Omerta is an uninspired game that had true potential.
Like many gamers I find some odd compulsion to manage resources on a grand scale. What exactly those resources could be depends on the game. In something like X-Com it is time, money and military tactics. In a Tycoon game it is space and money and in something like Civilization it is everything about a civilization. However, makers of social games have discovered games love of resources management and milked it for everything it’s worth. Sadly, this is what Omerta: City of Gangsters feels like, a well polished social game.
Gameplay works as such, you take control of a prohibition era gangster looking to rise to power in the realm of running bootleg liquor and other despicable things done to make illegal money. It starts with you buying a property to call your hideout, why they let you do this is unknown as you only have one option to choose from. Then you open a map and send your thugs to buy various goods and then sell them at a lower price. Once you have enough money you can rent buildings to produce goods to sell over time. That is the majority of the gameplay and god is it boring.
The monotony is occasionally broken by missions where you actually get to use your thugs in turn based missions. They can focus on killing rival gangsters, police and even the occasional Klu Klux Klan members. This is easily the best part of the game and yet is still very disappointing. The maps lack variety and the abilities the thugs have are fairly mundane. I know they shouldn’t have super powers but you lack some basic options that make turn based games great. Depending on your weapon you get different abilities but there is never any reason to use anything other than the main attack most of the time.
