Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Do not be fooled by the moderately good reviews by the gaming press.
This game is far worse than the reviews might lead you to believe. I was certainly fooled.
I got the impression that it would be a fun game (though none too original) that made good use of the franchise. That's fine by me.
In reality it is far from fine.
I have to mention I am a PC gamer, so when I say the graphics are generally awful in this game maybe that impression is a result of my high end PC gaming background (I am currently enjoying Oblivion with all settings maxed).
It could well be that the graphics are fine if your a PS2 or xbox gamer, I dunno everyone has their own standard.
Compared to GTA SA this weird "console port" (weird in that it seems to have hit the stores in its PC version first) completely fails to take advantage of the advanced effects that are possible today.
With GTA SA with all settings maxed on PC, I have a very beautiful looking gameworld to play around in.
In this case however, there is virtually no scalabilty, you are pretty much stuck with the standard console look.
Which means - no lighting or shading worth mentioning, ugly cartoon shadows that exist independ of any light source, ugly (huge) blocky textures and clippy paper thin (endlessly repeatative) environments.
New York is a boring wallpaper maze filled with toy cars that have no texturing or bodywork effects - just different colours (hard to believe for a recent game).
I should say that the animations and the cut scenes are top notch and the likenesses of some of the original actors from the film work well.
It's well done in the same way a good puppetshow can be. You are impressed how they managed to breath life into such stiff and non-lifelike models.
The people milling about are well done within these same limited margins, they are in no way lifelike.
They also lack any sense of graphical style that might make up for that, so in the end you have well enough animated, but boring generic stickmen streetwalkers.
Gameplay.
In the same way the graphics fall short of the style and invention of GTA save a few high points (animations and likenesses), so does the gameplay.
This GTA clone is really no fun at all. Think of GTA done badly and there you go, with the exception of a pretty nice fighting system.
When the gameplay is generally so unispired though, being able to beat folk up with such florish and detail is wasted.
Kinda like the reverse of GTA were the gameplay is so good you forgive the simplistic fight system.
The car handling gives no feel that this is actually a heavy hunk of metal you are controlling, they just wiz about the streets, the last nail in the coffin for any period feel this game hoped to inspire in the player.
The GTA lean towards gameplay at the expense of realism is obviously aimed at here, but there is no balance struck, you just have a limited stock of ugly generic cars that are just as boring to drive as they are to look at.
As far as the story and missions go, what's the point when the basic guts of the game is so inferior?
In the end it seems it was a really bad idea to mix together such an over the top arcade gameplay style (and a pretty poor one at that) with such a serious and realistic plot.
You have a detailed and nuanced story here, but I am not someone that puts story before gameplay. The Godfather score is stiring, but it is not enough to stop me knowing just how empty of atmosphere this rendering of 1950/40's New York really is.
A true turkey that needs to be outed. Has EA become so powerful that people fear to tell the truth about a game that cost the company millions to licence, or have they enough money to ensure favourable reviews when it counts? Hard to believe.
But it's harder for me to believe how kind the reviews have been for this turd.
Just be cautous before you waste your money like I did, the press let me down badly.
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