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The shooting/driving/fighting game comes to PC.
When I first heard of True Crime I was like “Wow! A GTA game set in a real city.” That couldn’t have been farther from the truth. Unlike Rockstar’s gangster simulator, in True Crime you have to face the consequences of your decisions. But there are other little improvements over the GTA series which are welcome.
You play as Nick Kang. You’re dad was one of the best Los Angeles police officers the city ever saw. You’re not exactly a model cop but you get the job done which is why you have been recruited to the new EOD division. To solve the story you’ll need to play through many episodes - each consisting of various missions that have you fighting, driving, shooting or even using some stealth.
Activision labeled this game as a shooting, driving and fighting game. The missions in the game usually take one of these three roles, although there are a few stealth bits thrown in there for good measure. The shooting is effective since it automatically targets your enemies. The PC version of the game also lets you use “mouse-look,” meaning you can control the aiming with your mouse. Your main weapons always have unlimited ammo though you can pick up better weapons from fallen enemies. The fighting in the game is also very developed. You start the game with a small number of moves but that number quickly grows as you go about the game. The driving in the game feels excellent and the sense of speed does a great job. As in GTA, you can use any car you want. Along the way, you’ll also receive “random crimes” which are little side missions to get you more reward points and maybe some good cop points.
The key thing about True Crime and what separates it from the GTA series gameplay-wise is the good cop/bad cop meter. In any given mission, you can choose to blow up and kill anyone you want without a problem. If you simply take them down and arrest them though, you’ll get good cop points. The same applies for the criminals in the random crimes. If you kill a civilian for the hell of it, you’ll lose the good cop points. If you pass a certain stage in the mission structure and have a bad cop rating, you’ll go an alternative way. It isn’t too much of a problem since you can always replay missions.
The game’s visuals were pretty good, last fall… On Gamecube. Back then, I ignored the fact that the character and car models were just above average because I was blown away by the scope of the city. For those who don’t know: you can see every major street, street and back street of Los Angeles is captured in the game. You can spend hours exploring new areas of the city. As big as Liberty and Vice City were, True Crime’s Los Angeles dwarfs them. The streets look different enough and you’ll find the major Los Angeles landmarks. Luxoflux needs to start paying a bit more attention to their main rival, the GTA series, which receive numerous graphical enhancements when the game gets released on the PC. The texture work isn’t bad but they are a bit too blurry and “washed out.”
The soundtrack in the console game is excellent if you like hip-hop. Luxoflux added a lot of new songs, mostly rock songs, to balance this out on the PC. These bands include popular groups like Alice in Chains and MegaDeth. The sound effects are efficient, although nothing spectacular. The voice acting is very strong with lots of famous names like Christopher Walken, Russell Wong and, Michael Madsen. Be careful if you dislike cursing, since True Crime doesn’t let its M rating go for granted.
True Crime: Streets of LA for PC is still a very solid game, just not the upgrade I expected from the console versions. Nonetheless, the game remains fun to play and offers a compelling experience. -- Jose Liz, PGNx Media
---- May 26, 2004
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