Omerta: City of Gangsters Review: It’s Fun Being The Boss
Omerta: City of Gangsters Review: It’s Fun Being the Boss
Omerta: City of Gangsters
PC
Kalypso
Strategy
Omerta: City of Gangsters takes you back to 1920’s Atlantic City. Here, you play the role of an immigrant who came to America to live the big life, the American dream. Of course his version is one of being a crime boss who plans to take control over all of Atlantic City.
Omerta: City of Gangsters offers a mix of simulation and turn-based strategy gameplay. You are eased into the gameplay with smaller and less intensive missions to begin with. Each mission has you start fresh in a new section of town where you are given certain tasks to complete the mission at hand. The first priority is to set up new businesses where you can begin to receive an influx of cash, both dirty and clean money. Dirty and clean money are both used for different reasons such as buying certain businesses. Another important factor, while establishing yourself in a new district, is raising both your liked and feared factor. Both are good for different types of businesses and to be able to get certain tasks done.
The majority of your set-up time, while establishing yourself in a new district, is to earn income and make sure you have enough beer and liquor to sell at your places of business. Should your breweries, distilleries, or smugglers not provide your businesses with enough material to sell, you can also purchase items from local stores or from a jobs market. Of course, the local stores will only be there until you run them out of business and take over. You can do that by being nice and buying them out, continuously raiding their supply, or by driving by their place of business and putting a few bullets into it. At that point, the building is yours and you’ll be able to set up your business of choice.
There is a lot to learn with the game and its many options for different types of businesses and how each one interacts with another. However, it’s very easy to get a grasp on the gameplay and how everything handles and it’s also very simplistic. You won’t have a hard time diving into this game at all.
Each mission can last as long as you would like, however, if you choose, you can try and play out each mission as quickly as possible. Right from the beginning you are given only a number of tasks to complete while you grow your businesses in each district, but for me, once I started growing those businesses, I wanted to see how well they perform instead of reaching the set goals for accomplishing a mission. Therefore, I had a lot of missions that took me far longer than necessary to accomplish the mission at hand so that I could move on to the next. If I am going to go through all this work and put time and effort into an area, I would then like to see how much cash flow I can receive instead of completing the mission and starting all over again in a new district.
If I earn $50,000 dollars in one mission area, I can’t take that with me on my next mission into a new district. I am simply starting all over again to build up the new district. The way the game is built requires it to be played this way so that it isn’t easy, but it’s still slightly annoying. However, you will learn to get over it, but it still nags at you and makes starting the next mission far less exciting or enjoyable. At the very least it could have given me a stats option to see past gameplay experiences and how much cash I earned or how much time it took me to complete the mission. Unfortunately, there is nothing like that; your only reward is to move on to the next district and begin anew.
Now, it’s not all bad in regards to going to new districts. It’s fun to see these new maps with the historic 1920’s look that the game offers. You also get to level up your characters and hire new members to help do your dirty work. Also, the further you get means the more places of business you get to open. I was excited to open my first casino and try to meet all the goals to have it be as successful as possible. Even though you start anew with each mission, the game still offers enough interest and liking to pull you in for more. I’ve been able to get extremely addicted to the simulation aspect of the game, especially when all the businesses are running at a maximum. As I said before, it’s fun to see how much cash you can pull in, but it does get old after a while.
The turn-based strategy part of the game can be fairly enjoyable. Also, unless it’s a main mission, you can choose to simulate the outcome. Many times throughout the simulation part of the game you will come across random moments where other gangsters have stolen your goods and you’ll have to fight them to get it back. In addition, you can choose to do a bank heist and fight your way to the vault and back out. Or maybe you will need to bust one of your members out of jail. There are many of these events that come about, some by choice and others at complete random. It can be enjoyable, though I still had trouble becoming interested in that part of the game. If I could simulate the event, I would do so.
Each squad member comes with their own unique abilities to bring to the fight. Some members might use their fists, a bat, or a nice gun or two. It’s all about playing the battlefield to your advantage and taking cover whenever possible. Also, to mention one of my favorite moments, included among the weapons are grenades and other type of large area explosive devices that you can use on enemies when huddled close together. The turn-based strategy part of the game can be challenging if you don’t take it easy and be smart with each move. So, when I was able to hurt four enemies with one grenade throw, I was a very happy boss.
Omerta: City of Gangsters offers the player with addicting gameplay, but still falls short in certain areas. It was too easy to lose interest in the turned-based strategy part of the game. I grew tired of the same voice clips over and over again and most of all, I am saddened by no stat tracking of any kind. Even just tracking simple numbers would have been a great feature. What are my lifetime stats as boss?
Either way, It’s still fun being the boss, bribing cops to look the other way, breaking members out of jail, running rival businesses out of work, opening casinos, conning celebrities, extorting local officials and of course raking in the money. For those who want more than just the single player mode, you can also take the game online in both versus and co-op action.
Omerta: City of Gangsters has a lot of shortcomings and can be very simplistic. Even with its fallbacks, the game can still provide you with moments of enjoyment and can entertain you for quite some time.
Score: 6.5/10
Good write up.
Exactly how I felt. Starting over after every mission from scratch, with no stats, records or anything that shows the evolution of your accomplishments is just terrible.
No experience bars, no charts, no nothing.
Makes the whole thing feel like one big thankless experience.
And house-clicking in multiples of a hundred, in isometric view, isn’t exactly my idea of ‘fun’. And the camera, jumping around during combat, needs to get outta town, too.
Fuggedaboutit.