Gang Street Wars Review

Gang Street Wars is a truly unique gaming experience. It attempts to deliver a real time strategy experience combined with tower defense. The application delivers an experience unlike any other I played.

The game is a side-scroller with truly terrific artwork. Your home base is on the left and the rival gang is on the right. The objective is to destroy the enemy’s home base. You start the game by sending out your soldiers in the direction of the enemy’s base. There are four different gangsters to choose from. Each has its own unique attributes that assist you in battle.

As your soldiers march across the screen attempting to gain new turf they are met by the rival gangsters. When two opposing soldiers meet they fight and the winner continues marching forward gaining more ground. The idea is to gain ground, hold it, and then make your move on the enemy’s base.

This game gives a whole new meaning to the term man spam. In order to hold your territory you need to continually turn out new gangsters to take the place of your fallen soldiers. This essentially becomes a game of reverse tug of war. The strategy element comes into play when you choose the type of soldier and their position in your line up. Some soldiers can attack while they wait their turn for the front but take higher damage in face to face encounters making proper soldier line up critical.

You can pull your gangster from the front line in real time to save him from death and allow him to heal. This however causes you to lose ground and may have you wondering if it is worth the trouble. While all this is going on you have the option to continually upgrade your soldiers to make them more effective. You also have the option to build a base defender. This seemed somewhat pointless, since if the enemy is that close to your base you might as well restart the level.

This game is fun but can be extremely frustrating on the more difficult settings. It seemed too easy to lose ground and sometimes it felt like you lost fights to the computer unfairly. There were times where my higher ranked soldiers were beat by the exact same enemy configuration. If they added the ability to play real people, this would quickly clear up the issue. There were also times where it was very easy to accidentally select the wrong build order. I am sure a few updates will fix these minor issues.

As I stated earlier the graphics are really nice. The characters walk like gangsters and the levels are very stylized. However, there really didn’t seem to be much if any difference between the different levels. It would have been nice if they mixed it up some. The music and sound effects met expectations.

There is plenty of strategy present in this game, from cash management to fighter lineups. There are seemingly endless combinations to work with. However, at times it feels like your best laid plans end up in a log jam.

This game would be greatly improved by a neutral building between the two bases. If you were allowed to capture this building and then plant your base guards at the new location a whole new level of strategy would be developed. This would allow you some breathing room. You could even expand on this by having multiple buildings, some that accommodate more than one guard.

This game is unique and entertaining. However, it has the potential to be repetitive and extremely frustrating (like throw your Iphone across the room frustrating). The concept here is original and tactically great. With a little tweaking this game could become the standard for a brand new genre. If you want to try a strategy game with something new to offer this game meets the mark.

Positvies: Terrific animation, Entirely new TD experience, Interesting strategy combinations

Negatives: Can be frustratingly difficult, Tendency of wars to jam up, Game can become repetitive