Gangsters: Organized Crime

Fantastic Game with much depth and replay value. Games such as this are far and few in between these days. This game used to work on my old XP machine with the DOS Box installer but now in 2018 with my new Windows 10 I get errors when installing and the game does not start up properly. GoG please fix this !!!!

This review is a technical one so I will break it down into two parts, A & B: A - The game itself: This is a wonderful game with a steep learning curve that is both challenging but also highly rewarding and it's easily the best mobster simulator I have ever played; the vibe or atmosphere is astounding, the choices you make have immediate impact in the game and to really excel in the game you have to think like a mobster which includes being ruthlessly cunning and charismatic. A healthy balance of challenging yet fair is accomplished here and the game has a strong focus on your minions who you will get to know over time. Playing this game is like reading a crime novel and it's nigh on impossible to not get invested in your empire to the point where rival slighting your gang starts to feel personal and that level of immersion is something than many modern AAA+ titles fail to capture. The game is simply brilliant. B - Technical issues: If you just read my foot notes (A) and are keen to play this I have some bad news for you, I don't know if it's possible anymore. I played this game years ago (boxed version from a shop in New South Wales I think it was) and more recently I picked up the gog.com version which simply will not work for me. I have spent the longest time fishing around the internet at sites such as reddit.com and the gog.com forums as well as general google.com searches and I have tested many reported fixes but it seems the game will not run on any O.S more recent than windows 95. I have tried Windows 95 compatibility mode (including various color and resolution settings and launching it with administrative rights) on both Windows 8.1 & Windows 10 neither one of which many any difference nor have any of the fix guides online that I was able to source, thus... As much as it saddens me to do so I must suggest you do not purchase this product because it simply doesn't work or it can work and I have been unable to find the actual solution to the issue. SUMMARY: This is an amazing game hence the four star rating alas the gog.com version does not appear to function on modern operating systems regardless of tinkering with the settings and utilizing compatibility mode; if you are actually able to locate an original copy of the game then I highly suggest picking it up.

This is hands down the most immersive crime managerial games ever made. Maybe it's the genre, but every strategy game with this amount of detail eventually starts to go haywire after awhile. We will start with the cons. The worst part about this game, is the A.I. 1) A.I. - Such is the case with this game, as mostly (even in games that last 100 weeks) you can expect the A.I. to start an all-out blood-bath against you or war. This happens regardless of context, and they shoot indiscriminately. The A.I. seems to expand at a rate higher than yours, all with less resources and men, but regardless by week 10 you will find one of the families controlling nearly 40% of the city. They rarely try out new rackets, or businesses, and primarily seem to invest in Insider Trading rackets, or extortion (which almost always ends up with them in jail and their eventual conviction by week 20). Even if you have 100 men, and Red has 20, they could still unrealistically control more. The player controlled NPC's when ordered to flee from an aggressor tend to run head-first into bullets , or sometimes walk into them and don't fire - leaving them to die on the sidewalk. Annoying and costly. Why? 2) Hardware Issues This could be due to me porting the game to a Mac OS using Wine, but the mouse does not work 99% of the time. The only way to move around the map is by clicking and selecting blocks and dragging them to the corner of the screen, moving one to two blocks at a time. As this is a game where you have to give each individual man an order each turn, this can get extremely annoying. There are graphical bugs and it crashes sometimes after a certain point, (week 32) Pros: 1) From rackets ranging in loan sharking, moonshining, to gambling, to legal ways of making money by investing in businesses, this game has at least a thousand options for you to build on to make your money. If you love the time period, and the mafia, this is the game to prick your finger for. 2) Game is open world.

The Roaring Twenties are arguably an underused setting in video games. Only a handful of games have ever really utilized it, and of those arguably only one, the first entry the Mafia series, has ever achieved any real mainstream recognition or success. Gangsters: Organized Crime is an unfortunate member of this club of forgotten games, but nevertheless one that you should add to your library today. Taking place in a fictionalized version of 1920s Chicago, Gangsters casts you as an up-and-coming crime boss with the ultimate goal of taking over the city through eliminating all rival gangs, being elected mayor, or going straight and becoming a legitimate business magnate. To accomplish this goal, you will order your trusted lieutenants and hoods to conduct a wide variety of illegal actions, including bootlegging, extortion, bribery, arson, and murder. You can also conduct diplomacy with other gang bosses, donate to charity to improve your image, acquire legitimate businesses, and hire lawyers and accountants to cover up your crimes. Gangsters has much to recommend it. The game world feels deep and alive, with your actions often having unforeseen consequences. Gameplay is an excellent mix of long-term planning and quick reactions to daily events. The AI is ruthless if you get sloppy, so fending of both rival gangs and the authorities is a requirement, rather than an annoyance or an optional extra. However, the game does suffer from a few issues that stop it from being perfect. The soundtrack is forgettable and the voice acting is lame. More importantly, the game can have severe stability problems, and issues like random CTDs and missing menu text can make extended playthroughs an irritating affair. Overall, Gangsters is an underrated gem despite it's technical issues. Any fans of strategy, historical games, the 1920s, or crime/Mafia lore should pick this one up.

This is a fun strategy game. I remember it so well that I bought it on GOG intending to use it on my Windows XP rig, but instead I get an error talking about the file's configurations no matter what I do. Darned shame. I liked this game a lot as a kid, and was looking forward to picking it back up. Hope GOG patches it so that it works again.