True Crime: Streets of LA

"True Unberable Agony"

INTRO: Reading previews and the like, I thought that this would be the heir to GTA. Not so. I thought this game was going to be a more linear GTA with kung fu. And for the most part I was right except that it would be fun any at all of course. In fact this game actually is very linear, although it tries to decieve you with side missions. This game takes 2 concepts tries to combine with the GTA phenom, and we get the worst game for the PS2. Hands down this truly is the worst game for this system.

GRAPHICS: True Crime takes a more picture perfect look than the pastel look of GTA. And to be honest, it looks quite good. The cinematics themsleves are done very well. Character detail is done well too. But the enviroment and weapons are uninspired. The have a very bland look, which helps worsen the repetitive feel of the game. One the goals for this game is to creat an acurate portrayal of L.A. I have never been to L.A. so I can not verify whether this is true or not. But I am told it is. If it is then at least you can use the game as a map. That is about the only use you will get out of this game. But for $50 you would better spend your money on the regular stationary map instead, it almost looks better too than this.
Score 7

SOUND: The music is good and varied. Most people will like the soundtrack overall. The voice acting is pretty good too, despite no big name acotrs here. The sound effects are decent too. They are not really that noticeable, so at least this one part of the that dosen't bring down the game.
Score 8

CONTROLS: Here is the game really shoots itself in the foot, no wait I better say commits mass suicide. To begin the driving portions are horrible. The controls are unresponsive and don't allow any error when error is in high occurence (such as running over pedestrians). This is an unaceptable mistake because you will spend much time driving from point A to point B. The auto targeting is the screwest thing I have ever seen. The controls for fighting are VERY unresponsive and makes the game even more frustrating!!
Score 1

STORY: Go to Blockbuster, rent a Steven Segal or Chuck Norris movie, and you might know more about the plot than the writer of the script does. Very, very generic. On top of that it does not even try to make sense!
Score 1

REPLAY: There is none. After you beat the game there is nothing to do. Sure there are the endless side missions, but they are the definition of reptitive. You will play the side missions for 30 minutes and seen all of the variety this game hast offer, both in and out of the story mode. To add insult to injury in one solid night of gaming you could beat the story mode!
Score 2

GAMEPLAY: The concept of the game is to be quickly and in a very linear fashion be escorted through the story mode by hand to hand combat, gunplay, and driving action. This sounds very good. The had combat is actually pretty deep too, but it's frustrating to actually use. The story mode is supposed to set up the side missions where meander around getting upgrades through supposed hours of reptitive gameplay. Nice concept, but very poorly executed. The game also has a good cop rating system. Where you gain for completing missions and picking up petty thugs, and lose for killing innocent bystanders. Sounds easy right? Wrong. You will frequently kill people by driving and the quircky auto target system in gunplay. To make matters wors if your rating is low then you can't upgrade. The upgrades include weapons training, new moves, martial arts training, etc.
Score 4

Average: 3.9

Rent/Buy: Neither , I need not explain this after what you have just read.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 03/24/04