Gamertell Review: Drug Wars for PC
by at October 7, 2009 9:33 am
Sections: 3D, Action, Adventure, Developers, Features, FPS, Game-Companies, Genres, Opinions, PCs, Publishers, Reviews, Shooter, Windows
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Paleo Entertainment shot itself the foot with the original version of Drug Wars, Merchants Of Brooklyn (MOB), by releasing it uncompleted. After changing the name to Drug Wars and implementing several fixes, the company hoped to have a worthwhile final product.
The story’s the same, a multiplayer component has been added and there were several invisible fixes. The question is whether or not these changes make it worthwhile.
What’s Worthwhile
There is some good stuff about this game. The story is really cool and that was pretty much the good part of the original. It features a stereotypical dystopian story as the world’s been flooded due to global warming. A multinational corporation started working with genetic engineering to clone slave builders. The company needed a particularly hardy type so it started cloning neanderthals and eventually created too many clones. Many of the excess builders are purchased by the mob to be used as bodyguards, foot soldiers or entertainment doing gladiator battles (often to the death).
The game’s animation looks really good. Sure, until fixes were put in the physics weren’t all that believable, partially due to glitches but new they are a bit more believable. The world also looks more realistic while retaining somewhat cartoony graphics from the original.
One of the most worthwhile elements of the game is the multiplayer mode. It looks better than the single-player mode and is not as demanding. Even if you’re not playing against anyone in particular, you’ll enjoy it.
Beef Up Your PC
Even so, the best and only truly good thing about the game is the story even though it is a bit formulaic. Also, the characters – especially your own- don’t feel like they belong in an essentially plotless story filled with mindless action.
Yes, it looks beautiful if you’ve got a really powerful computer. Even with a top-of-the-line computer you might run into a heavy lag while processing the surroundings, enemies and explosion. Strangely enough, the single-player campaign is even more demanding on your system. I was getting lag with half of the settings at medium and the rest at low on a computer that has a fairly quick dual-core processor, 4 GB of RAM and an HD Radeon 3470 with a lot of VRAM.
So, unless you’ve got a stronger computer, you’re still going to get a lot of lag unless you’ve got everything set at low.
Then there also is the issue of a heavily underpopulated multiplayer component. One of my complaints with the multiplayer mode is that it was hard to fine even one other person playing. If, instead, you get a group of people together with copies of the game, you’ll be able to make the multiplayer worthwhile.
The Bottom Line
As you can tell from the overall score, this is essentially the same bad game with slightly better packaging.
If you’re getting it for the multiplayer mode, find a few friends will to buy the game. At least then you’ll have someone to play with.
If you’re looking for a worthwhile single-player experience, save your money. There are few games worse than the Merchants of Brooklyn single-player half of Drug Wars.
Site [Drug Wars]
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