True Crime: Streets of LA

"An interactive cliched cop movie"

True Crime: Streets of LA hit the gaming scene after the success of Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. It was supposed to appeal to gamers because of the similar looking game play, but at the same time, it tried to offer different features and new directions to the young urban free roaming genre.

Story:
At its core, True Crime is an amalgamation of every action movie made in the past 30 years. Loud mouthed, witty protagonist Nick Kang is a hard nosed cop who doesn't play by the rulebook, and is deemed a loose cannon by his superiors. After a series of arsons and thefts have plagued the city of Los Angeles, the police department begs to have him back at a newly initiated Elite Operations Division. Nick sets out to solve these crimes and bring the perpetrators to justice. Depending on the player's actions, you'll get three different branching stories with three completely different endings. As the game progresses, the story incorporates many elements from action movies past, from the overbearing FBI agents to dirty cops and high speed car chases.
Score: 6/10

Graphics:
The city of LA is rendered nicely, with few artifacts and pop ups, and a smooth frame rate. Nice and sunny, Los Angeles always looks appealing, from the suburban neighborhoods to the green hills of Hollywood. Characters are given plenty of detail, and there is enough variety in the wandering civilians, although they're not as colorful or humorous as those in Grand Theft Auto. All of the cars have plenty of detail, and headlights, tires, windshields and gas tanks can all be shot at and destroyed. Indoor environments can be destroyed with satisfactory delight. Chairs will be smashed, tables will be broken, etc. as you lay down the smack down.
Score: 8/10

Sound:
Much of the game's humor comes from Nick Kang and his interactions with the other characters. If you don't like his attitude or his one liners, then you're going to find the game more immature and stupid than funny. Like almost all modern games, True Crime features voice acting from a stellar cast of actors, although this case doesn't feature as many big names as Rockstar can get. Michael Madsen, Gary Oldman, Michelle Rodriguez and Christopher Walken all lend their voices to the game, making the story and dialogue a lot more interesting than it should be. To complete the whole sound package, there's also a complimentary soundtrack composed mainly of West Coast rap.
Score: 7/10

Gameplay:
The game is broken up into three components: shoot-outs, fist-fights and car chases. The story mode is broken up into episodes, with branching ones for the alternate storyline. These episodes usually compose of a mix of shooting, driving and fighting missions, along with an untimed driving mission that basically allows you to roam around LA solving randomly assigned street crimes. There are a variety of different street crimes, and your performance is measured by a point system. By arresting people instead of killing them outright, you'll receive points that can be redeemed at training facilities scattered around the city. At these facilities, you can upgrade your fighting, driving or shooting skills.

Every episode follows this same structure, although a few throw in some basic stealth missions to add a bit of variety to an otherwise monotonous game. Almost all of the shooting missions play out the same, but some toss in some hostages and others involve you taking down a deadly sniper. A nice nuance is a Virtua-Cop styled aiming mode that lets you hit targets in the head or limbs for an instant take down, but most shooting missions can be completed by holding down the shoot button. Pretty much every fighting stage is the same, except for one or two. The fighting system can use some work, and often, smashing the buttons is as good as planning a strategy. The most variety comes from the driving stages. Here, you may have to chase down a prime suspect before he/she gets away, tail somebody or race to a location within a time limit. The end of every story strand is punctuated with a one on one fight with the main antagonist.

You should have few problems playing this game. The controls handle nicely, and if you don't like the default control scheme, you can always change it. The only control problem might be the inverted horizontal camera controls, but they don't take very long to adjust to. As for a learning curve, I would say it takes an hour at most to get accustomed to most things. As it stands, a proper tutorial would've been nice. The biggest problem I had was the lack of manual saving; I had to wander around the city for at least 20 minutes looking for parking garages to save in. Fortunately, the game will auto save in between missions and training sessions.
Score: 9/10

The game isn't terribly long, and game is somewhat artificially lengthened by the need to solve crimes in free roaming mode in order to gain valuable upgrades. However, the ability to replay any mission, the extra missions provided by the alternate episodes and the free roaming mode provide a lot of extra replay value.

Overall: 8/10 (Not an average)

Pros:
- Smooth frame rate
- Ability to drive around parts of LA
- Random street crimes provide replay value
- Similar to Grand Theft Auto yet different enough to distinguish itself

Cons:
- Auto saves only
- Missions are mostly the same except for location
- Soundtrack is too limited

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/19/07