Gunshot City

All of this just works. ― Todd Howard

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Gunshot City
Oh great, a free budget Grand Theft Auto for low end devices!
Protagonist(s): Unnamed Genre(s): Action-Adventure Platform(s): Android iOS Release Date: June 2, 2018 (Android) September 12, 2018 (iOS) Engine: Unity Developer(s): Sakis25 Publisher(s): Sakis25 Country: Greece Series: Crimelife Predecessor: Crimelife 3 Successor: Crimelife 3 (Remastered)

Gunshot City is a free-to-play action-adventure mobile game developed by Sakis25 and released on June 2, 2018 for Android through early access. An iOS port was released on September 12, 2018.

Difference from Crimelife

The game is a spinoff of the Crimelife series. Unlike the other games which use the Game Maker engine, this one uses the popular Unity engine known in the mobile game industry, and features real-time lighting and shading. It is also designed to resemble more of a "no limits" type of game.

Development of the game began in 2017, and was finished around mid-2018.

Why It Sucks

1. While the game is a slightly huge improvement from the other games due to it utilizing a new engine, it has its fair share of flaws. Here are some of them:
   • The game's plot is really short and basic. Heck, the plot is more of a tutorial than a plot itself (although this is intentional, see Trivia #1), as the missions are basically a street race, a taxi driver session, a gun purchase tutorial, and a simplistic gang war. After that someone calls you and tells you that the whole city is all yours, and introduces you to "arcade challenges" which are basically causing chaos around the city in order to gain money. Because of this, the game can be finished in less than an hour.
   • Outdated physics and animations, such as running and wielding pistols that look like it was adapted from early smartphone games.
   • The graphics are somewhat low quality, even for Unity game standards, and even look like an early PlayStation 2 title. In fact, the cars have mismatching textures, such as a metallic BMW car that looks like it was taken from an early PS3 game, a Ferrari being glossy, and a Dodge Ram having similar reflections to a Grand Theft Auto III-esque car.
   • Terrible framerates. (thankfully this is only on low end devices) Fortunately, this can be avoided by turning off color correction and shadows. Worse enough, if you die and respawn at the hospital or startup the game, these settings are ALWAYS ON, regardless of your customization.
2. The cars are literally real-life cars but under different names (in an attempt to bypass DRM).
3. Speaking of cars, they are absolutely immune to all sorts of damage. Regardless of how you damage the car through gunshots or wall hits, it will survive everything but rocket launchers.
4. The radio mechanic is totally abysmal and out of order, as it will play a random song on every vehicle. Exiting a vehicle and entering it again will cause the radio to play another song. Furthermore, it tends to play house music more often than other songs with different genres. If summed up, the radio works exactly the same way as GTA Advance, except that it does not loop songs.
5. Missions are delivered through phone calls only.
6. It takes about five seconds to enter a car. While this is to simulate the car jacking process, exiting the car only takes a split second.
7. The city looks small due to the majority of it being made up of basketball courts and parking lots.
8. Dumb police AI. Running over pedestrians does not alert nearby cops, but running over an officer himself does. Also ramming into a police car does not alert them too.
9. While the limited fuel mechanic is a realistic feature in the game, it can sometimes be defying especially during cop chases in missions. If you're not near a petrol station or don't have enough money for fuel, you'll have to get out and steal another car.
10. Terrible collision detection. When you ram into a streetlight at high speed, the car will slow down, but the streetlight remains intact. However if you hit the streetlights at a normal speed, they get detached.
11. The time can only be seen in the pause menu.
12. Several features from the previous title are absent in this game, such as Internet cafés and apparel customization.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The game can be enjoyable depending on your view.
2. Unlike most mobile GTA clones, this game does not try to be hard and use the "gangsta wannabe" theme prominent in said clones. Due to it being part of a franchise, it just follows the roots of the Crimelife series.
3. The game is lightweight.
4. The lighting is somehow appealing and well done.
5. More money farming businesses, such as taxi driver missions, vigilante, pizza delivery and the aforementioned arcade challenges, that save you from grinding.
6. The game runs at 60 frames per second max, compared to the other games which are locked at 30 FPS.

Trivia

• The reason why the game has no lead protagonist and a storyline is because the developer stated that he wanted to make a game where the player has unlimited choices to play as he likes. In addition to that, he stated that Gunshot City is "all about the fun you can get from an open world game".
• The game was originally meant to be released as the fourth entry in the series , as stated on the developer's blog site, but was instead released as a mobile spinoff due to it utilizing a new game engine that was prominent in the industry. Another reason is that he wanted to avoid getting it confused with the Konami game of the same name (although his franchise is stylized as Crimelife without spaces), given the fact that he was releasing a game on mobile storefronts and that Konami was already prominent in the mobile game industry.
• The game was originally written in JavaScript, but was eventually transferred to C#.
• An Audi car was meant to appear in the game as depicted on the screenshots, but was cut for unknown reasons.
• The mission passed theme is reused from Crimelife 3.

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