Category: Action RPG
Developer: Gameloft
System Requirements: OS X v10.6.6
Review Computer: iMac 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM and 2.26GHz
Network Feature: No
Processor Compatibility: Intel
Price: $6.99
Age Rating: 17+
Availability: Out now
Gangstar: Miami Vindication (GMV) is a great idea for a game. In fact, it's such a good idea that they made it in 2001 as Grand Theft Auto III. But it wouldn't matter if it was a clone, if it were only a good clone. As it is, GMV is a buggy, jumbled mess. You'll have conversations with invisible NPCs, drop out of a cut scene to find yourself surrounded by alligators, and end up in gun fights where you have to chase down the thugs who are supposed to be trying to kill you, so you can finish a mission.
You play Johnny, who's come to Miami for some vindication, one supposes, because his little brother has been kidnapped by the Armada Gang. Since Johnny (a Dude who is Bad Enough if there ever was one) has no idea where his brother might be kept, he has to complete a series of missions to lure the Armada gang out, as well as earn the trust of Roscoe, the—and I swear I'm not making this up—hillbilly who lives in the swamp just outside of town. Roscoe assigns you several missions designed to enrage the Armadas into coming after you, which includes stealing a hearse and a drug boat. Neither of them work. Later you learn that Roscoe is in poor health, lost most of whatever influence he had in the area, and is clinically insane…which you probably could have picked up on when he sent you into a gator pit to save his son.
So, you have missions that involve driving around Miami. A really tiny version of Miami, which has a couple of garages and a gun store where you can buy a flamethrower and rocket-propelled grenades. If you need a ride (or wreck your car), you can steal one or carjack a slow-moving vehicle, then drive around listening to radio stations if you want, sort of like GTA 3. But where the GTA games were huge homages to crime movies, GMV feels like the direct-to-DVD cousin: the sets are smaller, the script is worse, and the songs on the radio don't so much evoke an era as sound like they were written by the producer's sister's husband's band. If GMV were a movie, it'd be made by Roger Corman.
In addition, the game is buggy as hell. During the first big firefight, bullets flew off in all directions, rarely striking opponents even when they stood perfectly still. I picked up a shotgun and found it was less useful than a pistol. Two enemies ran away (actually swam away) from the fight, and even though my goal was to steal their boat, I had to hunt them down and kill them to finish the mission and move on with the story. During cutscenes, the supporting character of Betty vanished completely, leaving Johnny talking to thin air.
"That's my kind of woman," he said, wistfully.
"Invisible?" I queried.
When I briefly took over Betty to distract some cops, she was suddenly teleported to the middle of the ocean, which was a bit of a problem since it meant she kept failing the timed mission. I once aborted a mission in the gator pit, only to find that Roscoe's home base was now overrun with reptiles. I was being pursued by the cops for jacking a prowl car, when I was interrupted by a cell phone call from Betty. When the call finished, the cops had disappeared.
All of this might mean less if I gave a damn about the characters, but Johnny is simply a cut-out. He's looking for his brother, which I guess justifies anything, including turning a cop car into a bomb and sniping a police detective simply because he overheard him talking to the head of the Armada gang. Oh, and after you blow his brains out you can run up and gather the money that flew out of his body; the police officer standing right there won't mind.
I'm all for guiltily enjoying a game; part of the reason we have video games is to let us imagine doing things that are horrible in real life. But in GMV, illegal streetracing packs all the excitement of biking to the grocery store, and finding a Netflix envelope in my mailbox brought me more happiness than climbing to the top of a roof to scout out a drug lord's meeting.
When it works, Gangstar: Miami Vindication is an adequate enough time killer, though the game bits are so closely sandwiched between the cutscenes there's little flow. But the bugs and the lack of any tension make this game impossible to care about.
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