You have to love Gameloft's persistence. This is a company that seems to exist solely to bring generic copies of popular games to mobile. With their new game, Gangstar New Orleans Open it blatantly appears to fill the shoes of the wildly more popular Grand Theft Auto franchise. Despite GTA already having numerous releases on Android, Gameloft is still going to try and compete in the market with their inevitably half-hearted attempt.

At least the narrator of the video pronounced New Orleans correctly despite their ridiculous accent.

Don't get me wrong, it is not like I don't want to see competition on the Play Store. I just find it difficult to consider this game as any sort of competitor to GTA. Maybe if Gameloft took the time to create something that worked properly, it would not be such an issue. Having played Gangstar New Orleans Open, this does not look to be the case.

To start, this version of Gangstar is pretty darn buggy. There are plenty of users reporting the game as incompatible after installing, despite the Play Store listing their device as compatible. This would not be a huge deal if the file size was inconsequential, but to no one's surprise, the game files are quite large. Downloading these files not only wastes the users time but also their precious bandwidth. There are also a bunch of issues with the draw distance. You will see plenty of disappearing and reappearing buildings, which is made even worse when your character runs. While running you will slam into invisible buildings constantly hitting hidden walls. It is only after you see this issue a few times that you finally figure out that there is actually a building in your way.

Bugs are not the only issue, though. The lag in this game gets to be pretty ridiculous. No matter the device you use even the highest of the high end will lag and stutter while playing this game. The framerate is just too inconsistent. Seeing that this happens regardless of device, it becomes pretty apparent that poor coding and lack of optimization are the culprits. What is weird, is that Gangstar New Orleans Open had a long soft-launch where these issues were reported ad nauseum and yet here we are at release and nothing has been addressed.

So it goes for Gameloft. Apparently, quality gaming experiences and a worthwhile reputation are nothing compared to the bank you can make with in-app purchase filled clones of better games.