I really wanted to love Gangsters: Organised Crime, instead I just like it. You start the game as, well a gangster, with a small crew and an office with the goal of dominating the city and fighting off other gangs, or going straight, if a life of crime isn't your thing. The game is split between two modes. The first one you can issue orders to your gang, such as extorting residents and shops to increase your territory, robbing banks, buying property and attacking rivals. The amount of options available to play with is really commendable and it can be really fun experimenting to see what mayhem you can cause. Once, you have issued orders you are then moved to a real time isometric view of the city as you watch your gang complete their tasks. In this mode you are mostly just a spectator, although you can issue basic commands on the fly to assualt or kill other gangsters you bump into on the streets. Although, this does carry a risk of starting an all out war or having your gangsters gunned down by the police or arrested. Once the week ends you are then taken back to the first mode, where you can review your progress and set up your orders for the following week. Unfortunately, the game suffers from being unintuitive and it oftentimes it boils down to trial and error which leads to it becoming a little frustrating at times. This is made worse by the clunky UI, where it feels like you have to click through a few too many tabs or menus to get to the option you are after. That being said, once you do manage to figure out what you are doing and the get to grips with the poorly explained mechanics there is fun to be had. Just a little bit more polish, it would have been fantastic, but it is still definately worth a try.
Mars: War Logs, clearly borrows from better games and although it won't set the world on fire, it is solid enough to get a few hours of entertainment from. You start the game in a POW camp and are swifty introduced to the main character Roy as he rescues a new immate from the less than romantic attentions of a fellow prisoner. After this "edgy" but oh so cheesy opening, you are tasked with attempting to escape from the prison whilst completing numerous side quests. As to the side quests, they don't offer much and most of them revolve around collecting X amount of Y or hitting people until they stop moving. I won't go to much into the story, not because I will spoil it, but because it isn't something that hasn't been done a million times before. It is not that it is bad as such, it is just very generic and uninspired. Although, the game has RPG elements, they are fairly basic and amount to upgrading a couple of dozen skills and some item crafting but most of the skills have little impact on game play and you can get through most of the game without needing to craft anything, The combat, like much of the game has been done before and if you have played any action game in the last 10 years you should pick it up instantly. You can perform a couple of types of attack, block, use hot key special moves and roll, oh how you can roll. They do attempt to spice up the fighting by giving you the option to issue commands to NPCs who are with you, but I never used it. But, it is there I suppose. Overall, Mars: War Logs is an average game but it makes a good distraction and there is the skeleton of a good game buried within it, and for a budget title, you could do a lot worse.
