True Crime: Streets of LA

"True Crime: Streets of Twinked out."

True Crime: Streets of La la la!

Rundown:

Let's get a brief rundown for those of you who are new to the game, or haven't played it. True Crime is set in LA, the city that makes Liberty City look like a mild suburb filled with nice caring people. The point of this game, is an Ex-Cop, now a Agent of a group called E.O.D. (Elite Operations Division) named Nick Kang. Kang has in his powers the ability to do whatever he wants to stop crime, which makes me think the 'O' in EOD is 'Oppression' and not 'Operations'. I actually felt sorry for the poor criminals, but when I played the game for about 20 minutes, about 200 crimes opened up around Kang himself, so I started to think LA needed to be quarantined and gassed.

The Game has several Modes, so I'll give a rundown of each.

''Do Nothing Mode''
This mode has no name, it's where you can go around and do whatever you want, and score points for upgrades by solving crimes. The game tries to give you non violent ways to stop crimes (You can flash your badge, fire off warning shots, get an upgrade to shoot shots that nuetralize criminals) but these things, as you'll quickly learn do nothing more than make you want to start shooting everyone, even those who don't break the law. The badge causes people to run away, firing the warning shot makes people give up until you get close to them, which in case they start to shoot at you, and the nuetralization shot tends to kill people. The game tallies your 'Bad Cop' rating, shooting people for no reason, and such, but it's so easy to get a 'Good Cop' rating (break even, all you need is +0) that eventually you'll just start running people over to get to a jaywalker. I'll admit some of the crimes are funny, but more often than not, you'll just see the same 'Street Fight' crime over and over again. So the game isn't really much fun in 'Do Whatever' mode as in Grand Theft Auto. At least in GTA the people were kind enough to stop when you crossed the street. People like to run you over, and then back up, just to hit you again. Fun. Also, criminals have a habit of stealing cars to run away from you. It's irritating to drive them down, wreck their car, have them 'give up' just as soon as you get close, they run past you, get in your car, and drive away. I know it's realistic that they can give up, but you can only arrest them if they've given up or are knocked out (dead), so trying not to kill them is a hassle.

There is however, a story mode, and it is done very well. Things you did wrong show up in movie scenes (let someone get away and in the story they don't act like you magically got him/her) and you can redo the missions to get the good (or bad) parts if you wish. These missions are compromised of 'Driving' 'Tailing' 'Fighting' 'Sneak around' and 'Shoot anything that moves'

Driving and Tailing are a lot like 'Do Nothing' mode but you get a timer or you have to chase a car or something. Not as fun as the others, but challenging sometimes.

'Fighting' is kind of clunky, you get several attacks, grapples, the grapple button however seems to mean 'grunt like an idiot, and get hit in the face'. You can kick, jump kick, punch, block, and do various combos to stunned opponents. This would be a lot better if the enemy didn't auto block all the time, or if the grapples worked more often than not. I don't know, maybe I just sucked.

'Sneak Around' mode is kind of pointless and wasted in the game. They could have done a lot more with this, but it's more like, walk slowly and hit the Square Key mode. You can crouch and sneak, but the obstacles are taller than Kang, so there isn't any point. You can just run up and karate chop anyone. You're given 3 unaimable tranq darts, which, come in handy, if you're lucky, and then there is the 'kill' command, which lowers your score, and your reward points, and takes longer than just biffing the people. I guess it's usefull if one guard gave you some trouble and you had to restart, or you're particularly sadistic.

'Shoot anything that moves' This is actually fun. The game should be more like this. However there are some annoying things. The controls, and the twinking, lets things happen that shouldn't, usually in your disfavor. I tended to start to go into slow motion dives at inopportune times, or first person aim when I thought I had a rapid fire gun. Several times I went through solid objects, but I'll get more on the twinks later. ''Hell hath no fury like Nick Kang pissed off''.. I'm sure they have one, but I think Nick Kang pissed off is up there in the top 20. Prepare to step over a small mountain of quickly evaporating corpses.

Twinked Out!

Golden Rule
'' For every twink, there is (hopefully) a counter twink''

This game needs to go back and get some debugging done. Prepare to slide through walls, push people through unpassable things. Heck I've driven a van into a wall, and appeared on the other side. The good thing is, it's so twinked out, that if you do twink somewhere where you're not allowed to be, you can usually force yourself back out the way you came in. The bad thing is people you're chasing twink into places you can't get to them. Animations like to twink out, if, per say, you're arresting someone, putting the cuffs on them, and someone bumps into you, you'll cuff the air, and the person will fall funny through the sidewalk. There are so many people, this happens often. Sometimes people get stuck on random things, and become 'glued' to them, and can't be interacted with, unless they untwink out of it. This is particularly bad when you're trying to arrest someone. The camera tries to go through things to give you a good view, which is good, but sometimes you get a view from inside someone's head, where you can see their eyeballs all round, and their teeth, inside their head, and it's downright creepy.

Graphics:
9/10
GTA fare, not too bad, I'd give less, but the map of LA is HUGE.. it's got to be the size of several Liberty Cities.

Music/Sound:
5/10
I don't like the rap much, and there is no alternative.. the voices are done well, but Kang has some pretty lame things to say, and he says them often, even when he shouldn't (like at the shooting range).

Gameplay:
4/10
The modes are nice, but under done, and the game feels like a beta with all the control problems and the massive twinking. The fighting makes me get frustrated at the controller. Frisking people tends to make you tackle them.

Fun Factor:
7/10
It's fun.. for a while.. and then it gets annoying. It's ok to play if you play it with someone so you laugh at them getting mad, or mutual laughing at the bugs in the game.

Replayability:
2/10
The game.. is short.. like.. two day short. Everyone I know that played it for a good while beat it in 2 or 3 days. That's everything, all upgrades, all cars, all missions, even the alts. GTA at least took a while. And the 'Do whatever' part of the game is annoying because of the citizen and driver AI's.

Overall:
3/10
Rent or Buy? I'd say rent. It's ok to play for 3 or 5 days or so, but owning the game just makes you mad you spent 50 dollars on something you beat before you got used to it. I didn't buy it, my friend did, but his first words on seeing the 'best' ending was 'Yeah.. that was worth 3 dollars'. The game feels like it's unfinished, and once you do beat it, it becomes too annoying to play again, unless you find someone new to show it to, for sheer laughability.

Short, albeit sometimes fun, and HUGE map, lots of crime to solve (good god is there), but lack of a lot of Story Mode things to do, as well as twinks and bugs, and bad controls, make Streets of LA a 3/10 in my opinion.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 12/12/03