Gangsters: Organized Crime

aka: Gangsters: Le Crime Organisé, Gangsters: Organisiertes Verbrechen
Moby ID: 3109

Description official descriptions

Gangsters: Organized Crime is set in a fictional city in Prohibition-era America, featuring over 5000 citizens including 400 individual gangsters. The player's goal is to take all the riches, through bribery, theft and aggression.

Gameplay is a combination of Sim City-style building and turn-based planning, where you have lieutenants who do the dirty work for you. The more blocks in the city you take over, the more people you have loving your work, making it easier to control each area. But be careful, there are three other gangs out there, so blood can get spilled easily.

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Credits (Windows version)

140 People (54 developers, 86 thanks) · View all

Original Concept
Game Design
Programming
Producer
Artwork
Marketing
Sound Effects
Music composed
In game Speech
  • Philip Morris Music and Voice production
Cinematic Sequences
  • Maverick Media
The Gang would like to thank
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 74% (based on 21 ratings)

Players

Average score: 2.9 out of 5 (based on 23 ratings with 4 reviews)

Unrewarding Gangster Simulator

The Good
Gangsters is a crime simulator set in the fictitious city of New Temperance. As a budding crime lord, you are established with a small front and a few loyal gangsters. As weeks pass, you can crowd out the other crime lords, bribe officials, attempt to become mayor or even decide to go straight. Within the confines of New Temperance, you have the freedom to try different playing styles- you can concentrate on being a bootlegger or create a reign of terror.

Gangsters is divided into two sections. There is a planning stage where you give orders to your lieutenants, create and equip teams, and more. In this stage you can order your gangsters to bomb businesses, extort areas, kill hoods. The second section is the working week where you see the orders being carried out. The working week (Monday-Friday) is presented as one seamless day where you can watch your gangsters perform as instructed. Elements may arise during the working week that complicate orders, so you can issue limited commands to your hoods like telling them to tail an enemy, flee from police, or open fire on someone.

There are three versions of the map available: an isometric streetview (with buildings toggle), an overhead view of the streets, and a larger, less detailed map which shows the big picture. Each one is very useful, although there are some problems with the isometric streetview.

As I mentioned, you can tailor your gameplay and act as a crooked businessman or psychopathic killer. There are many business and crime commands available so either style is satisfactory. You have several vehicles to choose from and an assortment of weapons ranging from standard pistols to tommy guns to super-John Woo style- twin pack handguns.

Gangsters may seem difficult due to a steep learning curve and manual that lacks both content and organization. There are four tutorials included which require following instructions from the manual. These are helpful, but the best way to learn the game is to keep replaying early sections until you get the hang of it.

The Bad
Gangsters is pretty bland.

New Temperance has few defining features other than a river. I wish it had been more colorful, better street names, more lifelike. The buildings (visible in the streetview) are nice, but the isometric angle means that they block your view. You can rotate the map, but that just results in another area being blocked.

You have a whole slew of gangsters but none of them have any personality. All police look the same, there are a few character models for the hoods but they are largely indistinguishable, civilians look alike. If you hear that John "Adjective" Doe died it means very little. I wish they had done more to personalize these people.

The music ranges from decent to terrible. Ambient noise is mixed and absent from some perspectives.

The biggest flaw comes from the message system during the working week. While your hoods are out collecting protection, etc, messages will come through. There are messages about fights, hood sightings, failed orders, and priority messages. You will probably want to speed up most of the working week. It isn't visually enjoyable to watch your hoods drive around and collect protection. (Time is weird too, like The Sims, it might take your hood several hours to walk a few blocks). However when these messages come through they slow the clock to regular speed. You have the option of filtering the messages, which is convenient because the only item which requires your attention are the fights. There should be an option to pause the working week when these messages come through. Instead you have to have one finger on "P" to stop the game and issue orders.

In the end, I would have loved to bypass the working week and just receive failure/success messages at the end of each planning turn.

The Bottom Line
This is a mediocre gangster simulator with a steep learning curve and very little payoff. I would have trouble recommending this game except for the fact that it is one of the better gangster games available (though not as good as a text one I had for my C64).

Windows · by Terrence Bosky (5397) · 2002

A great, but a difficult game

The Good
Who hasn't had a dream to play a big boss. Now its your change. In gangsters you are a criminal who want to become the mayor. First you must make a gang of criminals and then give them orders to terrorice the city. A the great thing of this game is, you can almost do anything, from little assaults to big explosions.

The Bad
In the beginning it is very difficult to start a game. But when you got the hang of it, its great to play. And when your got more hoods(criminals that works for you) its very complex to see their jobs doing in city.

The Bottom Line
This game isn't just for a few minutes to play, you must give it some time. Play a lot with it and then you see the beauty of it.

Windows · by Buuks (197) · 2001

Hopefully worth the effort

The Good
I've only been playing it a few days so this is a preliminary view. So far so good but I hope I won't be disappointed. It does evoke the gangster period fairly well. There are a lot of options which enhance the sense of realism. As the other reviews say, it is definitely a Sim as much as a game. There is a lot of challenge, and a fairly good sense of period.

The Bad
It is difficult to learn - any extra resources would be helpful. As suggested in another review I looked at the Primagames "Fast Track" guide. There is also a strategy guide at the developers' site. This also has a list of buildings which is missing from the manual. They really should circulate a strategy guide with the game. I am still trying to figure out why, in week 8, 27 of my 50 guys were mowed down by the cops. I think one of them was Wanted, and the police shot him, other hoods shot back, and it started a chain reaction. But I don't know! The management can get tedious, particularly as your turf grows - and at the moment I don't trust my Lieutenants to manage their own patches of turf.

The Bottom Line
A challenging resource-management game set in the world of 1920's gangsters. It simulates the experience of being a crime lord's accountant as much as it does the experience of being a crime lord.

Windows · by Spike Robinson (2) · 2002

[ View all 4 player reviews ]

Trivia

Marketing

Eidos made plans to hire an actual gangster, convicted in the 1960s, to appear at a trade show in Europe to promote the game. When the press came down on them hard for this stunt, Eidos PR was quick to downplay it.

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  • MobyGames ID: 3109
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Kartanym.

Additional contributors: Ye Olde Infocomme Shoppe, Rebound Boy, Patrick Bregger, Alsy.

Game added January 21, 2001. Last modified January 22, 2024.