9mm

Around September 26, 2011, Gameloft’s 9mm reached the Android Market for $6.99, a couple of months after its July 2011 iOS release. It was a gritty third-person shooter about crooked cops, and Droid Life called it GTA-esque, with a gruesome, drug-filled storyline. 9mm is no longer sold on Google Play, and we could not verify its Android package name or an official removal date, so the download field on this page is left empty.

What Is 9mm

You play John “Loose” Kannon, who leads a team of hardened cops willing to bend the law to clean up the streets. The story moves through Latino suburbs, a nightclub, the police department, rich suburbs and an industrial area before heading to Mexico, wrapped around gang wars, crooked cops and betrayal. The campaign runs across 12 levels, and each one leans on staged shootouts rather than open exploration.

Slow-Motion Gunfights Were The Hook In 9mm

Combat leaned on slow-motion stunts and leaping gunfights, with destructible 3D environments that broke apart around you. The arsenal grew to 16 weapons, including pistols, shotguns, submachine guns and grenade launchers, plus power-ups bought in the shop. An interrogation mechanic asked you to capture gang leaders and informants alive instead of shooting them, which gave some missions a different feel from straight firefights.

Online Multiplayer And A Hip-Hop Soundtrack

9mm supported up to 12 players online or over local Wi-Fi across four maps, in free-for-all and team deathmatch modes. Gameloft also licensed a hip-hop and rap soundtrack with tracks from Freeway and Jake One, Beanie Sigel and Apathy, which suited the crime-drama tone. Few mobile games in 2011 put that much effort into licensed music.

Why 9mm Gets Compared With Gangstar Rio

Both came from Gameloft in the same period and both dealt in crime, so players weighed them against each other in forum threads such as one on TouchArcade titled Gangstar Rio vs. 9mm. The difference is structure. Gangstar Rio is an open-world game with free roaming, whereas 9mm is a linear mission-based shooter that spends its energy on set pieces and gunplay. If you wanted a city to explore, Rio was the pick, and if you wanted tight shooting with a story, 9mm made more sense.

Is 9mm Still Available On Android?

No. It is no longer sold on Google Play, and Gameloft has not released a remaster. At launch, reports said it would not run on some popular devices such as the Droid Bionic, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Droid Incredible, which shows how device-specific Gameloft’s HD builds were in 2011. The game also predates 64-bit Android, so even an old copy may not install on current phones. We do not recommend modded or mirrored APKs, and for an official Gameloft crime game that is still live, Gangstar Vegas is the closest option.

Gameloft also brought 9mm HD to the BlackBerry PlayBook, which says something about how widely the studio pushed it at the time. On every platform, though, it came from the same period of premium mobile shooters that faded once free-to-play took over, and none of those versions are sold today.

Before the Android Market release, Gameloft had also announced that 9mm was coming to the Xperia Play, Sony Ericsson’s phone with a slide-out gamepad, and the game appeared on iPhone in July 2011 and on iPad soon after. Its trailers leaned heavily on the multiplayer mode, which Gameloft showed off in a second video that July.