Sup?
I've been thinking lately about gangster themed strategy games, and I noticed I only really liked Gangsters: Organized Crime, and perhaps Gangland a bit. Omerta had a cool idea but implementation sucked. City of Gangsters is really a logistics tycoon with some gangster paint, not an actual mafia game. I admit I haven't played Empire of Sin, but I watched a few gameplay videos and I didn't like that it seems to be basically a X-Com2 lite with some basic empire management stuff.
I tried playing recently the GOG version of G:OG, and although it worked and I had some fun, I kept getting frustrated by the ancient UI and aggresive AI. This made me think about what I would like in a hipotetical, modern Gangster strategy game/simulation. Here are some things which I think are important:
- a large(ish) city. Must be continuous (i.e. no teleporting between districts, your gangsters can cross the whole city on foot)
- preferably pausable real-time gameplay (merge the Planning and Actions phases from G:OG, but don't remove any options/orders, which Gangsters 2 did, sadly)
- a lot of varied criminal actions available (beatdowns, intimidation, bribery, ambushes etc), each having it's own set of costs and consequences/effects
- a lot of different legal and illegal business, each having at least a small twist/hook to them, for example money printing press can boost income of legal business, while brothels can be used to bribe/persuade police officers, judges and other characters
- a lot of personalization: you can create your Player Character, name him/her, name the gang, choose your clothes and gang colors etc.
- immersion: seeing your gangsters walk around, doing your orders, getting handed envelopes with money from "protected" businesses, having your gangsters put a witness inside a car trunk, driving to a desert and then the gangsters whack and bury the witness.
- combat, but not too complicated. I don't have any good ideas for combat really.
- a whole justice system, with each crime committed possibly creating some evidence (like witnesses etc), which then gets investigated, the police will start looking for suspects, if they arrest a suspect then there is a court trial with a judge, jurors, lawyers etc. At each step of the way you can intervene to make sure your gangsters can evade responsibility for their crimes
- a cool mafia organisation tree, like in the movies, with a boss, capos, soldiers.
basically a sandbox gangster game, with no pregenerated missions, to make the player feel like a boss.
What are your thoughts and ideas?
I've been thinking lately about gangster themed strategy games, and I noticed I only really liked Gangsters: Organized Crime, and perhaps Gangland a bit. Omerta had a cool idea but implementation sucked. City of Gangsters is really a logistics tycoon with some gangster paint, not an actual mafia game. I admit I haven't played Empire of Sin, but I watched a few gameplay videos and I didn't like that it seems to be basically a X-Com2 lite with some basic empire management stuff.
I tried playing recently the GOG version of G:OG, and although it worked and I had some fun, I kept getting frustrated by the ancient UI and aggresive AI. This made me think about what I would like in a hipotetical, modern Gangster strategy game/simulation. Here are some things which I think are important:
- a large(ish) city. Must be continuous (i.e. no teleporting between districts, your gangsters can cross the whole city on foot)
- preferably pausable real-time gameplay (merge the Planning and Actions phases from G:OG, but don't remove any options/orders, which Gangsters 2 did, sadly)
- a lot of varied criminal actions available (beatdowns, intimidation, bribery, ambushes etc), each having it's own set of costs and consequences/effects
- a lot of different legal and illegal business, each having at least a small twist/hook to them, for example money printing press can boost income of legal business, while brothels can be used to bribe/persuade police officers, judges and other characters
- a lot of personalization: you can create your Player Character, name him/her, name the gang, choose your clothes and gang colors etc.
- immersion: seeing your gangsters walk around, doing your orders, getting handed envelopes with money from "protected" businesses, having your gangsters put a witness inside a car trunk, driving to a desert and then the gangsters whack and bury the witness.
- combat, but not too complicated. I don't have any good ideas for combat really.
- a whole justice system, with each crime committed possibly creating some evidence (like witnesses etc), which then gets investigated, the police will start looking for suspects, if they arrest a suspect then there is a court trial with a judge, jurors, lawyers etc. At each step of the way you can intervene to make sure your gangsters can evade responsibility for their crimes
- a cool mafia organisation tree, like in the movies, with a boss, capos, soldiers.
basically a sandbox gangster game, with no pregenerated missions, to make the player feel like a boss.
What are your thoughts and ideas?
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