Omerta: City of Gangsters Review

Game Reviewed: Omerta: City of Gangsters

Release Date: February 12th, 2013

Developer: Haemimont Games AD

Publisher: Kalyspo Media

Platform: [Reviewed: Xbox 360], PC

Genre: Sim / Strategy

Rated: T for Teen

Haemimont Games, recent developers behind XCOM: Enemy Unknown has taken a step back to the days of prohibition. Where families did whatever they felt necessary to run the districts and expand. But while it all sounds interesting, it’s falls short.

You begin as a crime boss wanting to take control of the city and shutting up anyone who believes otherwise with your entourage of thugs. Choose your character’s face and create his background by answering questions that you deem best fit.

As you choose your background you begin to upgrade smarts, guts and more characteristics that you will later realize have no meaning other than to make you feel a sense of development for your player.

Atlantic City is the opening setting. You start off stealing booze to make money of your own, which then leads to the action. And when I say action, don’t get too excited.

Fight or shootout with other gangsters and police officers. It’s all turn-based and very clumsy. You have a grid to determine exactly where you want to position yourself. And even when I was point blank, found myself shooting at people, clearly missing. I aimed directly at one mobster and shot to the left of him. Warning shots I guess.

On a positive note, it’s not a one man show. As you progress throughout gameplay and build your crew, you’re able to hand select members to join in with you. Each member can also be used strategically from melee, shotguns, pistols and so forth.

Each chapter builds on this method. In all, it feels like The Sims: Gangster Edition, however, you’re a bit constricted on what you can do. For example when you perform task likes raids, drive-by’s , etc, you only pinpoint where to go and wait for your screen to inform you on the results of that particular crew members task. Were they successful? Stand by.

You can rent to and create a speakeasy, or multiple to distribute and/or manufacture liquor or other supplies. However, I “kind of” find it fun to let my gang just raid. But then the question raises, why are we driving?

Whenever you send a member on a task, they will run blocks to their objective. Not sure if this was an enactment of the era or just the lack of vehicles for the player.

You reputation does mean everything as you can be rated cold to brewerys, disabling you from buying them out. Omerta prefers you to have a “warm” ranking with some establishment before making it one of your owns. Then you have your wanted ranking which places you in trouble with authorities. By choice you can choose to take them on or pay them off with bribes for many favors, such as confiscating evidence and lowering your wanted level.

Online modes are as well a bit bland. There’s options for either co-op and competitive sessions of Get the Money, Jailbreak, Gang Wars and Bank Heist. While co-op is always an exciting experience for most games, the replay value sinks where it matters most.

In the end, you don’t feel much like a crime boss of anything. Omerta was very slow paced and never really managed to find its footing. During shootouts you deal with excessively repeated dialogue, looping tracks and the lack of opportunity that could’ve genuinely made Omerta shine.

The Scores

Gameplay: 2.5/5

Visuals: 3/5

Audio: 2/5

Controls: 3/5

Replay Value: 2/5

Overall Rating: 2/5