The greatest strength of this Luxoflux game, however, is the integration of story and layers of game design into one cohesive package that makes the whole thing flow more like an interactive movie than anything else of its kind. If the GTA games gave us a living city that reacted to almost all of our whims and left us on our own to generate fun for ourselves, True Crime gives us very specific things to do in that living city so that we might drive a genuinely compelling story.
It's the difference between your pre-school teacher leaving you in sandbox so that you might amuse yourself and her putting you in the sandbox to build a castle to use as a prop in a fable she wants to tell. True Crime gives you a purpose and a consequence for every criminal you bag and every civilian or cop you blast and the events of one mission are tied to the next mission all the way to the multiple ends of the game. Some might see this as restricting compared to the Rockstar franchise that defined this new sub-genre of free flowing action games. Even with major technical issues that do hold it back, True Crime does what it set out to do and to put it simply, it works.
Strategy Guide Available!
Own the Streets of L.A.
Learn the ins and outs of crime with our in-depth walkthrough, filled with secrets and expert tips.
Gameplay
You're cast in the role of detective Nick Kang. The prototypical hot shot cop with an attitude problem that we've seen in dozens of Hollywood blockbusters and B-movies. As we said you have the freedom to travel anywhere in the game's depiction of Los Angeles and you can seamlessly go from driving to operating on foot with the press of a button.
When you're on foot, Nick Kang can fight, shoot, flash his badge, fire in the air and roust suspects. Your driving skills from racing games will serve you well, but Nick can also auto-target or use precision aiming to shoot people or vehicles while driving. Using 24/7 training centers to improve his driving, shooting and fighting abilities, you can add even more functionality and offensive moves to Kang's arsenal but it's all done with a purpose.
True Crime uses multiple systems to keep you entertained. You have to complete missions to advance through the game's main gritty story, but you also have optional random crime missions and those optional 24/7 training challenges as well. All three of those systems are tied to each other and none are as optional as you think because of the game's good cop/bad cop karma meter, branching storylines and shield system.
If you're starting to get confused, just hang on because it gets deeper.
The game is broken up into episodes with multiple missions in each but you can only advance to the next episode by completing a certain percentage of missions in the previous episode. You can also fail missions, yet still continue on within the same episode, albeit with slightly different cutscenes and missions, until you complete enough missions to finish the episode. If you beat 100% of an entire episode you get a bonus cruise through LA where you can choose to unlock a special weapon, special car or special combat move. If you don't 100% an entire episode you can make up the difference with a mandatory crime patrol mission where you have to solve a set number of random crimes to make up for your shortcomings. All of this is to say that the game keeps you playing whether you're doing well and know what's going on or not.The initial levels of the game are simple enough and will fool many, especially GTA veterans, into thinking they're getting a cheap and easy gameplay experience. But as you progress, the game is going to demand specific skills: If you like the ability to shoot specific parts of an enemy's body or the ability to disable an escaping suspect's car with ease, you need these skills. These are skills that have to be earned by completing challenges at 24/7 training facilities scattered around the city. But to enter a 24/7 training facility you have to have enough shields accumulated to pay for the training session. To accumulate shields you have to do police work and solve crimes whether they're assigned missions or randomly generated crimes that you're alerted to while driving around town. This integration is how you end up mastering every skill available in the game and experiencing all True Crime has to offer. It's linear in that some events and challenges have to happen before the other but the beauty is you're still getting the freedom to choose what you'll do and when you'll do it.
The 24/7 challenges are scattered throughout the city and feature different goodies, some easier and more useful than others. For example, early on you'll notice that when you knock somebody down in a fight, they'll lay there long enough for a follow-up attack, but you won't know how to do it. Similarly there's a mission where enemies take innocents hostage and use them as human shields but using your zoom-scope shooting you think you can score a headshot, but it just won't happen for you. Ground attacks and precision aiming are specific skills that you can unlock at 24/7 facilities. You can even advance without these skills and finish the game -- but with a crap ending -- but your fights will last longer without ground attacks and your good/bad cop rating will be super negative because you will have capped lots of innocents in the process of shooting bad guys.
You'll notice you'll barely be passing most missions if you don't take the time to upgrade your skills. We're talking about beating minibosses with a sliver of health left and racing to locations with only two seconds to spare. You get the feeling that you should be better than that and the truth is you should. You just have to find how and where you want to invest in your skills. This is yet another subtle way that True Crime pushes itself on you and before you know it, you're hours deep into a game that you thought you'd knock out in an afternoon.
The good cop/bad cop continuum is important at specific crossroads . It will require that you have a good cop rating to advance, otherwise you're headed towards a less-than-great ending to the game. Your karma rating will most likely be low early on because your unskilled Nick Kang will be popping innocent civilians, rolling up on sidewalks at high speed and killing pedestrians and all kinds of stuff that you'll think is just part of being a cop in LA. The thing is, True Crime lets you hop in and out of any missions and episodes that you've unlocked so that you can re-insert yourself into the storyline at any point and replay specific elements.
For example, if you're a really bad cop and you know you're missing the good cop storyline (which leads to the good endings) you're best served by hopping back to a driving mission somewhere so you can solve some random crimes or even get some new combat or shooting skills so you can replay the main missions with more success. You improve your cop rating by arresting instead of killing and by generally showing restraint in all situations. The challenge, as we said earlier, is showing restraint when you have no choice but to bust a cap in somebody's ass. With precision shooting you can neutralize enemies with a shot in the shoulder or cause their vehicle to spin out rather than incapacitating it with bullets. You can even attempt to subdue a suspect by flashing your badge or firing a couple of rounds into the air in hopes of scaring the sucker into compliance. But the karma system is yet another subtle way that True Crime gets you into every single element of the game.
The interactivity of True Crime's Los Angeles is outstanding even if there seems to be a shortage of traffic and diversity among citizens at any given time. You can punch, shoot or search any NPC at anytime. Attacking for no reason will raise both your bad cop rating and the civic unrest meter. When you get critical civil unrest, the SWAT team will be dispatched and you will get smoked. It takes a lot of death and damage to send the civil unrest meter soaring.
The random crime generator basically takes some NPCs and gets them to start robbing each other, jacking cars or other crime and puts a blip on your radar so you can find it. You get credit for even heading in the direction of the crime to solve it but you get major points (in the form of shields) for solving it peacefully. If there are three thugs robbing somebody you have to arrest all three to solve it perfectly. The thing is the average citizens in True Crime are far more active and aggressive than the ones in either GTA game. We've witnessed sequences where we rolled up on a random crime scene in Nick's custom cop car, started fighting the suspect, who then hopped in our cop car and took off. We chased him down in a slow truck, incapacitated our now stolen cop car, the suspect then got out, put up more of a fight and then stole the slow truck we arrived in and left us sitting there with our burning, flat-tired cop car.
Considering a suspect or two can even brandish a pistol, sword or bottle at any point during that sequence, it's safe to say True Crime will keep you on your toes. And while the tendency is to ignore the random crime generator early on, it soon becomes your best friend and ally. That's right around when the crimes themselves become a lot more dangerous and complicated.
Beyond this you get realtime traffic that responds to green and red lights and nervous criminals who may just attack you out of the blue. The real traffic patterns affect you when you're driving and on foot so you have to pay attention whether you're in a high-speed chase or fighting on a busy street corner.
The control systems in True Crime aren't as intuitive as it could be. The auto-targeting system is very awkward at first but after making the adjustment it's functional. The targeting icon pops up and slowly moves towards the nearest target when there's an enemy nearby. While in a car you have to hit the shoot button to bring up the auto-targeting system which then works the same way as when you're on foot. When the reticule gets there you hit shoot again to squeeze off a shot. You can see the super slow bullets traveling towards the target and most likely missing if the target starts moving. By squeezing the shoot button and holding it, you get the precision aiming where you now have control over the targeting icon on the left analog stick.
Faster auto-aiming is an upgrade and very recommended when you start facing more multiple threats. The auto-aiming also ties into the problematic camera system that often gets lost and hung up behind objects. The auto-aiming will sense a target nearby which locks the camera so that you no longer have free control to look where you want. This is extremely frustrating and leads to you taking a lot more damage in a firefight than you should. Sometimes it will even lock onto an enemy you can't see or even shoot because of the game's major clipping problems. Aiming and camera problems plagued the GTA games as well, but that doesn't mean that it's not area that needs to be addressed. The fighting engine is very well done. It's one thing to get out of a car and start shooting people. But the attacks and combos you can pull off at will make a huge difference. When you're on foot, whether indoors or out, you've got a whole arsenal of moves at your disposal. Dead to Rights is the closest comparison we can make to the on-foot portions of True Crime. Your basic punches, kicks, flying kicks and throws are basically setups for the combos, finishers and throw moves you can unleash when you dizzy your opponent. Facing tougher opponents ends up making the fights scenes look like something out of The Matrix with all kinds of blocks and counterpunching. You can add running moves, ground attacks and group counterattacks through training, but they all blend together seamlessly in one nice fighting system. It's one of the best ways to interact with the Streets of LA.
Graphics
The visuals of True Crime are mixed bag of great and not-so-great. You never get a loading screen as you motor around the hundreds of square miles of Los Angeles and much of the LA you see can be destroyed either by fist, bullet or bumper. On the other hand, the camera can get hung up behind walls and will fight you more often than it should, especially when you're on foot and the auto-targeting system detects and enemy nearby. Then again, you're getting an extremely accurate representation of Los Angeles down to the streetlights, landmarks and quirky neighborhoods. It's not that the driving elements look better or worse than the on-foot segments of the game. Each part has its strengths and weaknesses but the sum total is just north of decent.
The list of the good stuff when it comes to True Crime's graphics includes the well done cutscenes that come complete with lip-synching to go with all of the marvelous voice actors involved. Whether he's on foot talking on his cell phone with the fine people of the EOD or back at headquarters itself, Nick Kang's scenes that set up and explain the missions you've just carried out or about to take on are all well produced. The particle effects when you crash into fences, trees, lamp posts and even concrete barriers are also very effectively good looking. While it's unrealistic that a detective of Kang's height and build would be able to punch holes in solid adobe, it looks cool when, in the middle of a street fight, one of his errant punches destroys a piece of the environment. Garbage, benches, tables and nearly any other item that looks like it would be breakable in real life can be smashed up convincingly.
The animations during the fight sequences are surprisingly well executed. Considering you've got an entire city represented, the fact that Nick looks as good fighting indoors as he does outside, is very impressive. As you unlock new moves and throws, the grappling and striking animations get more complicated and you can appreciate the difference from one move to the next. Even if the move has an inane name like "Kung Pao" it looks awesome.
The list of bad things about True Crime's look includes many technical hang-ups. There are far too many clipping issues that come up far too often to be ignored. Similarly, the camera ties into the clipping problems so that there will be times when the camera will float through and behind a wall or tree during a fight so that you can't see the action at all. If the fight flows in such a direction so that the camera dislodges itself from said wall, you might see that Nick and his opponent are both "phasing" into and out of trees, cars, bus benches or any other piece of the environment during their fight like a couple of pissed-off ghosts. True Crime is indeed an ambitious game, but it doesn't mean that an intelligent camera system and a solid looking game environment aren't requirements. These problems are just too significant to overlook.
Another problem with rendering all of LA is nailing the right amount of traffic, both vehicle and pedestrian, flowing around the city. There are only a handful of NPC models available here but you only see a handful of them at any given time. That is, when you're out on the street rousting suspects, you may grab the same guy twice because there will be six dudes that look just like him on that particular block. Same for cars. At times the streets will have nothing but SUVs and taxis out there, even though there won't be nearly enough of them. The next time you're out, there will be lots of cabriolets and luxury sedans. (Rockstar North did the same thing in the GTA series, too.) Inexplicably you can have all-out fist fights in the fast lane on any freeway whenever you want. Bumper-to-bumper traffic is the lifeblood of the City of Angels and this game needs a transfusion. The representation of the streets of Los Angeles might be the real star of the game. While accurately depicting every McDonalds and Starbucks spread across the I-10 corridor from downtown to the beaches would've been nice, we're quite impressed with the fact that every single street, avenue and boulevard is right where it should be. The rough parallelogram (you never thought you'd hear that one from us) defined by Pacific Palisades to the northwest, Marina Del Rey to the southwest, Downtown LA to the southeast and Los Feliz to the northeast is the sandbox for True Crime and every nugget of pavement between those points is as it should be. So much so that Los Angeles natives --or anybody who knows their way around La La Land-- will have a tremendous advantage when it comes to the timed driving portions of the game. If you've used a shortcut down a back alley to dodge the cops in real life, it'll probably serve the same purpose in True Crime.
Sound
Starting with the stellar lineup of voice actors and finishing with the comprehensive score to the game, the audio elements of True Crime are outstanding. In fact, Nick Kang's dialogue is the only knock we have against the audio and that's only because it's extremely corny, not because of Russell Wong's delivery. Thankfully, the irrepressible Christopher Walken makes up for the excessive corn with cool lines and even cooler delivery. The music includes original tracks tons of minor West Coast hip hop artists and platinum acts like Westside Connection and E-40 as well as classic cuts like "6 in the Morning" from Ice-T and even a couple of BONE Thugs-N-Harmony hits.
The sound effects are decent but the weapon, car and combat sounds all play second fiddle to the voice actors and hip hop artists. Even the radio dispatcher drops the occasional comedic gem when she's alerting you to some crime and/or the participants involved. The dry delivery when she's telling you about a Hollywood celebrity buying drugs on a street corner is priceless. Christopher Walken outshines all however as Kang's buddy and mentor when he takes over a flashback cinematic or other story advancing bit. He's also the voice you'll hear when you take on a 24/7 training challenge. His line when you pass or fail is short but sweet with a "Yo Slick! You rock!/suck!" It's classic Walken and the very reason he was included in this game. You'll recognize the voices of Mako and Michael Madsen as well when their characters take the scene but you're hearing Wong and Walken more often during gameplay.
We've all seen a ton of cop movies set in LA and from Eddie Murphy to Josh Hartnett, none of them strikes the balance of relatively cool yet still embarrassingly corny that Nick Kang pulls off. For every good line he has like "Double up on these, bitch!" he's got two hokey ones like "It's dim sum time!" and the aforementioned "Kung Pao!" Those are so bad, we're not even going to give you the context in which they're used. It doesn't matter. The comments from NPCs on the street are at least as varied and humorous as any that you might've heard in either GTA game.
The music in True Crime is organized to match the action on the screen so there's a driving mix, a slow action mix and a fast action mix of songs. With the scores of tunes featured in the game, we heard the same ones an awful lot. Fortunately we enjoyed most of them but looking at the list and hearing the same handful of each mix over and over again seemed a little fishy. This is partly due to the fact that when you restart a mission you're restarting the song progression for the soundtrack. If you take 17 tries to beat a driving mission, you might hear "Flashlight" 17 times. Since we can't import custom soundtracks we like having the ability to switch specific songs off and on in each individual mix.True Crime Streets of LA: The Soundtrack The West Coast rap scene is represented rather nicely on this sonic companion piece to Activision's violent, rogue cop game. The game, which is like a digitized impression of every Los Angeles based cop movie you can think of, just beckons for the proper whoriding musical accompaniment. Thankfully the likes of Snoop, Warren G., Bizzy Bone, and the West Side Connection step up to the plate and deliver a spate of bass tweaking burners.
Verdict
True Crime is an enjoyable game if you can clear your mind of Grand Theft Auto expectations. The integration of story and gameplay is very nice, but there's a strong possibility that the majority of people won't get it at first because the tendency will be to play this game as if they already know what they're doing.
The consequences of your actions and nonactions are huge in True Crime and dramatically change your level of recklessness. It's a storyline that unfolds like a criminal investigation in a good cop show but imagine that you can hop into any point in that show and interact with characters to change the outcome. Now imagine that that interacting includes a rich fighting component, a deep shooting mechanic and a full driving game and you determine when and to what extent you do what. That's what we've been given here. It's a lot of fun despite the burden of the camera system and other technical glitches.
It doesn't, nor should it, replace Grand Theft Auto by any means. True Crime has enough good to counter the bad and stand on its own.