True Crime: Streets of L.A. - Review

Added January 1st, 2004 by MULTIMASTER

Introduction:

True Crime promised to be bigger and better than the award winning Grand Theft Auto series. Well, you might be asking yourself if it lived up to all the hype that was surrounding it for the past couple of months. Will this game be the next huge hit? It’s a very ambitious game, but in the end, the finished product isn’t enough to topple the GTA Empire. Now, that’s not to say that it’s a bad game by any means. Matter of fact, True Crimes is a very solid game. It just means that people wanting something better then Mafia or GTA won’t find it with this game.


Gameplay:

The story is one of True Crime's stronger points. It branches out into not one, not two, but three different endings. There is one for a good cop, bad cop, and also a neutral cop. But during the end of the good cop story the plotline takes a turn that is totally unexpected and it could belong in a sci-fi movie. The way that you travel through the plotline is something new though. You have that one objective that you cannot just beat no matter how hard you try; well True Crime lets you continue through the game even if you fail objectives. Now, you might be thinking that with a branching storyline and three different endings to play out that this game may take some playing time to complete. This brings me to my first disappointment about True Crime. I was able to complete the entire game in about 12-15 hours. (That includes every ending.) Your good cop, bad cop meter. This is a pretty cool element in the game, especially because it plays a role in what type of ending you get and what cut scenes you get during the course of gameplay. It is very simple how this works actually. If you want to be a good cop you have to chase down and arrest each criminal you go after. Each criminal you take down this way will give you one good cop point and also badge point which you can use at 24/7 clubs which I will explain a little bit later. But each criminal that you decide to shoot as they try to escape will either take away one good cop point or give a bad cop point. This is where the game starts to look and feel a little similar to GTA. If you decide to shoot down the civilians of L.A. will see a "civil unrest" meter next to you good cop-bad cop meter. When this begins to turn red gangs, the S.W.A.T. and the civilians themselves will begin to come after you. Street crimes are what you will be entertaining yourself with, when you are not on a particular mission. They range from taking down hookers to stopping a cockfight (animal cruelty), to recovering a stolen truck of Activision video games. After awhile these street crimes get dull and very repetitive but they are worth it for this reason: badge points. You will find yourself using these badge points to gain access to 24/7 clubs which are scattered throughout the very large city of L.A. There are three different types of 24/7 clubs to go to. Each one will either teach you a new fighting combo, driving move, or it will upgrade your weapon.

Graphics:

The graphics in this game where much better then I expected. This game being multiplatform and all made me think that it would be a step up from a ps2 game in how the game looked. While you can see how the developers had cut some corners for the game to run smoothly on the ps2, the Xbox versions is easily the best looking one. The car models look great. Doors fly off, windows crack, fires start, etc. But to me it seems like the games uses only a couple of different damage models. After a while, all of the damage looks the same no matter what car. The characters models are well done and look much better then those found in the GTA games. The city is very detailed, with nice looking textures. If you live in the city of L.A., you will have a lot of fun exploring the game to see how accurate the city really is. One problem that I found was that when I was attempting to arrest people I found that sometimes I was able to slap the cuffs on them from (what looked to be) ten feet away which seemed like a graphical glitch..

Audio:

Nick Kang's (the officer you play) lines are corny but sometimes very amusing. The cars sound good but some sound the same. They could have found better people for the voice acting as they were pretty mediocre. The soundtrack is mixed with all kinds of hip hop tracks. If you are someone that likes this type of music, then you will like the soundtrack. I am not one of those people but True Crime makes up for this with the custom soundtrack feature. One problem keeps popping up that has annoyed me for some time now. It got a little complicated to use, for me at least, it kept somehow resetting itself back to the default soundtrack. True Crime also supports 5.1 DD in game. Sound effects sounded nice enough to get the job done. Overall a good sounding game, especially if you like rap.

Controls:

Indoors, the camera gets very aggravating as does it when you are outside. Overall the controls are one of True Crimes biggest drawbacks. The shooting controls are terrible. Perhaps worse than GTA's shooting controls. Here they are broken down:

Left thumbstick-Steer left/Right/ move character
Right thumbstick-Accelerate/Brake/ pan camera
A button-Accelerate/ kick
X button-Brake / punch
B button-Hand brake / grapple, throw pick up weapons
Y button- Rear view/ jump kick
Left trigger- get in/out of vehicle / move character
Right trigger-Fire weapon / pan camera, select target
D-pad left-siren on / fighting mode
D-pad right- car horn / normal mode
Tap D-pad down- Change view / shooting mode

Replay:

Once I beat this game, I didn’t feel like going through it one more time. People that like to wonder around the city like in GTA will have some fun after they beat the game, but after a while, everything becomes a lot less exciting. People looking for a good game to rent and beat, this game should be on your list.

Summary:

Not what it promised to be, perhaps a little over hyped. There is still a lot of fun to be had with this game whether you are just running around killing civilians or actually playing through the story line. A very good first attempt at knocking Grand Theft Auto of its golden chair, but it fell a little bit short. Make sure to check this game out next time you rent a game. If you like it a lot, then go ahead and buy it. Overall, a solid game.