Chicago Enforcer Preview

Following the lead of such games as Mafia, Chicago Enforcer is the latest action game to put players in the shoes of a 1920’s gangster. Essentially a straight port of Mob Enforcer on the PC, Chicago Enforcer is an FPS game where you must face off against other gangsters and police officers in Prohibition-era Chicago. A budget title, the game will give gamers with little cash a chance to play as a Capone gangbuster, although as it stands the game does have a fair amount of issues to be fixed before the game’s release.

As I said earlier, Chicago Enforcer pits the player against rival mobsters and coppers in '20s Chicago. Being one of Al Capone’s cronies, you have a bunch of weapons from the era to help you complete your missions. While you only start out with a handgun and a lead pipe, you gain access to shotguns, Molotov cocktails and other weapons. One of the game’s big drawbacks is the simplistic mission structure. The missions are never terribly complex, unfortunately, often breaking down into simple gopher missions where you go from point A to point B. This tends to grow slightly monotonous before too long and hopefully the final version of the game will have a bit more diversity and complexity.

Another apparent problem with the game at this stage is the unbalanced AI. Your enemies, be they gangsters or cops, will attack you in a very simplistic fashion, meaning that they will simply run up to you shooting, failing to employ complex tactics like cover or any other means of avoiding gunfire. Not to say that getting rid of them is especially easy, as they will shoot at you from afar with impeccable aim. This makes taking them out more frustrating than challenging, as you will often take out a civilian thinking that they were a gangster and then it’s game over.

The game does promise to feature some pretty deep multiplayer features, including System Link and Xbox Live capabilities. The game is set to feature support for up to eight players in a variety of different game modes, including Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch, Capture the Cash and Turf Wars.

The graphics use the LithTech engine, which is undoubtedly showing its age. The character models are very simplistic, and you’ll notice quickly that you are spending your time killing the exact same A-shirt wearing thug over and over again. The environments also look pretty simplistic and lack detail overall. On the plus side, the framerates are pretty solid and the weapon models look pretty good. However, there is still a lot of work to be done on the sound front. The sound effects are pretty simple and light, not exactly dazzling in an action game. The music is pretty much nonexistent, so hopefully that will be fixed before the game ships.

Chicago Enforcer will give players on a limited budget a chance to live the life of a mobster, but as it stands, the game has a lot of problems that prevent it from being a lot of fun. However, there is still some time for these problems to be fixed before the game ships this February.