Let's say you have a son whose name happens to be Greg T. Adams. You live happily, get along well, until one day, men in white coats with a logo which says 'Konami' show up at your house and kidnap Greg. They return him, after a while, and he's REALLY different now. He's missing an arm and a leg, and they seem to have pulled a Dr. Steinman (i.e, cut bits of his face off and grafted these bits of face onto other bits of face...also, that was a hell of a lot of uses of the word 'face'). Also, they have changed his name AND, along with that, demand money for 'improving' your son.
'Welcome to Grand Central City...this city's all sin'. Those are the first two lines of the introductory cutscene which basically sum up my views about this game. It should be considered a sin to actually play this.
Story: Ahahahaha, no. 'Tre' (your character) wants to join the Outlawz (a gang which used to control the city but is only a husk of its former self) and rises up through the ranks until the ending. Insert violence and betrayal wherever required.
Gameplay will be split into two sections:
-Combat: The first half of the game places most of its emphasis on melee combat, you perform by clicking the left and right buttons, and then space to perform a finishing move such as lifting some guy onto your shoulders and stabbing him repeteadly. However, this is dropped faster than a toy gun at an airport and, coincidentally with my last analogy, you use guns for the rest of the game. You do this by auto-locking onto an enemy, shooting them with the mouse button, or, if the game happened to lock onto the wrong person, waving your mouse around to change targets. Thankfully, you can also get gang members to help you, and there are two kinds. There are the invulnerable, story related, people who can be used as cannon fodder and the GTA-like ally gang members who are...also cannon fodder.
-Exploration: You mostly get around by walking, because Konami decided to LEAVE OUT THE CARS! Well, sure, they're visible, mocking you like chocolate just out of the reach of a fat kid, but you can't actually climb in and drive around. You can also spray paint over enemy tags, to unlock secrets which are mostly interviews with members of D12 (more about this in the next section).
Characters: There are three gangs. The Outlawz: Underdogs who used to be powerful, and you know this, because THE MAIN CHARACTER JOINS THEM. The Headhunterz: The CL:GW equivelant of the Ballas whose higher ranking members are voiced by D12 and the KYC: A black gang, with multicoloured clothes, who speak with Jamaican accents and control import and export of the city. I suppose that's...kinda original.
In your gang, there's you (the underdog), Darryl (your cousin), Ronnie (another underdog), Furious (the tough guy), Diesel (leader's bodyguard) and Big Dog (the leader who, DUN-DUN-DUN, turns out to be in cahoots with the Headhunterz). The rest of the gangs are basically the same...seriously.
Audio: Le sigh...think about San Andreas for a second. Rap music was perfect for it, though RockStar chose to include other genres of music out of the kindness of their hearts. For shameless promotion, rap music was the ONLY genre featured and, surprise surprise, D12 songs were included. The only non-rap song was Only 18 which wasn't TOO bad, but still...shame on them.
Graphics: People are complaining about too many games only having the palettes of grey and brown. Ironically enough, this was a perfect game for it, but Konami just had to include practically every other colour in existence, so now it looks like a gangster version of Joseph's Technicolour Dreamcoat. The graphic quality itself isn't too great either...too blurry and cartoony.
Overall: A 'free-roaming' game with not enough free-ness and too much roaming.
'Welcome to Grand Central City...this city's all sin'. Those are the first two lines of the introductory cutscene which basically sum up my views about this game. It should be considered a sin to actually play this.
Story: Ahahahaha, no. 'Tre' (your character) wants to join the Outlawz (a gang which used to control the city but is only a husk of its former self) and rises up through the ranks until the ending. Insert violence and betrayal wherever required.
Gameplay will be split into two sections:
-Combat: The first half of the game places most of its emphasis on melee combat, you perform by clicking the left and right buttons, and then space to perform a finishing move such as lifting some guy onto your shoulders and stabbing him repeteadly. However, this is dropped faster than a toy gun at an airport and, coincidentally with my last analogy, you use guns for the rest of the game. You do this by auto-locking onto an enemy, shooting them with the mouse button, or, if the game happened to lock onto the wrong person, waving your mouse around to change targets. Thankfully, you can also get gang members to help you, and there are two kinds. There are the invulnerable, story related, people who can be used as cannon fodder and the GTA-like ally gang members who are...also cannon fodder.
-Exploration: You mostly get around by walking, because Konami decided to LEAVE OUT THE CARS! Well, sure, they're visible, mocking you like chocolate just out of the reach of a fat kid, but you can't actually climb in and drive around. You can also spray paint over enemy tags, to unlock secrets which are mostly interviews with members of D12 (more about this in the next section).
Characters: There are three gangs. The Outlawz: Underdogs who used to be powerful, and you know this, because THE MAIN CHARACTER JOINS THEM. The Headhunterz: The CL:GW equivelant of the Ballas whose higher ranking members are voiced by D12 and the KYC: A black gang, with multicoloured clothes, who speak with Jamaican accents and control import and export of the city. I suppose that's...kinda original.
In your gang, there's you (the underdog), Darryl (your cousin), Ronnie (another underdog), Furious (the tough guy), Diesel (leader's bodyguard) and Big Dog (the leader who, DUN-DUN-DUN, turns out to be in cahoots with the Headhunterz). The rest of the gangs are basically the same...seriously.
Audio: Le sigh...think about San Andreas for a second. Rap music was perfect for it, though RockStar chose to include other genres of music out of the kindness of their hearts. For shameless promotion, rap music was the ONLY genre featured and, surprise surprise, D12 songs were included. The only non-rap song was Only 18 which wasn't TOO bad, but still...shame on them.
Graphics: People are complaining about too many games only having the palettes of grey and brown. Ironically enough, this was a perfect game for it, but Konami just had to include practically every other colour in existence, so now it looks like a gangster version of Joseph's Technicolour Dreamcoat. The graphic quality itself isn't too great either...too blurry and cartoony.
Overall: A 'free-roaming' game with not enough free-ness and too much roaming.
