App Review: Gangstar: West Coast Hustle [Video]

There are some styles of games that you just don’t expect to see on mobile devices, even the makers of Grand Theft Auto made their mobile version into a more traditional overhead game. Here’s Gameloft’s attempt at an open world game, it’s impressive, but the corner cutting is significant.

When you see an ambitious game such as Gangstar, a shameless GTA clone, on Android you expect some rather rough edges and it’d be easy to harp on about its issues without even calling attention to the fact that Gameloft have succeeded in making a fully functioning open world game. You can run around, steal cars, take missions, get in fire fights and take part in races just as you’d expect from a game of this type. Technical restraints keep the map size small and the view distance close but it’s hard to complain when the game not only runs smoothly but also doesn’t trigger any loading times as you move around the city. The biggest issues that Gangstar faces aren’t technical at all, but instead are balance and content problems that can make the game both frustrating and not a lot of fun.

Driving is a big part of these style of games and provided you opt to use the accelerometer for control, getting around the city works fine and the car physics are at least tolerable although you can drive directly through trees and poles, but any joy from driving quickly fades once you get into a race. During a race opponent cars naturally know exactly where to go, while you are left guessing which way you’ll be turning at the next checkpoint. Practice makes perfect while you learn the layout of the race but things are made worse by the other cars driving like tanks that turn on a dime, it feels like you are racing a pack of slot cars rather than intelligent drivers. Fortunately all but one of the races are purely optional to the main story missions, although there are plenty of ‘get from A to B in under X seconds’ missions, these are far less frustrating. The other major part of the game is the combat and it comes off poorly. There’s no cover or tactics that need to be used, just try to spin the view so your target is on the screen and hold down the attack button for a second or two until they die. There’s plenty of ammo around in the game and money has little other use so you’ll be able to wipe out whole groups of enemies by just holding down the attack button. Occasionally you won’t be able to use weapons and have to use hand to hand combat, the difference here is that you need to keep tapping the attack button rather than hold it down to land attacks.

Wrapping the combat and the driving together is a mediocre story line that is accompanied by some of the best/worst gangster clichés seen in a video game. The dialog actually reaches the point that it becomes enjoyable just because it is so ridiculous that it becomes amusing, the death screen even announces “YOU BEEN MURKED” which is quickly becoming my favorite line from any video game. The story really can be just about as ridiculous and it reaches high points such as chasing an old lady around a hedge maze that is only about knee high (the hedge maze, not the old lazy).

Gangstar’s issues are very quickly apparent and it feels like it could have benefited from some more time in development to fix some of its issues, but despite this, Gangstar can be a lot of fun to play for the several hours it’ll take you to get through the storyline, if only to see what dumb thing will happen next.

When you’re ready, head over to the Gameloft’s store and download this game.

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