The good news is that Escape From Paradise City is far better than the mangled mess that was Escape From LA. The bad news is that it doesn't have anything at all to do with the John Carpenter 'Escape From' movies, so anyone expecting gaming adventures with movie legend anti-hero Snake Pliskin is going to be bitterly disappointed. Then again, you'll probably also be disappointed that there's not an awful lot of escaping to be done in this game.

This curious hybrid action/strategy/role playing game puts you in command of a trio of criminals who reluctantly agree to work with the National Security Agency in exchange for their freedom. Their task is to rid the streets of the numerous miscreants that infest it and, well, take their place. Bizarrely you aren't here to completely rid the city of crime, but rather put it under new management, a job you achieve by first killing rival gang members and then forcing their leaders to extort cash from local businesses for your own gain. Now it might just be me, but I think the NSA might have their priorities a little wrong.

Whatever the reasoning behind the skewered logic to your presence in Paradise City, it doesn't distract from the task at hand. Your main goal is to re-acquire control of a series of neighbourhoods that lie in the hands of various anti-social types, and once the gang members have been removed and their bosses subdued, neighbourhoods become your new cash cows, generating a steady flow of income that allow you to recruit your own motley crew of "gangers" who can be summoned to help overthrow other parts of the city to well defended for you to wade in alone.

But there's more to Paradise City than the simple mass slaughtering of its criminal population. There's an assortment of game types all mashed together, from some light strategic elements in the management of each neighbourhood to some very heavy leanings towards role-playing. It's the latter that seems to take precedent over all others, as all the characters are adept in a certain field and as with any other RPG they gain new abilities as they level up, gathering, as they do, experience points from killing gang members and gaining control of neighbourhoods. It's quite an in-depth system, giving you the option of dozens of new talents that characters can use in the field, and each are unique to one of the three characters. There's an impressive range of skills, and the fact that they differ depending on the character you are currently playing does add incentive to keep playing. The short and nimble Angel for instance favours speed and agility over brute force and strength, so receives abilities that favour light combat and sneaky cloaking to get one over on rival gangs. The gruff Boris meanwhile has his bodyguard do all his dirty work for him, using a selection of ranged attacks as his minion goes up close and draws all the attention. But these features don't hide the fact that this is a game lacking the depth it might try to achieve. The main problem with Paradise City is that it's a little too simplistic; everything here is so easy to grasp and understand that soon the deeply repetitive nature of the gameplay becomes a little too much to stomach.

The game plays very much like an action RPG; you guide your character around the city streets, searching for trouble. The control is fairly standard; you click to move around and click wildly on your special abilities when combat inevitably rears its head, sitting back to enjoy the show as characters exchange blows. There is an option for direct control, giving you the opportunity to take part in the action yourself, but the view it switches to, a third person perspective, often obscures what's going on, particularly when it involves large groups of combatants. It's worth pointing out that you only ever control the one character, never all three at the same time - rather than allowing you to use each character's skills alongside one another, you simply get restricted to mastering them one by one. As a possible solution to your lonely slog through the seedy back streets, your characters can request the help of bodyguards who can be found wandering the streets, much like the kind Boris relies on so heavily, and like their employers, they also level up and gain new abilities that remain unique to whatever style of attack they proffer.

However, for all the variety thrown at character progression, the actual tasks you have to complete suffer from constant repetition. Aside from overthrowing neighbourhoods and occasionally accepting the odd side mission that very rarely strays from killing gangers, there's not a whole lot of variety in what you do. Occasionally the game hints at something almost quite excellent, such as the way you enact a turf war after hiring the required number of gangers to launch an attack - and although it's nice seeing your criminal minions charging headlong into battle to secure yet another neighbourhood, you've no control over where they go and can't direct the action once it's begun. All you can do is tell them which neighbourhood to attack and sit back and watch, hoping that they don't all get slaughtered in the process! The actual management over your neighbourhoods is basic - it's so simplified it's barely even worth the mention. Paradise City hints at aspects of real-time strategy and simulation, but never really delivers any control or depth in these areas, and more features like commanding units during turf wars or keeping your neighbourhoods in order would have really helped broaden the game's appeal and variety.

It's a far cry from 2004's Gangland, to which this game is sort of a spiritual successor, a game similar in style to Paradise but with a heavier focus on its strategic micromanagement, so much so that it did actually make you feel like you were in control of your own criminal empire. In Paradise however you very rarely feel like you're in control of much of anything; it's less about gaining territories and gathering power over the city and more about levelling up your characters.

There are some elements that do stand out though; the abilities you get to unlock do make the effort of levelling up worthwhile, and getting a group of bodyguards to assist you as you tackle the more difficult of crime bosses do prevent the combat becoming a total bore, but in the end this is a game that would have actually benefited from giving you more to do than killing people.

To it's credit, the game does create a living, breathing city rather convincingly; the streets teem with pedestrians and traffic and the whole thing looks, for a strategy/RPG such as this, quite impressive. The character models might seem a little basic on closer inspection and some noticeable fogging can be seen if you zoom in close to the action, but as this is a game you'll be viewing from a distance most of the time, such minor complaints are hardly worth worrying about. Some occasional lapses in the AI do spoil the image a little - pedestrians will often seem oblivious to the fact that you're turning the city into a warzone, while cars seem all too happy ploughing into anything that happens to wander into their path, but minor quibbles aside, the actual city in Paradise City is adequately represented.

Escape From Paradise City is an odd game, a hybrid of different styles with some interesting ideas all thrown together that just don't seem to gel. It's a nice looking game that manages to be a better than average action-packed role-playing game, but you can't help but think the focus for Paradise City should have been put elsewhere. So, better than Escape From LA, just not as good as Escape From New York or Gangland for that matter, there's fun to be had but if you're after a game that really makes you feel like your part of your own criminal empire, best stick with this games spiritual predecessor.

Reviewed by Kieron Giacopazzi for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).