New York, the city that dreams are made of. Political corruption runs as deep as the money lasts. Blackmarket trade isn’t the only way you can influence history. 

City of Gangsters was a unique resource management simulator game based in the prohibition era in America. It allowed you to play in a nearly unending amount of randomly generated maps, with countless ways to influence history and create your own path in subjugating the city to your mafia like manipulation and crimes. 

Almost 9 months later we get our first major DLC for the game, the Shadow Government DLC. With the Shadow Government DLC the way you can play the game changes, and it gives you even more ways to control and manipulate your way through the crime world. And just to illustrate the grandiose size of the control you’re about to have, a new map comes alongside it. 

New York City, is the largest and most detailed map in the game yet. There is countless iconic landmarks and hidden locations that give you greater access to unique opportunities not seen previously in the game. Unfortunately, if you had a soft spot for one of the other city maps already in the game, you won’t be able to experience the Shadow Government DLC. The political machine is only available currently to be played on the New York map, and whilst this is a good way to ensure people see the new map, it may be a little frustrating if you’ve gotten used to another map style and know how to comfortably play the game in familiar scenes. 

Alongside this, the Shadow Government DLC lacks a proper tutorial like the game itself originally had, and by doing this, I found myself somewhat confused as to what I was doing. There is a light attempt at a tutorial via the early mission structure and a seemingly guaranteed victory in your first political victory. Importantly, the elections themselves are more drawn by manipulating the system and not by actively putting your predominant character into the political race. Whilst I understand the idea of being the man behind the scenes and putting people in your outfit into power so you can manipulate the system that way. It would have been nice to shift away from the black market trade and work purely on a corrupt political level, growing power and influence by making deals with other outfits. Essentially putting people in your pocket.

Alas, the Shadow Government DLC involves choosing people you can buy out and influence with your own money to manipulate the laws and systems to be in your favour and to take away favour from other outfits. Every two years you’ll get another opportunity to change the political landscape, by putting money into the individual coffers of the candidates you wish to support. Alongside this, you can then spend the coffer money to run different campaign events to try and influence more support in favour of your chosen representative. 

If you find yourself struggling to make good money in the game, you may find that the political activity aspect a little difficult at first. You’ll be needing thousands of dollars to influence events, and as you start branching out into the city, you’ll need to influence even more areas of the city. Whilst this adds a really interesting way to play, you’ll need to be incredibly well equipped with the fundamentals of the game.

The early parts of the Shadow Government DLC are pretty accessible, and the game will give you mission rewards to give you the early seed money for your first election. However beyond that, you will need to be able to play the game well enough to be making large sums of money to invest into the political system. I was never good enough to get deep enough to see the true aspects, but for those who want to put in the time, the Shadow Government DLC gives you a really new way to play. 

City of Gangsters is still a very unique take on the resource management sim style of game. With a growing map selection, more background races, specific ethnicity influences on political actions based on your chosen starting ethnicity. The Shadow Government DLC gives you many gameplay reasons to come back and play the game again, and does indeed give you a different style of gameplay to really flesh out the crime feeling a little bit more.