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Omerta : City of Gangsters promises serious incline... and fails
- Thread starter Burning Bridges
- Start date
MetalCraze
Arcane
This and some other threads make you realize that not being able to edit thread's title is actually a good thing
Burning Bridges
Enviado de meu SM-G3502T usando Tapatalk
Hell yes, this took a turn for the worse. Why they chose this (great) formula without the slightest grasp of gameplay, still baffles me
Meh, at first i had hopes for this game (despite Calypso) but after playing demo and reading some previews/reviews i thought best move is waiting a while. Guessed correctly it seems.
A Tropico merged with Silent Storm combat, I dreamed in a gansters paradise... :/
I just play Kingpin.
A Tropico merged with Silent Storm combat, I dreamed in a gansters paradise... :/
I just play Kingpin.
Gord
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2011
- Messages
- 7,049
So GOG made me an offer I couldn't refuse during the last summer sale (they gave away Omerta for free)...
Have finally played a couple of hours in between my D:OS sessions.
On the surface it's not bad, presentation is quite nice, albeit a bit sterile, you got a fitting soundtrack, the voiced character quotes are a nice touch, as are the portraits.
The graphics have a clean look to them, reminding me of older 2D iso graphics from the late 90s/early 2000s.
Unfortunately the game just lacks some soul.
In principle the ingredients are mostly there - you got gangsters, you got illegal ways to make money, you get to bribe the police, launder your dirty money, buy shit, improve your mobs...
I've been playing the story mode, which consists of a sequence of mission telling the story of a young italian gang leader freshly arrived in America.
Missions typically run like this: You set up some businesses to make money, work towards the goal (like buying some special building, finding some person, paying off John Wayne, who has a gig as the local Don in the game, etc) and do a few combats along the way.
However, all of that stuff just feels too formulaic and shallow, as if they had this idea of making a mafia game, did a brainstorm and then just piled everything into the game without really thinking about how it can be given a real place and justification for gameplay.
E.g. to make money, you can set up different businesses, like a Speakeasy to sell booze, an illegal boxing ring, a ponzi scheme, etc.
Some have resource requirements, like booze and beer for the Speakeasy, which you can either buy for cash or produce yourself. Others don't need resources, but work better or worse depending on how liked or feared you are.
Once set up, the building will just continuously create money for you (using up the resource, if applicable), no further input required.
Ultimately however it doesn't really matter what way you use to make money, the result is usually the same: your money counter goes up and that's it.
In the end, it just makes the different businesses feel a bit arbitrary. The requirements certainly aren't so high that you carefully need to consider which one to build and consequences are not really existent, either, so why do I need ~10 different ones?
The game also distinguishes between clean and dirty money. Dirty money is the day-to-day currency. Clean money has to been laundered from dirty money. You usually earn dirty money from your actions and almost everything you need is paid in dirty money. It makes me wonder why they even bothered with clean money. Clean money is really just necessary to buy some mostly unimportant things (residential buildings for the rent, yay! or new cars as opposed to used cars, wow!), for some mission objective or because John Wayne wants some clean money this time around. I feel that either clean money should have been given more meaning by making you pay for more stuff in clean money, or just be done away with.
And of course, opposing gangs. While in theory there are other illegal operations in the game, the only effect they seem to have is lowering your income a bit. You can piss them off, but as far as I can tell, that never results in an attack or something similar unless it's a scripted story mission (might be because I'm still quite early in the game, however). As a result, you never really feel any real competition, which is probably one of the biggest faults of the game. Of course, with some luck there will be more active opponents later in the story missions, but I somehow doubt it.
If you do too much illegal stuff, the police will step in. Their threat is represented by a "heat meter", filling up depending on what actions you take (e.g. stealing cars for your henchmen will make it go up faster than just waiting for your speakeasy to make some dirty money). Once it's filled up, an investigation is pending - you then have several ways to deal with it:
Destroy the evidence in a combat mission, blame someone else (will lower reputation with some random building, but who cares), call in a favour if you have bribed some officer earlier or just bribe the inspectors directly now. After that is done, heat is back to 0 and you can go on with twirling your thumbs.
As I said, once in a while you will come across a combat mission (either through scripted story events, or by finding and choosing an opportunity for a "heist" on the map). The combat itself works, but just like the rest of the game is not exactly deep. Your chars come with different abilities and skills (which you can level up once in a while) and you can buy and give them different weapons. First you get to chose your team of up to 4 guys participating in the combat and one for optional "support", giving you some kind of advantage if successful. Once the combat starts, your actions are separated between movement and attacks/special actions. A cover system can be used for protection. Nice touch: the game considers additional stuff between whoever shoots and the target. so if there's some small rack in between or even one of your guys, there's a certain chance that you will hit that instead of the target.
Combat difficulty varies with your equipment and number of characters. Most of the time its pretty easy, but I had one or two more difficult (optional) missions.
As of yet, I'd rate it ~5/10. It's not exactly bad, but not very good either. For higher rating it would need some more active opponents, and there would need to be some meaning to the different businesses you get to install for making money. Avoid it if you need real depth and high challenge, play it if you want some shallow entertainment in a 20s mobster setting.
Have finally played a couple of hours in between my D:OS sessions.
On the surface it's not bad, presentation is quite nice, albeit a bit sterile, you got a fitting soundtrack, the voiced character quotes are a nice touch, as are the portraits.
The graphics have a clean look to them, reminding me of older 2D iso graphics from the late 90s/early 2000s.
Unfortunately the game just lacks some soul.
In principle the ingredients are mostly there - you got gangsters, you got illegal ways to make money, you get to bribe the police, launder your dirty money, buy shit, improve your mobs...
I've been playing the story mode, which consists of a sequence of mission telling the story of a young italian gang leader freshly arrived in America.
Missions typically run like this: You set up some businesses to make money, work towards the goal (like buying some special building, finding some person, paying off John Wayne, who has a gig as the local Don in the game, etc) and do a few combats along the way.
However, all of that stuff just feels too formulaic and shallow, as if they had this idea of making a mafia game, did a brainstorm and then just piled everything into the game without really thinking about how it can be given a real place and justification for gameplay.
E.g. to make money, you can set up different businesses, like a Speakeasy to sell booze, an illegal boxing ring, a ponzi scheme, etc.
Some have resource requirements, like booze and beer for the Speakeasy, which you can either buy for cash or produce yourself. Others don't need resources, but work better or worse depending on how liked or feared you are.
Once set up, the building will just continuously create money for you (using up the resource, if applicable), no further input required.
Ultimately however it doesn't really matter what way you use to make money, the result is usually the same: your money counter goes up and that's it.
In the end, it just makes the different businesses feel a bit arbitrary. The requirements certainly aren't so high that you carefully need to consider which one to build and consequences are not really existent, either, so why do I need ~10 different ones?
The game also distinguishes between clean and dirty money. Dirty money is the day-to-day currency. Clean money has to been laundered from dirty money. You usually earn dirty money from your actions and almost everything you need is paid in dirty money. It makes me wonder why they even bothered with clean money. Clean money is really just necessary to buy some mostly unimportant things (residential buildings for the rent, yay! or new cars as opposed to used cars, wow!), for some mission objective or because John Wayne wants some clean money this time around. I feel that either clean money should have been given more meaning by making you pay for more stuff in clean money, or just be done away with.
And of course, opposing gangs. While in theory there are other illegal operations in the game, the only effect they seem to have is lowering your income a bit. You can piss them off, but as far as I can tell, that never results in an attack or something similar unless it's a scripted story mission (might be because I'm still quite early in the game, however). As a result, you never really feel any real competition, which is probably one of the biggest faults of the game. Of course, with some luck there will be more active opponents later in the story missions, but I somehow doubt it.
If you do too much illegal stuff, the police will step in. Their threat is represented by a "heat meter", filling up depending on what actions you take (e.g. stealing cars for your henchmen will make it go up faster than just waiting for your speakeasy to make some dirty money). Once it's filled up, an investigation is pending - you then have several ways to deal with it:
Destroy the evidence in a combat mission, blame someone else (will lower reputation with some random building, but who cares), call in a favour if you have bribed some officer earlier or just bribe the inspectors directly now. After that is done, heat is back to 0 and you can go on with twirling your thumbs.
As I said, once in a while you will come across a combat mission (either through scripted story events, or by finding and choosing an opportunity for a "heist" on the map). The combat itself works, but just like the rest of the game is not exactly deep. Your chars come with different abilities and skills (which you can level up once in a while) and you can buy and give them different weapons. First you get to chose your team of up to 4 guys participating in the combat and one for optional "support", giving you some kind of advantage if successful. Once the combat starts, your actions are separated between movement and attacks/special actions. A cover system can be used for protection. Nice touch: the game considers additional stuff between whoever shoots and the target. so if there's some small rack in between or even one of your guys, there's a certain chance that you will hit that instead of the target.
Combat difficulty varies with your equipment and number of characters. Most of the time its pretty easy, but I had one or two more difficult (optional) missions.
As of yet, I'd rate it ~5/10. It's not exactly bad, but not very good either. For higher rating it would need some more active opponents, and there would need to be some meaning to the different businesses you get to install for making money. Avoid it if you need real depth and high challenge, play it if you want some shallow entertainment in a 20s mobster setting.
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