Game Review: Gangstar Rio, City of Saints

Time to review the next offering from Gamelofts Gangstar series.
The game follows the story of a big shot Rio gangster and his fall from glory. After having his life and face taken from him, he gets help starting a new life as Angel, a new face in the gang world. Under this new identity he tries to track down the people involved in the car bomb that resulted in all of this.
The first thing I fell in love with in this game was the music. I find that it just sets the mood of the game so perfectly.

So let's get into the game. Well the story line is brilliant so far, the side missions fit together well with the story. It's all about regaining the respect you had at the beginning of the game.
A cool thing you get to do this time around is change your clothes. Each clothing item has it's own value according to armour, ammo, luck, and health. Of course you will most likely be dressing your character according to looks more than anything else. At the beginning of the game you have access to all the clothes, but after the accident you need to gain respect in order to unlock them. So be prepared to be running around topless for a while.

Another improved feature is the safe houses. Since the game has been expanded to have lots of new rooms to explore within buildings, you get to enjoy a variety of houses as the game progresses. All are equipped with a kitchen, clothing area, weapons area and a TV room with a TV I hope to see working in the next instalment of the game.

The cars are very interesting. You get to drive four Wheelers, strange red cars that I haven't been able too figure out if they are an in game joke or if people really drive such things, and of course an array of low end and high end cars. The more expensive the car, the faster it can move, and boy are the fast cars fast. The controls for these are again a let down. You really have to play around with the different control settings to find one that fits with you. And even after all that experimenting, you are still likely to crash a lot.
Other vehicles in the game include helicopters, small planes, motorbikes, speedboats, jetskies and the usual law enforcement and medical vehicles.

The radio is back. Still with all its lovely adverts and good tunes.Again you are able to change from station to station with a quick swipe across the radio screen.
Voice acting for me is pretty good but I've seen a lot of complaints on the play store reviews about it. The lip synching is good, which brings me to graphics.

It's a huge step up from Gangstar MV. The characters lips actually move now during cut scenes. No more random nodding that was some how meant to represent a talking person. The sculpting of the bodies is also improved. Which makes the time of toplessness less awkward. The scenery is captured very well, just with a glitch here and there when it comes to viewing the water from far.

It reminds me of GTA4 on pc, it's got nothing on the pc version of course but I do believe the mobile GTA3 release has some competition.

Verdict: Every cent spent is worth it. Even the extremely large download is worth out. Get it.
TouchToTouch.end

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Review: Gangstar Miami Vindication
Review: Gangstar Vegas City of Sin