Urban Crime Review

Taking over an entire city while surviving two warring gangs should be a heart pounding experience, right? Lots of guns, money and goodness knows what else. Unfortunately this isn't the case with Gameloft's latest free-roaming, freemium gangster title, Urban Crime, which has a number of significant problems that spoil what could have been a very competent title.

Urban Crime is described as a spin-off of one of Gameloft's other titles, Gangstar: Miami Vindication. The game sees the player try and reclaim lost turf while elevating their gang to power. This is done by taking on and completing a myriad of jobs around the city, which earns money and experience points, helping the player to level up.

Levelling up gains the player access to new weapons and items, which of course can also be instantly purchased using real money. What isn't so hot is the fact the player initially only has access to a couple of cars. Try and hi-jack a fancy sports car and a message will pop up saying it can only be used when the player reaches a certain level, or buys it via a micro-transaction.

The missions are fairly varied, short in length and perfect for gaming on the go. The player will flit between gunning down gang members, to simply collecting a package, and many other things in between. However, there are a number of technical issues that get in the way. Scenery pop-up is extremely bad, with NPCs and cars appearing just a few feet in front of the player.

This makes traversing the environment a chore, and the racing missions extremely frustrating, as often the checkpoint will appear too late, and the player won't have time to steer the vehicle. Framerate issues also plague the game. It is generally fine when the player is walking, but anything more demanding than that and it drops significantly, slowing everything to a crawl. Visually, while it is impressive to get a 3D city up and running, everything looks flat and lacks textures.

In terms of control, the character is moved via an on-screen virtual stick. It works well enough, although panning the camera around is fairly cumbersome. Controlling a vehicle is done by tilting the iOS device to steer, and pressing icons to accelerate/brake. The lack of tactile feedback means cars will often brake too harshly, or not hard enough.

In short bursts Urban Crime can be enjoyable. However, the problems raised throughout this review means that any fun had is often negated before too long.

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