True Crime: Streets of L.A. is brought to you by the team at LuxoFlux, the
development house responsible for the beloved Vigilante 8 series. In True Crimes:
Streets of L.A. you play the role of Nick Kang an officer recently transferred
to the elite E.O.D., Elite Operations Division. Nick Kang is tasked with taking
down the two major crime families in Los Angeles, the Chinese and Russian crime
syndicates and will have him traveling all over Los Angeles to get his bust.

Gameplay
The story in True Crime is pretty straight forward, your job is to hunt down
and remove the criminal threat the Chinese and Russian syndicates have been
creating. Through your hunt to end the criminal reigns you will frequently be
notified via radio calls from dispatch of crimes taking place. Radio calls often
include the location and what type of crime is taking place, with this information
you are free to engage the criminals in whatever way you choose, or to simply
ignore them and continue on. This is probably one of the greatest assets to
the game as it allows you to take a break from the story line and simply enjoy
the role of being a cop and busting small time crooks such as car thieves and
muggers. Unfortunately this break is needed quite often as the story of the
game is slightly lacking that draw to keep you fully interested and wondering
what will happen next.

In a unique twist to this growing free roaming genre of games, officer Nick
Kang can slowly upgrade his skills, while he won’t hit any harder, he
will be able to unlock new weapons, techniques for hand to hand combat, shooting
and driving. At the successful completion of every chapter you can free roam
and gain access to one of the locations for increasing your characters skills
for free. The normal cost of one of the various trainings is one shield; shields
are gained by successfully finishing a mission or stopping a crime, the better
scores are given for stopping the crime without casualties, as each casualty
deducts points toward the next shield earned.

The map in True Crime is simply huge and has exactly zero load time as you
travel from neighborhood to neighborhood, I was able to travel from China Town
to Beverly Hills without a slowdown in game play or single stutter. The map
features 250 square miles and 17 actual locations throughout the city, entire
highways, alleyways and side streets have been included in a very non-repetitive
design. The map is so large I often found myself getting lost as I traveled
the streets, if only I could ask for directions. The game features a map you
can use for reference in the start menu; unfortunately it lacks great detail
and doesn’t actually show every street that you can take in the game.
While the map isn’t a big issue as you have a small radar that shows a
close up of your current location and adjacent streets as well as important
locations, I did however have trouble finding out how to get on the freeway.
I guess that can also be called realism.

In a game featuring such a large free roaming environment the next issue becomes
the people within the city. The variety of people featured in True Crime is
a good addition, but every model does not seem to be available in every area,
certain types of people just cannot be found in areas and makes the game a bit
repetitive. You find yourself often frisking or chasing after the same people
if you stay in one neighborhood long enough, how many times must you find that
dope on grandma before she stops carrying? The models that are in the game are
well done though nothing spectacular, I was a little saddened by the lack of
interaction between characters, when arresting or frisking another character
in game I found officer Kang was not even touching them at times. The texture
work on the characters is well done however with the illusion of shadow and
original character designs, from bikes to hookers to the elusive mutant.

Control
The controls are decent, with such a variety of actions at your disposal it
seems the controls took a major hit. With separate controls for indoor fighting,
outdoor fighting as well as separate controls for fighting, and outdoor non
combat controls, things obviously get complicated fast. Having to push in the
analogue sticks to do the two many actions that make up a good cop, pull out
your badge and arrest people, can often be a little frustrating, you are forced
to put your gun away and stand up straight, removing your combat stance, then
press in the right analogue and while it is depressed, press B. All that to
arrest someone and in between the person can take off running at any moment,
open fire on you, or assault you, further more I often found myself attempting
to grapple the person as I did not press in the analogue stick enough and it
registered me as attempting to attack them. This becomes frustrating often as
you chase people down to frisk them and end up diving at them or any other combination
of actions that require pressing the analogue at high tension moments.

The plus side is the game does feature two control pre sets as well as the
ability to customize your own, I do not recommend customization unless you have
played the game for a bit, as you may end up switching a button someplace it
isn’t too helpful for it to be at, and have to change your controls around
mid chase. When I first began playing I took some time to familiarize myself
with the controls while running around and while driving, it’s been over
10 hours and I still sometimes dive when I want to frisk, or attempt a grapple
when I want to arrest.

The controls get considerably worse when in combat, with a mix of bad controls
and a bad camera when your back is against a wall or another object the game
often gets frustrating. Pressing backwards when facing one direction in combat
makes Nick Kang slowly back up instead of turning and running in that direction,
meant to keep you facing your opponent it often leaves you without many options
but to hope you out gun the criminal. The gun fights in the street also lead
to another problem, if you are blasting away at a particular target highlighted
by the target reticule and you kill them, the remaining shots you fire seem
to find their way to random targets in random directions. What would have been
a clean kill ends up leading to the death of a civilian and then a penalty against
your karma meter and shields. All in all I found the camera as well as the controls
very frustrating and requiring perhaps more time thnn it should to get fully
familiarizedwith all the actions.

The problem I had most with the enemies the artificial intelligence, the crooks
often ran directly at you, even when you have your gun drawn and pointed directly
at them. Some of the missions throughout the game have you sneaking around areas,
when on these missions you are given the opportunity to sneak attack, with either
a stunning or fatal hit. The problem with this scenario is that enemies will
not react to corpses or their stunned partners knocked out on the floor. At
one point I thought I was guaranteed busted and the guns were going to have
to come out blazing, luckily for me the enemy seemed to ignore his trusted partners’
corpse. I must say you are either dealing with the most unintelligent criminals,
which wouldn’t be a surprise, or someone slipped up when it comes to A.I.

The missions are the high point of this game, depending on if you simply like
to run around and fight crime or play bad cop and kill innocents there is something
for you to do, this all not including the main story that takes place in multiple
chapters featuring 7 or more missions per chapter. The variety of things to
do in True Crimes really adds to the enjoyment and replay value of the game,
including simply looking for Snoop Doggs’ bones if you wish to unlock
him, 30 in total hidden throughout the 250 square miles of Los Angeles.

The most impressive part of True Crime is the way missions vary throughout
game play, while you may conduct a mission once and fail to make it to the location
at time, what would normally have been a bar fight has now turned into a chase
as you arrive just as the perpetrator is fleeing the scene. Thus allowing you
to technically fail and still continue on with the storyline of the game. Each
chapter in the game has parts where there is room for deviation from the original
game plan, though it doesn’t seem as though all parts have a fail and
success counterpart, it is however a great addition to the linear game play.

Graphics

I must say the most impressive model and texture work done was on the enormous
variety of cars found throughout the game in various colors, and why shouldn’t
it be? In a game where you find yourself most often driving from location to
location, who would want to walk 250 square miles, you need a hot ride and some
good tracks to listen to. The variety of cars in the game rage from Hummers,
Denali-like jeeps, BMW-like sports cars to “Fast and The Furious”
looking race cars, complete with the hood painted a different color then the
rest of the car. The cars are fully textured down to the details inside such
as GPS navigating system, useless of course since it’s just a texture,
but finely detailed. All the cars offer a shine and reflective appearance adding
to the realistic feel when cruisin’ the streets of Downtown Los Angelos.
Every car in the game also contains its own basic physics for weight and speed,
so in a high speed chase you may not want to chase that Lamborghini with that
jeep you been bumping music in.

In addition to all the cars featuring their own damage modeling and zones for
disabling a vehicle as well as simply trashing it, the city also has a set of
damage modeling. Objects such as street signs, gates and even trees can be knocked
down as you plow through Chinatown in a high speed chase. In door levels also
contain damage modeling as you may be taking fire and the crate you were hiding
nicely behind is now splintered into pieces, or the pillar you were using for
cover is now missing a few chunks and the inside metal support is now visible.
When I first noticed this I was pretty impressed and after jumping out in bullet
time mode I felt as though I was transported to the Matrix briefly. The damage
modeling on the out door levels however is a lot less impressive as it doesn’t
seem to really react to you, if location A takes damage it switches to texture
B, the damage isn’t done relative to where you hit all the time. This
also extends to the cars, while the car is modeled in zones it seems, shooting
the tire specifically will apply a damage model to the general area of the tire
and pop the tire as well.

While on the topic of models and textures I must say that certain areas lack
variety, I often hung out in one area fighting the crimes I seen and found that
certain cars do not pass through certain areas, I am not sure if this is done
for realism, as you do not see many Lamborghinis in the ghetto neighborhoods,
but it also leaves you with maybe 7 cars max at times to choose from. The same
goes for people, you find yourself arresting the 8 max models on a specific
area, once again possibly done for realism, but slightly removing some of the
hang out and do good, or bad feeling.

Audio
This is where it all shines, the game features over 80 tracks, many of them
being exclusive to True Crimes and features many of today’s biggest names
in west coast rap. Artists who have contributed their talents are classic hip-hop
artists like Funkadelic, kings of rap such as Ice T and Snoop Dogg as well as
many others. The game features an editable play list that is broken into 3 sections
of music; Cruising, Fast Action and Slow Action, from there you can select the
tracks you prefer to hear and remove those you do not. All the music in the
game is uncensored, though the track listing in the game is, curse words and
other terms have letters removed to unsuccessfully hide their true meaning.

The sound effects are decent for gun shots, crashes etc. I did however notice
the steps in the game are not cued with the models actual steps and instead
this repetitive odd sound that begins when you start moving and often ends sometime
just after you stop. In general, excluding the footsteps, the sound effects
are nicely done and well detailed down to the various sounds of cars speeding
up.

One mixed reaction to the audio in the game comes from the lack of music as
you are patrolling the streets on foot, as you almost get into it as you are
cruising around and it abruptly ends as you give chase on foot. The atmosphere
of the neighborhoods often take over at this point with various activities going
on, characters walking in the street may stop and strike up conversations with
one another or a thief may run by, slam into a person and attempt to make off
with their possessions. The voice acting is well done down to the many sayings
of our E.O.D. officer Nick Kang. Officer Kang has various saying when he is
frisking a female or male on the street, commandeering a vehicle in the name
of police business and, even when he shoots an innocent, accidentally of course.
The variety does wear off as you play through the game advancing, due to the
sheer size of the maps and all there is to do, it is just a matter of time before
his sayings start to sound all too familiar.

On the topic of audio, the radio dispatch calls are nicely done; complete with
the code for the crime and down to the voice used, you are given the location
and the name crime taking place, often a very humorous crime involving top stars
of L.A. or, at times serious shoot outs or kidnappings. The variety of crimes
to take on and the radio dispatcher delivering all of them in a serious voice
complete with criminal codes is great fun.

Replay Value
True Crime: Street of L.A. offers many replay worthy features such as, replaying
the game to get the alternate missions and cinemas, making it to a location
just late for instance or getting caught at a part where you previously did
not will result in a your character taking a different branch in the storyline.
The standard police missions also add to the value, if you just want to roam
the town doing good as beat cop or harass people in the streets by frisking
them. There is always the good fun to be had blasting everyone and everything
that comes your way.

Reviewer's Additional Comments
While I found the story to be horrible, I did have some fun simply driving around
harassing people or stealing the tricked out “Fast & The Furious”
like cars spread throughout the level. The unique criminal events also add a
nice twist to the fun as I arrived on the scene of a star arguing with his many
girlfriends and shot him dead for cheating and drove off. Perhaps that wasn’t
how the game was meant to be played, but with the game play being so linear,
you make your own fun, you choose the punishment for a particular criminal.
The only question left is, Will you be a good cop, or a bad one?

Overall Score
Overall Score: 8.8/10 [Not an Average]

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