Mobster Roulette 2

Apologies for the late edition, folks, but I'm catching up on work and here with a scrappy, crappy game for your perusal (or rather, dismissal.) Coming hot on the heels of its predecessor, Mobster Roulette 2 is that most idiosyncratic of things, a strategy game with no strategy - or fun, for that matter.

It seems you lost $30,000 in a crooked card game and now you've got 24 hours (well, 2400 seconds) to pay it back to the gangsters you borrowed it from. Sounds like hard work, doesn't it? Well, it is, made all the harder by the minimal methods by which you can raise the cash. Mobster Roulette 2 is composed of several mini-games, none of which have had a lot of thought or effort put into them.

The simplest way to guarantee some money is by smuggling weapons across the border, which pays a cool $1,000. The game itself is simple enough: drive your car down a perfectly straight piece of highway, avoiding road signs and oil slicks as well as the cops, and reach the border before time runs out or the vehicle suffers too much damage. As far as driving games go, it's not the worst but I've seen far better, and winning isn't all that difficult. You could easily raise $30,000 just by doing this over and over again, but that would get as monotonous as it sounds, so let's see how else we could make some dough.

Ah yes, gambling - because that's worked so well for us so far. Again, there's nothing mind-blowing about these games. The blackjack game is straightforward and technically fine. It's a perfectly acceptable and adequate mini-game. But I could play far more interesting versions of blackjack online and not have to worry about some time limit coming down on me. Mobster Slots has the same issue - it isn't a bad game, just not a great one either. To be honest I've never seen the appeal of slot machine games online, unless you're working for some kind of reward, so there wasn't much motivation to keep on playing.

Strangely, I had my best success on the roulette table. I was able to guess correctly most of the time and tended to go with safe bets rather than pick a specific number, so I won a pretty penny. I suppose it makes sense that a game called Mobster Roulette 2 would feature a pretty decent roulette game. Perhaps if they'd focused on that instead of a bunch of lame mini-games, it would have made for a better final product. As it is, the roulette is simply good. But whoever runs this casino may want to read up on child labour laws, because the person in charge of the table sounded a lot like a little girl.

There's one other method of raising cash that I can't help but feel was added in the vain hope of causing a little controversy. If you get tired of running guns to Mexico and losing cash at the blackjack table (and you will), you can always grab your gun and just start shooting people on the street. There aren't any consequences for doing it, so grab a 12-gauge and blow 'em away! It's a bit gratuitous, all things considered, and you never earn more than nine or ten dollars per person. As a way of breaking up the tedium, however, it's great.

On the off chance you actually have some spare money, you can spend it sprucing up your home, which is looking remarkably bare; I guess borrowing from the Mob really was the last resort. Why you'd do this and what it has to do with the main plot of the game, I have no idea, but I'm guessing it awards you bonus points at the end. Regardless, it's just an unappealing garnish on a meal that didn't look very good to begin with.

In fact, nothing in Mobster Roulette 2 is very appealing. It's a game that looks and plays in a very workmanlike fashion. It's almost as if the developer released a beta, having not yet added the final touches to make the game more interesting. As it stands I just couldn't be bothered spending forty minutes to find out how it might end. There isn't enough to hold your attention for forty seconds, if I'm completely honest. Mobster Roulette 2 is a functional, acceptable game that holds little appeal and less staying power. In terms of gangster games, this one barely ranks as a common hood.