caporegime A caporegime or capodecina, usually shortened to capo or informally referred to as "captain" or "skipper", is a rank used in the Mafia (both the Sicilian Mafia and Italian-American Mafia) for a '' made member'' of an Italian crime family who he ...

of the Mangano crime family based in Palermo. When their father, the Don of the Borgata, dies, a power struggle hits the family and ends with Chico being nominated as the new boss. Romano, Angelo, and Sonny murder Chico after his promotion and flip away from Italy to the new world, escaping the police manhunt meant to capture them. Two years later, Mario's uncle Vincenzo Mangano calls Mario's grandfather and says that the three brothers are in his city, Paradise City. The single-player campaign begins when Mario is sent to Paradise City by his grandfather to work under Vincenzo until he is powerful enough to hunt down and kill the three murderous brothers.

Reception

The game received "mixed" reviews according to the

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website

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

. A common criticism of ''Gangland'' was its repetitive gameplay. The game also suffered from a poorly implemented checkpoint saving system, as well as game mechanics that would discourage the use of certain units because of future penalties. Some of the actions a player could perform could be considered game breaking actions (such as the permanent destruction of vital resources) that could ruin multiplayer games. ''

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'' gave it a score of eight out of ten, saying, "It ain't pretty, but it's business." ''

Playboy ''Playboy'' is an American men's Lifestyle magazine, lifestyle and entertainment magazine, formerly in print and currently online. It was founded in Chicago in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from H ...

'' gave it 75%, saying, "Think of this strategy game as ''

The Sims ''The Sims'' is a series of life simulation game, life simulation video games developed by Maxis and video game publisher, published by Electronic Arts. The franchise has sold nearly 200 million copies worldwide, and it is one of the best-selling ...

'' meets ''

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''." However, ''

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'' gave it three stars out of five, saying, "Releasing a game without a save mode is a brave move; releasing a game without a save mode because you forgot is just worrying. For those of you hoping to play ''Gangland'' and complete it, my advice is to wait until a save patch becomes available, supposedly in the next month or so."

Sequel

On October 1, 2007, publisher CDV announced that '' Escape From Paradise City'' had gone gold and would be available later that month. ''Escape from Paradise City'' was developed by Sirius Games.

Notes

References

External links

Official website
(archived) *{{moby game, id=/gangland 2004 video games MacOS games Organized crime video games Real-time strategy video games Role-playing video games Simulation video games Video games developed in Denmark Video games set in the United States Windows games Multiplayer and single-player video games