Gangs of London

As close to broken as it gets. Anyone looking for a virtual 8-ball or darts simulator will find it here, but they certainly aren’t worth the 40 dollar price of admission.

Sure, I’m busting its balls, but Gangs of London isn’t all terrible. It’s just really easy to pick on the bad A.I. and repetitive gameplay.

Whether it's stealth, driving or shooting, the game feels limited and unengaging, is hampered by unresponsive controls and completely lacks the necessary polish of a modern production.

It seems Studio London has ignored everything anybody disliked about the two Getaway titles and just included the problems in Gangs of London. This results in poor AI, a terrible aiming system, repetitive missions and a sporadic frame-rate.

It all boils down to one simple fact - it's just not fun.

Apart from the cheese factor, Gangs simply fails at the basics. [Nov. 2006, p.120]

Curiously enough, the billiards mini-game really does sum up Gangs of London as a whole. Gangs of London has a lot of balls but when it comes to sinking them it always scratches.

I desperately wanted to like this game. Really. But the terrible gameplay, boring mission structure and pathetic mini-games just make me pity it.

There’s a good game in here somewhere, but it’s buried beneath a layer of unpolished graphics, clumsy controls, and boring missions.

Gangs of London would get wasted in the opening cinema of any Grand Theft Auto game. Although it strives to be all things to all gamers, it comes off as little more than a sad mess of something half-digested, in the final analysis.

A blatantly shallow excuse to create yet another exercise in brutality and abhorrent language. The game lacks any form of motivational justification, and setting it in realistic surroundings, force feeding an uninteresting cliche-riddled narrative across truly banal missions, and then relying on violence and blood-spattered cursing and imagery to pad the gaping holes, makes the '18' certificate assigned by the BBFC ('M' for Mature in the US) seem sadly insufficient.

The dialogue is belief-defyingly bad, the characters who deliver it lazy, one-dimensional caricatures. [Oct 2006, p.94]

It is simply a portable piece of ugliness that lacks humility, wit, or any entertainment value whatsoever. It is singularly unpleasant in the way it handles its subject matter, and it lacks the style or panache to carry its inadequacies with any dignity.

Rent Gangs of London for some pub games on the road, but please do not encourage developers to continue putting wretch like this on a system with so much more potential.