Now, we'll come to the meat and potatoes of a game, the gameplay. You'll be given a vehicle called a Flyer, which is basically the equivalent of a floating car. Here you will have to establish a name for yourself as a tough enforcer up for hire. After awhile, you'll be able to take on more lucrative contracts, until you gather enough information and evidence on major mob bosses. You'll then have to dispatch them and their enforcers. You will be able to get jobs at the ICNB, and receive e-mails from your contacts, plus the occasional advertisement, promoting everything from weapons to pleasure houses, although most of the time it's the later. You'll also be able to buy weapons and other accessories from the Network Of Global Merchandise Center, also known as GMC. However you'll have to dock at a service depot in order to have your new toys installed. All these wonderful services have been brought to you by GLOBNET, Pandemia's premiere Ethernet Service.
If you have ever wondered what it would be like to be Bruce Willis in the 5th Element romping through town, here's your chance. To get to various mission objectives, you'll have to dodge in between dozens of buildings and heavy traffic, including cabs, holiday makers, family cars, trucks and so on. Be warned though! If you accidentally destroy a civilian vehicle in a vicious firefight, StarPol will come after you. So, it's advisable to lure your opponents out of the city and finish them there. However, if you do get pursued by StarPol, you can purchase a new ID Card for your Flyer at your local GMC to evade pursuit. Try not to do this as new ID Cards are very expensive.
With over a 100 thrilling missions varying from search and destroy, escort and transporting to delivery and hunting down extra-terrestrials, the missions for Crime Cities are something like Tachyon: The Fringe, were you play a tough mercenary who does someone else's dirty work for a fee. Two more aspects I will cover are the controls and the all important AI. The controls have a somewhat Descent feel to them, allowing you to strafe and roll your way through a firefight. This should go a long way in attracting many Descent fans while satisfying those with a taste for less complicated controls. The AI for Crime Cities is fairly advanced. The enemy AI won't just hover around with a big sign asking you to shoot him. They want to live as badly as you do. To accomplish this, they have a few tricks up their sleeves. They'll duck, strafe and dodge in between buildings and traffic to survive. One more thing would be the difficulty setting. It can be adjusted to several settings: Very Easy, Easy, Medium, Hard and Ultra Hard. This move will help make the game a challenge to both hard-core simulation fans as well as beginners to the genre.
Have you ever wanted to team up or deathmatch with your friends in some other simulation game either than Descent? Well, here's your chance. You'll be given the option to use all vehicles in the game, with the complete arsenal of 23 weapons, compared to the single-player campaign, where you can only use up to 3 vehicles and weapons are limited to the which planet you're on. So, if you ever wanted to know how it feels to be a flying an advertisement board blowing up 15 of your friends, you'll like this. Instead of buying weapons and charging your shields at your local GMC, you have to pick them up around town. And don't worry, there will still be plenty of traffic for you to dodge around in multi-player games. Or, if you're feeling lonely, you can hold a team deathmatch with your friends against another group. Trying out both forms of deathmatch against Jin-Wei and some other friends, I must say it worked out pretty well.
