True Crime:
Streets of L.A (2003/Xbox)
You play Nick Kang, a bad ass cop who has just returned from suspension. Your job is to fight crime and particularly the Triad and the Russian Mafia. While doing this you use a variety of abilities and items, including martial arts, guns and driving at insane speeds in your very own sport cars. During this Nick Kang says some of the cheesiest lines in computer game history, like “Whoop Ass isn’t just my license plate.”
Graphics 7/10
The graphics of True Crime are probably its strongest point
unfortunately this is necessarily a good thing. Don’t get me wrong, every thing
looks as it’s meant to, gun look good, the cars are shiny and the people have a
good feel to them. Each person is well animated and all of the cars take damage
really well. Because each time you are shot, your car will have bullets holes
in them, dent will appear and your vehicle will eventually blow up. The problem
is there aren’t enough cars or people in the city, which makes no sense. I live
in the
Sound 5/10
The sound is probably the most contested part of this game. Much like Marmite, you love or you hate it. I personally can’t stand rap, though one or two songs were not too bad. Luckily for the Xbox owners, they have the chance to change the rap music and put their own choice of songs on in its place. Though because of the sheer amount of rap songs there are on available on this game, it will take at least ten minutes just to turn them all of and put your own music in their place.
Making up for the sub par choice of music are the voices of this game, though they don’t make up for it by much. Each of the main characters voices has a distinct feel to them, though once you’re out on the streets you will be hearing the same voices over and over again. Your main character Nick suffers from this exact same problem. He has a lot of one-liner which he will say at particle times during the game. For example when you win a fight he may says “You fought the law and the law won”, though he may say this over and over again. Also the lip sync in this game is terrible; I haven’t seen it this bad since Sonic Adventures 1 on the Dreamcast, this adds a real feeling of rushed programming to the game and generally lower the overall experience.
Game play 5/10
Every game is about control and like the rest of this game the controls are not very good. Let me explain, first the driving controls. The button configuration is simple, A, accelerates, B, Brakes and the left joystick steers. But this is where the simplistic ends. The control of the cars and other vehicles has a seriously steep learning curve. It will take at least 10 minutes to get use to the handling of the slower cars; the fast cars are just awful. And to top it all of, when driving, pressing the L trigger actually makes you jump out of your car, which is very annoying if you have been playing any other racing game.
On to the shooting controls, that much is better than the driving controls. There are a lot of guns in this game and like real guns they have a lot of power behind them. Yet like most of the controls in this game the could of done with tweaking them a little more. For example like in most game you shoot by pulling the right trigger, same in this game, though in this game you hold the trigger down to zoom in, which means inside a hectic fire fight you may find your self zooming in by mistake. Also as I mentioned before, you can dive around like in Max Payne, though one problem is that unlike in Max Payne you can’t change direction in the air. So if you get shot from behind it can be a real pain, literally.
And finally the Fighting controls. They are generally simplistic and very limiting. Sure you have access to special move, but your normal move can be very stale and slow. Yet it’s seems that Nick Kang is not he only master of fighting in L.A, you walk up to any one on the streets and they fight and block like they’re Ku Fu Masters.
The game must be given some credit for its RPG like upgrading system though. Scattered across the city are the 24/7 Dojo’s which are places you can and must visit to gain new skills such as ground attacks, fast reloading and car manoeuvres. These will of course help you on your quest to solve the crimes in the city. To gain entrance to the Dojo’s you must have badges which are earned by solving crimes.
Another feature is the Civil Unrest meter, basically the more bystanders you kill the higher the meter goes, when it gets full the police chase you, if you kill even more then swat comes to kill you, in the words of the game, your screwed. You can evade both but it does take time and skill, that fact alone adds a touch of realism, not much though the fact that no matter how many of the cops you kill the bar can return to normal and everything is forgotten.
Story 5/10
The story of this game is as recycled as a glass bottled. If you’ve seen any movies like Die Hard or Lethal Weapon you’ll be able to predict ever single event that happens. Well at least until the end, lets just say that this game become very unusual, using a lot of Chinese mythology and a very large scaly creature. But that only if you’re a good cop and are able to reach that ending. Because there is two other ending available, though each of these are bad endings.
Replay 4/10
There is almost no replay value from the main story of this
game, there is no difficultly setting and any experienced gamer will be able to
complete the game in about 2 or 3 days. The only replay value of this game is
from the random crime generated, which creates crime for you as you drive
around
Overall 5/10
True Crime: Streets of L.A is a most defiantly not a great, it’s certainly not a good game, it just about an average game. Filled with to many graphical flaws, bad gameplay and Nick Kang’s attitude, this game is not something you want to own.