First reviews: Gangs of London
My Gangs of Londondemo hasn't come in the mail yet, but I'll just throw it away considering the foul early reviews it's been getting. While the game looks like it had potential, the end product is littered with flaws. One in particular is that you can't actually explore the city freely, a la GTA, unless you're in Free Ride mode: the game wants you to go down its fairly linear, and restrictive story otherwise. Most of the missions seem to be driving from point A to point B, and even doing so might be a bit rough:
Simple actions, like strafing and shooting at enemies, require near-bionic dexterity - four buttons at once seems a tad extreme - and that can only be put down to poor design. When essential functions like 'crouch' randomly decide they can't be bothered to work at critical moments during (the almost unplayable) stealth missions, it's simply unforgivable. Throw in a targeting system which, much like the PS2 games, favours locking on to enemies so far away they may as well be on a different continent, or - even more excitingly - enemies standing behind objects your bullets couldn't penetrate if they were actually lead hippopotami, and frustration becomes your closest friend.
Ouch. You can read the entire IGN review, but I think it's safe to say that when you want some street violence on your PSP, you better look square at Vice City Stories. (P.S. Why are there zombies in this game?)
