July 9th, 2003 (12:00am) - London, July 8th 2003 - Budding Al Capone’s across the world are set to play out their gangster dreams thanks to leading game publisher Whiptail Interactive’s latest offering Gangland, developed by Danish gaming experts MediaMobsters, which is due to be released across the UK, Europe and North America in November 2003. In a new hybrid format that combines the best elements of real-time strategy, role-play and simulation gaming genres with a totally new style of in-game combat, Gangland delivers a menacingly fresh PC gaming experience.
The game follows the Sicilian mob theme made famous in films like The Godfather, Goodfellas and more recently by hit TV series The Sopranos. You take on the role of one of four Italian brothers, Mario, Angelo, Romano or Sonny. Born into Sicilian mafia, your character must work his way up within the family and compete with other mobs and gangsters for supremacy within the game’s ’Paradise City’ playing environment.
As you progress through the game building up your own empire by setting up protection rackets, threatening locals, prostituting women and where necessary, murdering people, you gain respect from both your peers and family. The artificial intelligence (AI) in Gangland will react to the way in which you go about playing the game with an entire city and all of its inhabitants going about their daily business around you. It is possible to interact with every single one of the 500* non-playable characters (NPCs) appearing in each of the game’s 26 sections, each character living out its own unique AI driven life.
Gangland players will continue to be surprised and thrilled thanks to a Highscore system and a unique "Event Engine" that generates non-linear plot lines every time a new game is played. Each new game requires gamers to adopt a range of different gameplay tactics to successfully control, manipulate and extort each district’s 300 active citizens and 200 hoodlums.
Combat in Gangland introduces a totally new way of fighting, mixing ’first person shooter’ and ’realtime tactics’ styles in an innovative way that results in players having to move quickly and make tactical use of their gaming environment if they want to become the most powerful gangster in ’Paradise City’.
Speaking from his safehouse in a secret location, Chris Warrender, publishing director of game publisher Whiptail Interactive said. "MediaMobsters has created a dangerously good game In Gangland. Its hybrid style of gameplay is complemented by a truly intelligent gaming system that creates a progressive living and breathing city environment, with everyone and everything reacting to every move that a player makes during the course of the game. Whiptail Interactive is proud to unleash the masterpiece that is Gangland, one of the most exciting games I have ever seen, on serious gaming enthusiasts everywhere."
"Gangland attracted serious interest from some of the largest publishers in the industry, but Whiptail Interactive’s business model offered us the flexibility and focussed approach that best suited our way of working. Whiptail Interactive’s belief in Gangland combined with the dedicated hands-on approach and working partnership that they offer made the choice really easy for us." Said Christian Majgaard, director of MediaMobsters.
A team of 17 programmers, artists, designers and producers worked on the game, which was taken from concept to final code in just 18 months. The PC game can be played in both single and multiplayer format with up to eight people playing against each other controlling up to 50 characters each at any one time. In order to complete the game, single players will have to murder, pimp, threaten, bribe and extort their way through 26 maps comprising 13 challenges and 13 conquests. There are 15 different maps to complete in multiplayer mode.
For further information on Gangland, please visit: www.mediamobsters.com.
