True Crime: Streets of LA

This was a great game for it's time. This game incorporates martial arts, car chases, shootouts, hostage situations and some stealth missions. One of the things I really liked about this game was that you could create your own music playlist for fight sequences by accessing and selecting your own personal music data. The game play in this game will have you feeling like an action hero in a typical 90's undercover cop movie. You can accommodate vehicles and frisk suspicious persons on the street. My only complaint was that I wish there were more vehicles besides cars in this game. It can get a little bit boring roaming freely through the map. But if you stay focused on following the tasks and continue to complete your missions, you will maintain a value of excitement and stay entertained.

True Crime is the type of game that you sit down at, have a good time and then you want to play it again. It isn't Grand theft auto and it isn't driv3r but it has some cool features that none of those games have. So if you want just a good, easy to pick up game which has no real depth or heavy plot then choose True Crime: Streets of L.A.

Graphics: 6/10 (big city but spread out and dull) Sound : 10/10 ( Loads of hip hop gangster music) Gameplay: 9/10 ( Some cool features but some flawed controls) Overall: 8.5/10 (A good game to sit down and play for a while)

I have True Crime Streets of La for PS2. Believe me or not, this is the only video game that I have for my PS2. I literally play this game every single day. What I like about this game is that if you collect 30 dog bones, you can unlock and play Snoop Dogg as a undercover cop. All he have to do is solve street crimes. It's really nice that True Crime Streets of La is the GTA clone, which means similar to GTA, except that in True Crime, you have to play as a law enforcement officer. In GTA, you can do whatever you want like missions or killing people, stealing cars, robbing places, One of my favorite police undercover game ever!

True Crime owes a lot, if not everything, to the Grand Theft Auto series. Indeed it is very difficult these days to have a free-roaming action game and not compare it to GTA but True Crime is so alarmingly similar that I'm surprised Rockstar didn't try to sue.

The story of True Crime is right out of a direct-to-video action film of the late 80s. It starts out as your typical renegade cop shoots first and ask questions later kind of pulp but ends up being about ancient Chinese wizards, huge fire-breathing dragons and sewer-dwelling zombies. If it began far-fetched then what it ends up as is just plain weird. However, that's not to say you'll not have fun. The plot is spread out over 9 different stages each with about 10 individual missions. It's possible to replay your favorite missions too.

True crime has 5 different styles of play. First their is the free-roaming bit where you can run all over LA solving street crimes. There there's the car chases in which you run bad guys (and sometimes airplanes) off the road. Third is the stealth missions in which you must sneak into places unnoticed and render unconscious anyone you see. Fourth is the one on one combat and fifth, my favorite, is the shoot-em-up levels, where you can do loads of stunts and diving through the air blasting away at bad guys. The slow motion as you zero in on the targets is brilliant. But I would have preferred if the game was bloodier. A few splatters here and there ain't enough.

But much of this game is boring, aesthetically at the least. The geographically accurate LA is impressive but it's so unbelievably bland. The dullest colors are used to paint the environment and the city is pretty made up of grey-scale. The cars also cannot do stunts. Which is crap. How brilliant would it be to drive right off the freeway and fly into the sky before plummeting 100 feet? Too bad, you can't do it because of the pointless invisible wall.

Pros:

Loads of action.

Blowing up stuff is fun.

Cool cut scenes with funny dialogue.

Great tunes.

Cons:

Some missions are boring.

No stunts.

LA is bland and thoroughly NON-interactive.

The fights with General Kim are IMPOSSIBLE!

Loads of very long loading times!

No matter how disappointing some parts of the game are I will still be getting the sequel, True Crime: New York City. But please do not make as boring as LA was and cut out those awful loading times!

Graphics B+ Sound A Gameplay A- Lasting Appeal A-

Some comments already referred to this game ripping off GTA, and that's basically its only appeal. It's missing a lot of the things that made GTA great, though. The radio only plays rap music, there's no humor, you only get one gun (unless you kill somebody and take theirs, but then it's only until it runs out of ammunition--then you lose it), and the story is really lame and hackneyed (so are GTA's, but there the references are at least tongue-in-cheek). Also, the game was pretty clean-cut and had this stupid Karma system that punishes you for breaking the law. "He's a cop. He's supposed to always obey the law." Well, ok, but that makes for a really horrible game premise. The whole thing seemed a lot like Activision was trying to capture the GTA market while avoiding the backlash from religious groups and over-the-edge "WHAT ARE WE TEACHING OUR CHILDREN??" housewives that Rockstar received for their games. Unfortunately what resulted was a huge piece of boring, bug-filled **** that was just barely interesting enough to let the plastic on the Vice City CD cool off for a week.