True Crime: Streets of LA

"Mediocre GTA clone with a few nice gimmicks"

It's easy to see that the developers were trying to go an opposite route with True Crime: Streets of LA than Rockstar did with it's hit Grand Theft Auto series. Instead of taking on the role of a common street thug ala GTA3 or a professional gangster as in Vice City, True Crime puts you in the role of law enforcement. While a great idea on paper, chasing down common thieves and criminals, being slightly exempt from the law, comandeering vehicles, etc., the end result is much less exciting and much more repetitive than other games of the genre. The numerous bugs and camera glitches only hinder the experience further. But while it may seem like I'm bashing this game, it does have it's fun moments and fun play features that really feel more like gimmicks and stolen elements from other games.

Gameplay: 7/10

Unlike GTA, True Crime can be broken down into multiple play sections. You can either cruise the city or complete missions, driving, fighting and stealth.

Cruising: Unlike GTA, True Crime doesn't focus around cruising the city, looking for missions. There is much more structure which leads to much more linear gameplay. But that isn't to say that you'll never wander around between completing missions. One unique feature of cruising in True Crime is a random crime generator. As you walk or drive around you essentially take control of an average street cop, making arrests for petty crimes, high speed chases and shootouts. While a bit overly repetitive (random street crimes occur in LA every few seconds apparently), these pseudo-missions are extremely fun for a while, especially when shooting out a criminal's tires while engaged in a high speed chase through an enormous recreation of LA. Unfortunately, unlike GTA, True Crime does not encourage wiling out on a city, wreaking havoc and causing chaos. You are punished for killing innocents, death animations are dry and boring and there is very little blood at that. One of my biggest annoyances with this aspect of gameplay is that no matter what, you are commandeering a car. You walk up to the car, press the L1 button and wait a few seconds and the driver/owner crawls into the passenger seat and out of the passenger door. This system of taking new cars seems to slow down the action and make things very dull and unrealistic. But luckily, there's a huge selection of cars, from trucks to luxury cars to sports cars complete with body kits, rims and spoilers, a big step up from GTA. If only there was more traffic in LA...

Fighting: The fighting aspect of this game is, well, corny. First of all, opponents tend to be very heavy on blocking instead of simply fighting back. But worse, the camera often hangs up on walls and objects. Luckily, many background objects are destructible to throw your opponents through and into. There is also a (relatively crappy) combo system, allowing the player to pull of a (small) number of cool looking and powerful moves.

Stealth: The stealth aspect of the game is also corny. You hold X to put your back against walls. From there, you sneak up to guards and use one move to stun them, another to snap their necks (good cop vs bad cop). Not very much variety in here.

Graphics: 8/10

To me, the graphics are a big saving feature to this game. The large variety of cars are rendered well with a very realistic look to them. The city itself and character models are also done to a higher quality than GTA: Vice City. But that is to be expected, this game being released one year later..

Sound: 8/10

Another quality feature of this game are it's sound effects and music. Voiceovers, screeching tires, blazing guns and a large rap soundtrack all go together well. A certain five letter word is heavily overused, as are the cheesy one-liners Nick, your character, loves to say.

Control: 6/10

The button layout for this game simply does not work. Many times have I been engaged in a high speed chase, shooting at the car in front of me, when suddenly my finger slips one shoulder button and the next thing I know I'm rolling around on the highway. Besides that, button reaction time can be rather slow, many times I've had to press the same button more than once just to get into a car or fire my weapons.

Replay: 6/10

As I've said before, True Crime eliminates many of GTA's addicting aspects. Since you are on the side of the police, you will not be the one getting chased. Instead, you slove petty and repetitive crimes as you chase criminals up and down the same streets over and over. The missions offer a lot of variety, as I've reviewed in gameplay, but they just don't feel natural, they play like gimmicks. There just isn't a whole lot to come back to once you've played the missions and have had your fill of pursuing high speed chases.

Overall, True Crime is just mediocre. While it is very different from GTA, I wouldn't recommend True Crime to a casual GTA fan, they'd be better of buying Vice City at a cheaper price. But for those who loved GTA, or for those who wish to take on the roll of the police instead of the criminal, True Crime is a fun game until GTA4 comes around sometime next year.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/29/03