Empire of Sin

First published in GRIND I, pages 52–55.

Tommy gun, whiskey, and Al Capone, Civilization, X-Com, and Mafia. It sounds like a delicious cocktail you'd offer the mink-fur-collared lady delicately flicking ash from her cigarette, careful not to stain her silk gloves, which you hope to gently pull off her fine fingers with your teeth later. But all the aromatic smoke of tobacco, chestnuts, and cherry wood dissipates: in front of you is an old dear who couldn't be bothered to change out of her dressing gown and slippers when she popped down to the pub you're in to buy single cigarettes, and the cocktail you were about to offer her? A Tanita liqueur served in a filthy shot glass with what looks like seed husks and cigarette ash floating on top.

With any game I feel I'm about to get overly excited about before it's released, I try to distance myself from any teasers and trailers. This way, I can enjoy what the game has to offer more easily, and at the same time, I don't build up very high expectations only to be disappointed when they don't come true. And somehow, Empire of Sin still managed to disappoint, not through any unrealistic expectations I had, but through the immense potential it could have had, which was squandered, as well as a total lack of imagination and originality.

At the start of the game, you're offered a range of criminal personalities from the 1920s, some historical, others fictional, with whom to transform the city of Chicago into an empire built on a foundation of oak barrels before the end of Prohibition in 1933.

Personally, I chose to avoid Al Capone, thinking he was too stereotypical; plus, it would have been more satisfying to take over the reins of his empire later in the game. I don't know what pushed me to choose Maggie Dyer, maybe I felt a kind of empathy for the lack of female character representation in the industry, which | has been talked about for a while, | maybe out of respect for Brenda Romero, whose artistic vision was materialised in Empire of Sin, or for the simple fact that she's an old lady tattooed from head to + toe who uses a whip not just in her BDSM escapades, but also to subdue the lions of the circus she runs and the 'lions' of the criminal underworld.

After navigating the character selection menu, I'm hit with a brick of a cutscene in which Maggie Dyer discusses details from her past with her driver. Why did I say brick? Because that's exactly how it felt when the combination of sub-mediocre voice acting and amateur puppetry animations shattered any attempt at immersion in the romanticised atmosphere of the historical period. I hoped it was just an isolated case, that I'd simply got off on the wrong foot and that things would settle down eventually when I'd enjoy the tactical turn-based combat, the empire's micromanagement, or the diplomatic decisions I'd make regarding my rivals. That wasn't the case.

It's time to discuss Empire of Sin's combat system in detail, so if you're reading this paragraph on the throne, I suggest you wipe up and park your posterior on a more comfortable surface so you don't go numb. Done? Good.

The combat is a copy-paste of X-COM 2. That's it. No, not quite. It's a copy-paste of X-COM 2 not only in terms of mechanics, but all the gangsters' roles, along with their abilities and actions, are perfectly identical one-to-one, yet important elements for the game's realism, such as destructible objects or walls, are missing. I can be face-to-face with an enemy, separated only by a pathetic chair, I can spit an entire clip of lead from my tommy gun into him, but the idiot and that rickety chair escape safe and sound thanks to unfortunate RNG, the cover system, and the furniture's invulnerability to any external force.

What's more, in X-COM we had sometimes mini-cutscenes when a team member changed position or executed an enemy, little tricks that help you stay down there on the battlefield with your soldiers and not remain a detached observer watching only from a bird's-eye perspective. In Empire of Sin, out of 20 melee attacks, in 17 of them, the attack animation plays first while the enemy stands stiff as a board, only after my character finishes slicing the kebab off the rotisserie does he remember it's time to scream in pain and for that sweet ketchup to gush out; in the other 3 attacks, the exact opposite happens.

I compared Empire of Sin to the Civilization series at the beginning of the article. That's because, at its core, it's a 4X game (Explore, Expand, Exploit,

Exterminate), and the characters seem to borrow the cartoonish style from Civ 6. This part of the gameplay didn't make me forgive its sins either, because the diplomatic game is abysmal. As long as you maintain your relationships with the other bigwigs through exchanges of alcohol, weapons, or money, they'll leave you alone to grow your empire beyond any possibility of them standing up to you without all allying against you. Which will never happen. And as for territorial wars with your rivals, things are far too simple: the moment war is declared, you can almost instantly conquer three or four bars, brothels, casinos, or distilleries, and your rival will jump at you with a wad of cash to leave him alone. And as long as you make sure to invest all your ill-gotten gains into security upgrades at every establishment you own, you become invulnerable to any attack.

Given that this game fails to impress in any way on any level when it comes to gameplay, its only hope remains the atmosphere and story. Each character has a personal quest line that you go through in the first 15 minutes and which I couldn't care less about. That's it. Empire of Sin fails to sell me on the atmosphere of gangsters, jazz, and illegal alcohol at all. All the characters are grotesque caricatures, sinister puppets your grandma keeps in the attic and that always scare you when she makes you fetch a jar of pickles from up there. And the establishments you own?

They all look the same and don't noticeably change in the wake of improvements. What's more, during fights, the customers in those establishments all stand motionless and cower for the entire duration of the altercation, and if you happen to need to pass through them, they'll simply slide out of your way like a curling stone.

They could have easily included civilians as a neutral faction, and too many collateral casualties in the war for the right to booze could have led to an increasingly hostile attitude from the local police. Police I always forget exist in the game, because often I'm fighting Al Capone's men in the middle of the street while the coppers walk past us without paying us any mind, and their raids come once in a blue moon and you quickly resolve them with a cheap bribe. But returning to the game's atmosphere and the indestructibility of the furniture: HOW CAN I HAVE A BAR FIGHT WITHOUT CHAIRS BEING BROKEN OVER BACKS???? In all gangster movies, the bar gets riddled with holes, splinters and shards fly everywhere, and all the tables used for cover turn into sawdust. Here I can throw three grenades in the same spot and the floor doesn't even get scorched.

I have nothing good to say about Empire of Sin: it's a jumble of mechanics and styles stolen from other games, over which a cheap Art Deco sticker and the Prohibition era label have been slapped. Both peel off easily. After playing for more hours than it deserved, I was left with the impression that it's still an early access game and could improve. But it's a "finished" game that costs 40 euros, which I think you'd be better off investing in Silent Storm and Silent Storm: Sentinels, a 2004 game that puts Empire of Sin to shame in every respect, including animations and graphics, as well as a completely destructible environment (I demolished the entire facade of a two-story house with a Lewis gun). Empire of Sin is the first tactical turn-based game I've considered a total waste of time. It had potential by the cartload and chose the path of sub-mediocrity. What a shame.

Article by Mihnea Niță