Empire of sin the gangster full#

Why bother to take your time to tinker with minute aspects of your empire when all you really need to do is ransack, kill and bully, take everything and pump all of the money into your properties ASAP so nobody dares come near them? You can, in fact, go one better and just cut off the head off whatever snake happens to be attempting to bite you at any given time head straight for the boss of whatever family you're dealing with and sack them off, take what they own and lock a district down. All of the various aspects of management – there are tons of them and they're all presented in terribly busy menu screens that are painfully difficult and time-consuming to parse – begin to expose themselves as completely unnecessary.

Things really do unravel quite quickly here in terms of challenge, and it's not just with regards to the massively repetitive combat. However, this is also where the wheels start to come off this particular 1920s Cadillac Sedan.

Empire of sin the gangster full#

Once you've hired a few thugs, you'll get down to the turn-based combat element of proceedings – an aspect of the game that's initially exciting, atmospheric stuff full of swearing, spraying of Tommy Gun fire and suitably vicious melee attack animations all set to a consistently excellent Jazz soundtrack. This system does a great job of making the game world seem alive and interconnected. Move your cursor over each face in this wretched hive of scum and villainy and indicators appear on top of other mugs indicating personal links, whether it be lovers, friends or deadly foes.

In order to hire said thugs, you'll refer to the game's black book, a rogue's gallery of criminals, all of whom – in one of the game's most interesting ideas – have relationships and history with one another. You'll also need to hire goons to join you as you run around the streets of Chicago smashing up joints and muscling in on new territory. For our playthrough, we jumped into the shoes of Frankie Donovan, an Irish ex-rebel and expert marksman who does a fantastic line in swearing at every single opportunity he's given.Īnd you'll need plenty of dollars here as you shell out for various levels of security for each of your establishments, more refined ambience in your bars and brothels, stronger word-of-mouth to bring the punters in or to add new games to casinos and make sure the cops are well looked after so they turn a blind eye to your nefarious escapades. There's a fantastic selection of characters to choose from here that includes the likes of good old Scarface himself as well as Dean O'Banion, Daniel McKee Jackson and a bunch of well-realised fictional choices all of whom have been impressively designed and voice-acted. Starting out in the dog-eat-dog world of Empire of Sin, you'll be invited to choose your protagonist from a generous roster of budding mobsters, each with their own backstory, perks and traits, before hitting the streets in your own personal bid for power. It's an era that absolutely oozes atmosphere and one that we couldn't wait to spend time in – however, it's also currently bogged down by game-breaking bugs, poor performance and gameplay systems that should mesh well together but just haven't been executed properly. Romero Games' Empire of Sin is an excellent premise for a turn-based strategy/management mash-up that sticks you in 1920s Chicago during the heyday of Al Capone and a host of other real-life gangster legends and charges you with building up your very own criminal enterprise.