Gangs of London

Gangs of London PSP is a 2006 action-adventure game from SCEE London Studio, published by Sony Computer Entertainment for Sony’s handheld. Set in a stylized contemporary London underworld, it is a spin-off in The Getaway series rather than an adaptation of the later television drama. Its portable interpretation of the series combines third-person gunfights, driving and stealth with a territory-conquest campaign built around five rival criminal organizations competing for control of the capital.

Story Mode begins by selecting one of five gangs, each given its own leader, look and viewpoint on the struggle for London. The campaign is organized as a sequence of short, menu-selected operations instead of one uninterrupted open-world story. Comic-book-style scenes introduce the gangs and frame individual jobs, while the larger objective is to weaken rivals, complete the available work in an area and eventually seize their territory. That structure makes Gangs of London well suited to brief PSP sessions while still providing a citywide criminal power struggle to work through.

The missions deliberately shift between several forms of action. On foot, the game uses third-person shooting, close-range confrontations and occasional stealth assignments; some situations put allied gang members alongside the player. Driving jobs ask players to pursue or evade vehicles, deliver a car, protect a target or force an opponent off the road. Other assignments involve kidnappings, raids, escorts, defense and hit-style objectives. These changing mission types are central to the game’s design, even though progress remains tied to the chosen gang’s campaign and the territories controlled by its enemies.

Away from Story Mode, the PSP version offers a collection of London-themed free-roaming activities. Players can explore by car, take a tourist’s photographs of recognizable landmarks, work as a taxi driver in The Knowledge, evade pursuit, tackle riot-control scenarios or try unusual variants such as Four Weeks Later, which brings zombies into the city. These side activities are separate challenges rather than extensions of a seamless campaign, but they give the game a broader selection of short-form modes and different reasons to revisit its rendition of London.

Gangs of London also includes Gang Battle, a turn-based strategic mode that turns the fight for the capital into a board-game-like contest over districts. Players position gang members, build their strength and use cards or other advantages as they try to claim ground from opponents under different victory conditions. At the pub, the game provides local multiplayer diversions including darts, skittles, pool and an arcade game in the style of Snake. Its Game Sharing option was another PSP-specific feature, designed to let players pass generated content to another handheld without requiring a second copy of the game.

Released in Europe in September 2006, Gangs of London arrived after The Getaway and The Getaway: Black Monday had established London Studio’s crime-fiction setting on PlayStation 2. It transfers that setting to PSP through compact missions, illustrated storytelling and a notably wide mix of driving, combat, strategy and minigame modes. The result is a distinct handheld branch of the series: a game focused on competing gangs and the many small challenges surrounding their attempt to dominate London.