Tour London on your PSP with Gangs of London (Gangs of London (PSP))

Member Name: julwhite

Product:	Gangs of London (PSP)
Date:	06/03/08 (64 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Some brilliant sub-games

Disadvantages: The missions are too hard

Gangs of London is a game for the PSP which was released in 2006 and is very similar to the Grand Theft Auto series. Essentially you are a gang member in London and have to complete a number of missions to progress through the main part of the game.

I'll confess at this point that on Grand Theft Auto, I'm not very good. The missions mostly defeat me and I just enjoy cruyising around the city in the cars finding secret areas and meeting some smaller challenges. I like that kind of game where you can just pick it up for a few minutes.

Gangs of London is similar in that you can work through a number of missions (in what is called the "story mode"), and you can complete them in any order you want. There is a good choice of missions and you can miss out any that cause you trouble and try them again later.

For me, I found the missions too difficult and I soon lost interest in them. I personally felt that I was so far off finishing them and that the controls were so clunky that I was unlikely to ever complete them, and so I soon gave up.

However you can play the game in a different way, and just go exploring or perform some other challenges. This section is called the "free-roaming mode". In this section you can free drive, be a tourist in London (where you take pictures of London landmarks), cause havoc, speed trap, riot control, getaway, four weeks later and my favourite in this section, "The Knowledge". In this you have to race to different parts of London as quickly as possible using your map and knowledge.

Although I found these all of passing interest, I soon got bored of the "free-roaming section" as well, and was just going to put the game down before I realised that there were some other extras on the game.

There is a section called "Gang Battle" which is a turn by turn game which is similar in principle to Risk, where you have to fight other gangs in different parts of the city. This strategy game is superb and in my view far more addictive than the main game. You can choose from a range of difficulty settings and the game lasts around 20 minutes or so. It is logical, easy to play and great for filling in a few minutes.

Then there is a section called "The Pub", which has sub-games entitled darts (fairly good, easy to use), skittles (very addictive although I can't get past level eight), UK 8-ball pool (a bit dull after a while), US 8-ball pool (very similar to the previous game, just different rules) and arcade. This arcade game is absolutely brilliant, and is similar to the Snake game on phones.

This game in itself for me provided the longest lasting entertainment of the whole game, 32 levels of this little game (I'm on level 29) where you have to use quick reflexes and concentration to succeed.

For me, the whole game seemed slightly bizarre. Huge amount of time has no doubt been spent on producing the whole game, but the main part of the game is quite dull, and the extras are in places simply brilliant. It goes to show that games don't have to be visually superb to be playable, and if the writers hjad shown the same thought and insight in the main game as in the extras, the game would have in my view been much more playable.

The game is now available on PSP Platinum, which retails at 14.99 pounds. It's not as good as Grand Theft Auto, but there is a depth to the game that does provide a good few hours of playing entertainment. For me though, the main game itself is a let-down.

Summary: A strange game where the sub-games make up for the main game