iOS - Gangstar Rio: City of Saints review

Jason Tsay Nov 28, 2011 Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Me Follow Us App Review, Apple, Applications, Exclusive, Gaming, Okay Geek game review, Reviews, iPad, iPhone, iPod

The official Grand Theft Auto game debuted on the iOS platform a while ago but Chinatown Wars only offered a top down gameplay style which just didn’t cut it for many GTA fans. As a result, many have turned to the Gangstar series by Gameloft as an alternate car jacking experience. How does the third iteration of the series perform? — Our full review after the break! 

Gangstar Rio: City of Saints
App type: Game
Price: $6.99
Compatible: iPhone 3GS / 4 / 4S, iPod touch (3rd - 4th gen.) and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later.
Developer: Gameloft

The game weighs in at a hefty 1.65 GB (the iTunes Store shows 818 MB but the app management list when our iPod was syncing displayed 1.65 GB), compared to its prequel’s 601.3 MB. The game is universal so you’re essentially getting two games for the price of one - both the iPhone and iPad versions.

Story

The game starts off with a mission to drive to your boss Andreas. You play as Raul and represent a gang called the Assassinos. Your boss knows you plan to leave the gang so he plants a bomb in your car. After completing Chapter 1, you awaken from a coma in another part of Rio and take a new identity – Angel. Returning to the Assassinos to get revenge, you are sent on a series of missions, one of which involves shooting at a moving train to blow up some cargo before the train arrives at its destination. Although the game has much more of a story than previous iterations, it isn’t all that well written and language is unnecessarily fowl, especially in cutscenes. Although this is to be expected in any Grand Theft Auto style game, much of the dialog is pointless and crude.

Gameplay and Controls

Controls are simple. If you’ve played a Gangstar game before, you’ll know how this one works. On the bottom left corner is a joystick to walk/run. On the bottom right corner are buttons to shoot, enter a vehicle, and run. The top left shows a minimap which you can enlarge simply by tapping and the top right allows you to switch weapons. Dragging on the screen controls the camera and tutorials show up as a popup at the top. The targeting and attacking system is simple – tap the person you want to attack and hit the shoot button.

Driving in the game is set to manual acceleration and accelerometer steering by default. You can drive a wide variety of vehicles including cars, motorcycles, and boats. All the cars in the game retain their names from previous iterations but have all received cosmetic updates. Their relative performance still remains the same. (For example, the Gallapino is essentially a Lamborghini). In this game, you get points for doing crazy stunts with cars such as “air” and “drift.” One thing that we found to be particularly amusing is that you can practically drive up any slightly slanted building/mountain no matter how steep it is. We were able to ride a motorcycle to the top of a tall building, literally scaling the wall. That’s not the only strange physics element though; when you ram into another vehicle at full speed, you just stop. Your character won’t be injured nor will the other party be affected. One nice feature is that the last car you drive will automatically be parked outside your safehouse. You can begin missions by driving to the location or by calling up the minimap

New Features

One of the highlight features of the game is that you can now enter buildings – and are required to for some missions. During missions, you won’t just find people standing around. For example, you’ll find a guy breakdancing on the ground in the club. However, when you’re simply free roaming, many buildings simply don’t have anyone in them and thus there is no possible interaction at all. This is a shame because many buildings like the hospital are very large, containing several rooms and detailed surroundings.

The game also features a new leveling up system based on respect points you gain from doing crazy stuff such as killing people and drifting in your car. Each time you level up, you get respect points to spend on health, melee, shooting, and driving capabilities, as well as unlocks for certain weapons and vehicles.

Overall

Compared to the game’s prequel, Miami Vindication, I’d say that Rio is a much improved iteration of the Gangstar series. Rio feels like a much more expansive environment to roam in and several elements of the game are enhanced. The entire sandbox environment is highly detailed and just about every inch of the world is accessible. It’s not a perfect game but until Rockstar drops a standard GTA game for us iOS players, this is the best thing available. And to be honest, it’s a very enjoyable game to play.

Download Gangstar Rio: City of Saints on iTunes
Universal App on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch