Stepping into the sneakers of an enterprising street thug is nothing new in video games, with franchises such as Grand Theft Auto, Saints Row and others finding massive success over the years. Big Time Gangsta attempts to bring those games' turf wars elements to the iPhone, but while it finds some success, it is ultimately kneecapped by its unwieldy, oftentimes frustrating game design.

The story in Big Time Gangsta is nothing to really speak of, following a clichéd "Just out of prison and ready to retake what's mine" plotline. But while it's nothing innovative, it is serviceable, and sets users up to begin waging turf wars immediately.

As the big time gangsta of the game's title, users must take over buildings, corners and even entire blocks in their effort to win control of the city. This is accomplished through battle sequences that place the user and their lackeys on one side and their opponents on the other. Your gangbangers shoot automatically, but you can make them fire more quickly or even use special items by way of the iPhone's touchscreen controls.

The battle sequences in Big Time Gangsta are short, perfunctory and have absolutely no skill-based or strategic aspects to them. Luckily, however, they also tend to be extremely short and feature graphics that are pretty impressive for the iPhone. While a battle system with deeper gameplay would be appreciated and really up the replay value of Big Time Gangsta the existing one works well enough, especially when seen as just the pay-off of what comprises the bulk of the title's gameplay.

Much of your time will be spent collecting money and items from corners you control and sending individual gangmembers out on missions. Then, in an effort to strengthen your gang, you can use the money you've earned to buy new weapons or items and even recruit new soldiers to your cause. While this is all fine and good, pointing to a lightly strategic roleplaying game, it's also where Big Time Gangsta's biggest problems start to set in.

For starters, in-game dollars aren't the only thing you need to buy upgraded weapons and recruit additional gangbangers. Many of these items must be purchased with credits, of which you start out with but a handful. It is possible to earn credits through regular gameplay, but they are few and far between. The only way to get the exorbitant amount of them needed to buy some of the game's best weapons and characters is by purchasing credits with real world dollars.

There's nothing wrong with micropayments, as they can be an effective way to augment the cost of a free or inexpensive game and can even fund future developments. But a game should be playable without micropayments, and unfortunately, after a point that comes far too early in the game Big Time Gangstas just isn't.

After your initial expansion, the game's difficulty increases dramatically, and since skill and strategy don't help much in your turf wars, the only way to keep moving forward is by getting better stuff. But of course, the corners you have conquered don't generate anywhere near the amount of dollars or credits you need to compete with your more numerous and better equipped rivals. While Big Time Gangstas doesn't cost anything to download, it's far from free to play.

Missions are another way that users can generate funds, but all of them last at least 10 minutes, and many take a full hour. During that time, the character sent on the mission cannot be used for any other purposes, which means that there's a fair amount of waiting involved in Big Time Gangstas...unless of course you want to buy credits and use them to have your characters complete missions instantly. Similarly, injured characters must wait to regenerate health, unless you've got extra credits to put toward their miraculous recovery.

The waiting in Big Time Gangstas isn't even the real problem though, as the game's notifications can let you know when gangmembers are back from missions and ready to be tasked with something else. In this way, Big Time Gangstas could be a pretty fun game to pick up for some inventory and character management for a few moments at a time throughout your day. But just like the stash houses and corners, the game's missions generate far too little income to remain competitive.

To Big Time Gangsta's credit, the game is playable without spending additional money - you just have to do a lot of waiting. You can even get around the waiting without paying anything though, as long as you're willing to download sponsor apps, review the game and do other errands for the developers. While it's nice to have a way to get additional credits for free, no one likes being bombarded with constant advertisements.

Big Time Gangstas has the framework in place to be a great game, with several of the title's problems rectified by other gameplay elements. Unfortunately, it quickly becomes apparent that this free download is designed to get you spending consistently through in-game micropayments. If a better-balanced version of the game was made available for one, two or even three dollars, it would be worth a download, but as is, it cannot be recommended.

Final Score: D