Customer Reviews

True Crime Streets of LA

5 star:		(46)
4 star:		(45)
3 star:		(34)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(23)

 

 

True Crimes of LA is actually a pretty good game. You get to explore a much bigger city than in GTA: Vice City, but the stale gameplay and such can easily bring this game down a notch. While more realistic in everyway, True Crime can be considered one of the more innovative games of this time!

First the graphics. The graphics in this game are ASTONISHING! They're almost realistic in everyway! Surprisingly enough the game looks like REAL L.A. (with the exception of there not being much traffic.). So as far as eye-candy goes, True Crimes does a brilliant job here.

Now the sound. Again, no mistakes here! Good sound overall, and you can't go wrong here. Sound effects are great as well as the music. Again, you're not going wrong. The only thing I can say is that if you don't like Rap, you may not like the soundtrack as much.

Gameplay is probably where te game begins to faulter. The game has a "Good Cop/Bad Cop" system which isn't a bad idea. Should you do things the way a cop in real life would (i.e. you don't kill those you capture, you only injure, you fire warning shots and only shoot people in the leg and such) then you'll be considered a "Good Cop". Do the complete opposite and you're a "Bad Cop." There is a meter that tells you on which side of the bar you fall on.

Good Cop/Bad Cop isn't too badly done, but it really brings down the difficulty level of this game. It's fun to drive around but the game is so simple to keep to one side. If you see someone rob a bank you can easily just hit them with your car and not kill them, which results in you being a "Good Cop". If you hit him and kill him, you're a "Bad Cop". This becomes simple gameplay should you approach it that way.

What also makes gameplay simple is that you can choose to redo any failed missions. Clearly you could try them over and over again until the game is done with. BUT you could continue and leave mission failed. If you do this it effects future missions. Missions are very realistic. You can go undercover and hope you don't blow it even. You can do various things that a cop would do. You can search them and see if you find drugs, weapons, etc. or you could flash your badge, which will result in a suspect running or something else.

What's not to like about the gameplay? Well, it's too simple for one thing. I already talked about how you could hit a suspect with a car and not kill them, and this finishes missions easily. The other part is that you could easily complete missions without shooting (just knock them out). The auto-aim is very nice however.

The other bad thing about the gamplay are those camera angles. You'll find yourself constantly repositioning the camera just to see some of the action. Because of the camera you could be "jumped" and never know who did it, or get shot from behind.

The game presents a branching story. The outcome depends on the missions you succeed in and whether or not you're a "Good Cop" or a "Bad Cop". There are tons of ways to go through the story but the final confrontation is the same. You "could" become a bad guy but it makes no difference.

The story is actually more like something you'd see in an action movie. You've got your average jerky character (Nick Kang) who doesn't want a partner and constantly refuses to work with his and goes at it alone. His father used to be a part of the LAPD but died working a case. Sound familiar? It should, and it's full of chase scenes, one liners, and everything else you could want in an action movie.

So while larger than Vice City by A LOT the game is actually fairly linear. The storyline is decent (although the main character takes a bit of time to like), the gameplay is nice and overall the game is pretty good.

The Good:
+Great graphics and sound!
+Though quite linear, TONS of missions
+Lots of weapons to choose from
+Branching story
+Multiple endings
+HUGE City to explore

The Bad

-Main character is unlikeable at first
-Annoying Camera Angles
-Missions are too simple

The game overall is pretty decent. You've got a lot of freedom to enjoy and a huge map to explore. A great experience.

I had been hearing so much about this game, and couldn't wait for it to come out, then I finally played it and was a little disapointed. I wanted to like this game so much more, but there were big-time flaws. Don't get me wrong though, there are also some good features as well.

You are Nick Kang, fresh out of suspension and onto LA's E.O.D. squad. Time to take the streets back and find out what happened to your father. Drive, fight and shoot your way through a huge, accurate recreation of Los Angeles. While playing the game, there is a good cop, bad cop meter. If you use deadly force on a suspect or kill an innocent, you get bad cop points. If you arrest a suspect or bust someone with drugs or a weapon you get good cop points. If you have a good or bad cop rating affects the storyline and the outcome of the game which is cool. The storyline: OK, the storyline is alright at first for a video game, but then it takes a "Big Trouble in Little China" twist and all of the sudden your fighting flying-demon heads and demonic concubines. Then the final ending is also pretty damn stupid, after defeating the last boss there is no additional information to the story. Also there aren't that many missions, and they are pretty easy. I got 100% mission and upgrade completion in 2 days.

The gameplay is really what prevented this game from being outstanding. When driving, it feels like you're drving a tractor on an ice-rink. The handling sucks, the cars are slow, and the controls aren't very good. When in shooting mode, you have an auto-aim which works pretty good, or you can zoom in for manual-more-precise shots. The problem is that takes a few seconds and you usually get blown away while doing it. When there are guns on the ground you can kick them up and catch them and start shooting which is cool. The fight mode has some cool moves and combos, but when fighting certain characters it doesn't make sense. There aren't certain moves or buttons to counter the other persons moves, you just have to hit random buttons and hope it will hit them some of the time. You can also pick up knives and penetrate an enemies skull to kill them, which is really cool. There is also a "Metal Gear" style sneak mode where you stay silent, hide from enemies and use a tranquilizer gun.

What adds to the entertainment value of the game are some of the other features. While driving around you get calls from dispatch about crimes in your area and you can but these criminals if you want. Some of funnier ones were: busting people at an anti-videogame rally, saving talk-show host Jay Deleno's car, stopping a truck full of fake Puma gear, and arresting a diseased prostitute.You can also walk around and shakedown anyone you want, searching them for weapons or drugs, there really is no point to it though, it only gives you good cop points. Throughout the game you also get to fight crazy bums and strippers!

The graphics are good, no problems there.

The soundtrack is outstanding, this best video game soundtrack I've heard so far. If you don't like rap you probably won't like it though. Voice-overs by Christopher Walken (nice!) and other celebrities, and Nick Kang has some funny lines.

Overall a good game, but not quite as good as I had hoped. The gameplay and story just weren't cutting it. It is worth a play-thru though, but I say rent it before you buy.

I've played this game on a demo on the ps2. It is extremely fun and it has many elements that make it worth buying in the future. Unlike GTA it has advanced hand to hand combat in which you can perform combos to take out your enemy. The gun play is truly awesome also. You can do "bullet-time" in any direction as much as you like unlike Max Payne in which you were restricted to only using it when you were able to. Also the driving is not like GTA at all. It actually is life like. The car turns and peels out just like a real life situation. The graphics are outstanding and can be compared to GTA: Vice City. You can't roam around as much as you like which can be a downside for those who excelled in the shooting of pedestrians and going on killing sprees and doing hit and runs in Vice City. All in all i feel this is a great game, and will serve you hours of fun, will soon be an awesome hit!

To anyone who thought that GTA 3 was revolutionary, but was disappointed with the Vice City's emphasis on gimmicks and movies over gameplay, and the Getaways lack of any useful Navigation system, this game is for you. Out of all the GTA type games out there (GTA 3, True Crime, GTA Vice City, Simpsons Hit and Run, and The Getaway), this is definitely the second best game on that list.

This game starts off with a huge part of L.A. While not a replica of the city (like the Getaway is with London), it has all the streets, parks, landmarks and freeways of the LA area. When I mean huge, I mean huge. While on an uncongested freeway, burning rubber, it still takes a considerable amount of time to get from one side of the map to other. The city map is a little too vague, but the on screen map in intuitive, and more importantly, street names are presented on screen, so you'll know if you're on Santa Monica Blvd or if you're on Highway 405. Also, the cars handle really well, the traffic is sparse and smart, and with your customized music, it's a joy to just zoom around.

This brings up the music portion. It's almost all rap, with a few heavy metal songs filled in. I'm not talking just some no name artists (but most of them are), but there is also major names, like Snoop Dogg, Warren G., N.E.R.D, and heck, I think there is MegaDeath as well. All the music is made to fit the atmosphere. The best part is, it's customizable. There are three different sections for three different types of gameplay (cruisin', slow action, fast action), each with about 15 unique songs each to play or not play. Simply amazing - I would say over 40 songs. The only problem is that you can't mix one type of music (e.g. slow action) with another type (e.g. cruisin'). So while I like the N.E.R.D song "LapDance", I can only hear it in certain situations.

Now to the gameplay. There are three basic types of missions - outdoor ones involving driving through the city, indoor one with gunfire, and indoor ones with martial arts fighting. All of these missions are short, so there is not much repeating or backtracking. The outdoor ones are the ones where it shines. The city is immense. Unfortunately, the missions do tend to be on the easy side, and are either tailing, racing, escaping, or just get to a destination. The indoor ones are not quite as fun, but the auto-aiming combined with bullet time movement makes it enjoyable, despite the camera conspiring against you. The fighting is slightly more annoying, as it is more button mashing than anything else, but again, it's doable. I hate all fighting games, so to me, it was the weakest type of mission.

The missions are combined into episodes. Each episode has six to eight missions, and there are eight missions to get to the best ending. There are two alternative endings that branch off, giving a grand total of 12 episodes in all. The best part is that all the missions are straight forward. You don't have to look into guidebooks or ask your friends for special tricks to beat any of these missions. Even so, beating all the missions are not required, so if there are some missions that are annoying or hard, you can skip them. This might result in alternative missions or missing some other missions altogether. Either way, you're never stuck.

There are also side mission you can do to upgrade your skills, or you can search random people on the street, or stop crimes and run down common criminals.

The only problem I have is one episode where it detracts from any sort of realism and where you fight demons, zombies, and dragons. A couple of these missions were extremely repetitive and so badly designed that it almost made me lose respect for this game.

All in all, it's a fantastic, immense, and polished game that I can't recommend highly enough.

Pros:
Huge city
Music
Customization of music
Graphics
Nothing too difficult
No gimmicks, guidebooks needed

Cons:
Dragons and demons missions
Too many indoor missions
Fighting was pretty lame
Camera angle is bad in tight spaces

Difficulty Level: Easy/Medium

Frustration Level: Low

Hours to Complete (100% of all episodes, all endings): 20 hours

When I saw this game, I thought it was a GTA type game. But when I bought it, I found out it wasn't. It's totally different. People are asking, "how is fighting a dragon 'True Crime'" well I'll tell you. If those losers bothered to play ahead, the would realize that he was dreaming. People these days!

Lets compare:

GTA:
-You can only chase people down in cars, barely any foot chases
-No slo-mo stuff
-When you get on a Vigilante mission you are the only one chasing the car

-No grappling, only punching and kicking.
-No Civil Unrest
-No weakness points on cars, only flat tires

True Crime:
-Cars chases, and foot pursuit
-Slo-mo
-Sometimes you can join a pursuit where there is already a pursuiing car
-Great fighting engine, with neat grapples and realistic moves.
-True Civil Unrest meter, so people will come after you when it reaches a certain point, whereas in GTA, you have to put in a code to have groups of people after you.
-Tire popping, gasoline tank weakness (hint, hint, explosion)

These facts and more prove that True Crime is true to the punch. Mind you I am a fan of both franchises, so I am not bashing GTA, I am just stating the facts. The GTA games are longer, but to advance to the next missions, you need to beat every single one, but with True Crime you never need to repeat a mission if you don't want to.

True Crime is the True Game of the year.

I went out and rented True Crime, I started playing at 6:30 and stop at midnight! In the game you play as nick cang, an L.A. cop and you go thourgh a seris of levels and opitional street crimes. Once you beat,aresset or kill a crimal you can take there guns. On the why you do things you get the title of good cop,bad cop or great cop. this is the best action/adventure game I've palyed,EVER!

I bought this game because I wanted to play a GTA-type game with the streets of LA, which I am very familiar with (Grew up near Crenshaw and Pico.)

I like the graphics. It's well done. The city might not resemble LA all that much except for few well known landmarks (e.g. the Staple Center). I like that you can fight hand-to-hand even though you can pretty much beat anyone if you press the buttons fast enough. The driving engine is simple enought although at top speeds, it does get kind of tricky. The missions are way too easy (they call driving to a spot on a map a mission.)

The controls and camera are what make this game from becoming real enjoyable. The controls aren't just tight and responsive enough.

Finally, the music. You are either going to like it or hate it. I like a little rap here and there but nothing but gansta rap with f-bombs littered all over the place. It gets REALLY annoying unless gansta rap happens to be your favorite genre. Activision needs to realize that someone like Nick Kang, the main character, might not even listen to rap. Again nothing wrong with rap, just a little variety would have been nice. Maybe even different styles of rap would have been nice.

This one is a rental. You could probably finish it in a weekend.

Aside from the obvious Grand Theft Auto comparisons, this game reminds me of a recent Activision game I played -- X-Men Legends. While their playability and quality are generally okay, both contain frustratingly crappy points that seriously chip into your enjoyment.

True Crime is so much a Grand Theft Auto clone that accusations of imitation are futile -- if that is a problem for you, you shouldn't be considering this game in the first place.

The pros:

- good audio and visual detailing. Pedestrians talk in a variety of characterizations, and their responses to your actions are pleasingly diverse.
- Angelenos take note: The geographical details of Los Angeles are very impressive. They obviously used a real L.A. map down to street names. In the game, I drove through two areas of L.A. I've lived in, and they nailed every single major street name (with the requisite modifications, "Street" for "Avenue", etc.). While non-L.A. denizens won't appreciate this point as much, Angelenos will get a massive extra kick out of this -- they'll be able to get around town without using a map.
- Michelle Rodriguez provides voice work. Enough said.
- I tend not to like driving games, but the driving engine in this game is simpler and a little easier to grasp. And I think it was wise that the designers chose to forego many of the narrow side streets, widening them to accommodate game mechanics. Too many narrow streets was one thing I didn't like about Grand Theft Auto III, and True Crime's street design makes getting around less of a pain, thus inviting you to more readily explore the city design.
- The radar is a lot less confusing than GTA III's, so it's easier not to be confused while driving.
- Good array of weapons.
- The game keeps you in the know about how many story branches you've missed or acquired, and permits you to replay missions any time you please. Also, you're given the choice to skip many missions and continue the story. That's heavenly -- it means if you're not good at certain types of missions, you still have a game to play.

Now the cons:

- As in X-Men Legends, the camera is abysmal. Activision somehow feels the need to make the camera a physical entity, and oftimes it will spin to behind a wall and refuse to move. I don't know why Activision always lets the game override your camera control (right analog stick), as in X-Men Legends, but this makes for some incredibly frustrating situations especially when you're fighting. No player likes getting shot to pieces just because the game camera feels like being stuck at an angle that prevents you from seeing your enemies.
- The auto-target is crap as well. Sometimes you'll get enemies coming after you, but for some inexplicable reason they and their cars will end up in between houses, blocked off by a fence or a short wall. And for some reason, you can't shoot through wire fences (?). However, since auto target can't be stopped, if you have an enemy trying to shoot you from behind a fence, you'll be stuck aiming at him whether you like to or not, and unless there's another target to switch to, you'll forever be doing circles around an unkillable enemy. Beggars the old question: Did they actually bother to test this?
- The hand-to-hand fighting system is boring and will give you Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Why? Enemies are blocking 95 per cent of the time, and breaking their "blocking stance" is a matter of luck, not skill. You basically hit the buttons as fast as you can and hope they unblock in time for you to connect.
- The stealth missions are unengaging, and the controls seems to gel up during these missions. You can hit the "stun attack" button and somehow not connect with an enemy one step away from you. And the "tailing" missions, where you have to follow enemy cars not too close but not too far either, are overlong, forcing you to whirl round and round to follow an enemy car that does ferris wheels all over town.
- Highways have good, realistic access ramps, but not enough exits. I checked against the highways I knew in real life -- they got the entrances right but not the exits. Why?
- This...is...one...buggy...game. I've owned it for a week and only played it for about three days, but it's frozen at least a dozen times by now. And as one internet user complained, the "manual target" function often fails to respond, which makes certain missions (eg. the "sniper" finales) unplayable.
- The manual target doesn't work well even when it's available to you. When driving and shooting at the same time, you're required to co-ordinate about five buttons at the same time to shoot at enemy tires and gas tanks. Feels like you need octopus limbs to pull off. And having to hold down fire for manual target to kick in is a drag. Grand Theft Auto III, Syphon Filter and even Thirteen had better manual-target controls.
- Horrible, drawn-out, amateurish voice acting from Christopher Walken. Just shut up already!

As with X-Men Legends, there's enough fun to be had here to warrant three stars. But I can't help thinking that many of the above issues are easily fixable. I just hope that the strengths prevail and the problems alleviate come time for True Crime 2.

Yes, rent it first. If I could, I'd give it 2.5 stars because that is all this game is....flat average. It does have replay value, but there are many MANY flaws. First off, the hand-to-hand combat system is possibly the worst I've ever used, the overall control setup is extremely cumbersome, the diologue stinks, and the game is just too short. If one chooses to simply play through the story, the game could be over within two hours. This is really just a good rental. I actually played it for the whole time that I had the game, which makes it worth the $5.00 at the rental shop. The feature of solving random, optional street crimes also provides to the gameplay experience, but other games have pulled off the genre in a much better way. If you want excellent hand-to-hand combat and you have the original Max Payne for PC, there is a free Kung-Fu download which is extraordinary. If you don't have the game, try out Dead to Rights. The shooting system and hand combat are much more fluid.

Wait.....did i mention that the Bullet Time setup in True Crime is horrible? The free aiming system that was available in both Max Payne games isn't there for Bullet Time in True Crime. Instead of simply slowing down for your dive and quickly rotating your aim, you must use the right analog stick to switch who you are aiming for. The right analog stick aim switch only works half the time by the way. It's frustrating because you can freely spray your opponents with bullets like you can with other mostly run-and-gun shooters.

Being able to update Nick Kang's, the main character, equipment and fighting combos is a nice feature. It makes things just a tad bit more interesting.

With an appropriate rating of Mature, there is tons of vulgarity in the diologue. The people on the street do carry on coversations and will respond in certain ways to Nick depending on his Good Cop/Bad Cop rating. If you run in to a few people with your car, be prepaired to be sworn at heavily. The S-Bomb is quite possibly the most used word in the whole game. So don't play this game with the kiddies around.

Driving is probably the most fun part about the game. The targeting system while driving actually works rather smoothly, especially for being the first game (I'm pretty sure) to feature a simultanious driving and shooting experience. Switching into the precision-aim option while driving slows things down and allows you to shoot specific areas of an assailant's car, such as tires and gas tanks. Outside of precision aim, the one good thing about the targeting system in this game is the auto-lock on the car that contains the perpetrators which Nick is trying to catch. But be careful, people and other automobiles are infamous for diving into your bullet path and you will frequently kill pedestrians and blast the tires of innocent drivers. Heck, maybe even a gas tank here and there.

One fact about this game that will probably raise mixed feelings is that this game is really never difficult or frustrating. The sneaking missions get extremely boring, but otherwise everything plays out in a simple manner. The advantage of the very short story mode is that it does keep the action from being repetative. About that story mode, there are 3 possible different endings...and all together, the game is still extremely short. After the games is finished, the nice things is that you can go back to anywhere in the game, weilding your new gear and sweeping criminals off of the street as mercilessly as you so please.

The amount of hype that went into this game encouraged many to purchase the game, and this game certainly didn't live up to it. When I rented the game, I had high expectations about the much acclaimed hip-hop game soundtrack. That had to be the worst hip-hop I have ever heard in my entire life. All the creators did is pick up the most vulgar hip-hop that they could find and put it in this game. The soundtrack is a deep insult to what hip-hop is supposed to be. True hip-hop fans will be disappointed, and people who already hate popular hip-hop will be adding a little extra morter in their Berlin Wall against the style of music.

If you want a chaos-ridden driver-shooter, the GTA series is probably a better fix. But if you prefer to be the good guy that is causing absolute entropy, then try this game out. You will find replay value in it's free-roaming style, but there are much better games out there that do a lot of things much better.

I got True Crime Streets of LA for Christmas and for a while I enjoyed playing it.
But the down fall with this game is the fact that it fails to hold the fun in playing the game.

Where Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City keep you coming back for more. True Crime doesn't really keep that interest, once the missions are over, all you can do is go round searching people and busting peoples butts who may have been just a little naughty.
Bikes and Helicopters would have been a great feature which Grand Theft Auto Vice City managed.
But a greater array of weapons like rocket launchers and grenades would have made it more enjoyable too.

It seems every gaming company is trying to make the next Grand Theft Auto game, a word of advice to the game companys leave it to Rock Star if you however want to a slighty different game and want to play cop instead of criminal then your probably like this game.
But this beats The Getway by a mile.

I rated
True Crime Streets of LA 85%
The Getway 50%
Grand Theft Auto 3 90%
Grand Theft Auto Vice City 99%