Omerta – City of Gangsters

Your boat pulls up on shore, and a fresh-faced Sicilian gets out. This is you. A wannabe gangster ready to make it big in Atlantic City. Omerta: City of Gangsters brings gangster life to you, letting you start from nothing with the aim of rising to a powerful crime lord.

The game starts out with an RPG like beginning, asking you questions about your past in order to set stats for the gangster you control. If you slept with a Don’s wife for example, and then immediately realize this is a bad idea and flee the country—you get +1 cunning.

Unfortunately, these stats mean almost nothing once you get going in the game. Omerta: City of Gangsters forgets about its promising RPG beginnings almost immediately after you start the game.

Very few threats

If life were really this easy for a 1920’s gangster, everyone would have been in the mafia. Commit a mass murder in the morning? The police will be off your back by noon with a large enough lump of cash. Taking over rival gang’s territory? They’ll let you have it with hardly any protests. Indeed, most of your combat will involve cleaning out Klu Klux Klan members from your warehouses, and other mini showdowns like this.

The turn-based combat is reminiscent of XCOM, but can just as often be skipped with the appropriate cash payment. Several different modes available The game is so easy to play, it often plays out like a game of Monopoly instead of a true gangster game. Money flows easily and endlessly from your speak easy, and it’s all too easy to get another business going just by talking to the right people.

This game also falls short of being a good tycoon style game, with no ledgers and an unimaginative sandbox mode. One small bright spot is multiplayer mode, which allows you to play certain missions with the help of others. Unfortunately, it shines a spotlight on the fact that this game might have been better off as a multi-player gangster war instead of a gangster RPG.

Excellent sound

One redeeming feature of this game is the classic jazz style of music that helps add mood to it, as well as the voice acting for the character. While this is one small aspect of the game, it does do a great deal in adding to the atmosphere.

Omerta: City of Gangsters could have been good. The glaring issue with it is the complete lack of risk in anything. A gangster’s life is, at its core, a life of great risk and (sometimes) great reward. Here everything has a simple solution to it, and there’s very little there to make it exciting or even particularly dangerous.

Pros:

• Some background to the story
• Great music
• Decent voice acting

Cons:

• No risks
• Too easy