True Crime: The Streets of LA

[Nevermortal 0]

I checked this out from my store today and boy, oh boy does this NOT meet my expectations.

 

- The graphics are pretty bad. I can understand that there's an awful lot of terrain to cover since they have rendered pretty much ALL of Southern California, but there's tons of slowdown, 'single-panel' graphics (especially the trees, oh god, the trees), and some bad camera work during the 'sneak' missions.

 

- Driving is the best part of the game, but the only drawback is that there's an awful lot of pedestrians, and if you kill them, you're FUCKED, plain and simple, because they contribute to you not advancing in the game.

 

- In the game, you've got a Good Cop/Bad Cop scale. If you have more Bad Cop ratings, then you can't advance. And its quite easily to rack up a Bad Cop scale simply by doing the things that you would think that you have to do in order to advance.

 

- The idea to being a good cop is to apprehend criminals, but most of the criminals you find either run, shoot you, or engage you in hand to hand combat, making it impossible to arrest them properly, thus adding to your Bad Cop rating. The only criminals that give up are domestic disputes, unarmed muggers, and rapists. The rest try to fuck you up royally.

 

- One of the major flaws is that it tries to be too many games at once, and thus, it just becomes an average game. The driving and causing random destruction is SO FUN but if you do it, you're screwed. The shooting is overly simplistic. The run & gun, dodge, and stealth missions are very watered down and simple. Those parts reminded me of the mind-bendingly hard Dead to Rights, just without the difficulty.

 

- The voice acting rules. Chris Walken, Michelle Rodriguez, Michael Madsen are all in there, plus others. However, the animators sucked at matching the mouth movements to the talking. Its all out of wack, I feel as if I'm watching some bad kung fu movie.

 

- The soundtrack is absolute ASS. Now, I know its rap, and I don't like rap, but my god, this isn't even good rap. For a game with over 50 tracks, I keep hearing the same ones over and over. The only standout tracks are a Parliament Funkadelic track, Megadeth's two, and surprisingly enough Taproot's "Poem" & Deftones' "Minerva", only because I've actually heard them before and can slightly get into them while doing my thing in the game.

 

Oh well, I hope the GTA 2 pack for XBOX is better than TC: TSoLA. And yes, I'm the only man to never, ever play the GTA games.

[Downhome 0]

Oh lord, I have the True Crimes demo, and it was a painfull bitch. It didn't make me want to buy the game at all.

 

I might pick up the game though, but damit to hell, it best be better than the demo that I have.

[razazteca 0]

Was it the PS2 version or another console?

[Guest cpac]

That is odd, I am loving the game so far. Anybody who bitches about ingame music is a fucktard to me. HELLO MCFLY, HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF THE RADIO???? God your acting like you are being forced at gunpoint to listen to it. PLus if you have the xbox version you can make a custom soundtrack. Yes the controls are not the greatest but I am sure it is just the learning curve and getting used too. I think the story, voice acting and the fighting are all well done. Good game maybe a must buy if you are interested in it. So far it seems worth the 50 bones. Oooo and I think the graphics are pretty good and we all know that graphics dont make the game it is the gameplay that does that.

[Guest pinnacleofallthingsmanly]

Fuck what you heard, this game is the shit.

[Guest Metallica]

I've been playing this most of the night so here are some quick thoughts on it!

 

* The controls take some getting used to. The cars seemed pretty sensitive and you can only drive using the analogue stick. As you play though, you can find training centres around the city where you can take a test and if you pass, you acquire a new skill (either a driving, shooting or fighting skill). So after a while little things that you'd expect to be there from the start such as quickly turning the car around in the opposite direction can be pulled off. If you complete an episode with 100% success, you can take another mission to get a bonus upgrade. So if you take the driving mission and win the race, you'll unlock a better car. I passed one before and ended up with a nice looking GTA style Banshee.

 

* At the start, you choose a name for your save game. Do this wisely because the name appears as your car's registration number! Pretty cool, mine says "MetalcA"

 

* You can frisk EVERYONE for no reason! If you find a weapon or drugs on them, you can arrest them. It looks cool too, you spin them around and hold their arms behind their backs and pat them down. I did it to a woman before and she said "I feel like SO violated" lol...another guy said "DAMN, did anyone get that on video tape?!".

 

* The city is amazingly huge. In GTA you eventually get to know your way around, I can't see that happening in this game lol Everything looks great too and there aren't any loading screens so you can drive from one end of the city to the other without interuptions.

 

* There isn't a great deal of traffic but when you're racing somewhere with just over a minute on the clock, you don't want busy streets..

 

* The fighting is pretty good and the environments are totally destructable so it looks cool to kick someone into an oven and have them catch fire, or for chairs, walls, tables etc to crumble upon impact. You can upgrade your fighting skills as the game goes on also so you'll learn new finishing moves or ground moves. I fought some cooks in a kitchen, all were carrying knives/cleavers, if you press O you can disarm them and then pick the weapons up for yourself, a few moves later and they're on the floor with a blade in their head.

 

* If you fail a mission, you don't need to re-take it. The story route will just branch off down another path. You don't get to take the bonus upgrade missions if you don't complete an episode properly though..

 

* You're alerted of crimes through your radio..you can take down the bad guy by using deadly force, neutralising them with a leg, arm or groin shot, flashing your badge, firing a warning shot in the air, pulling up to the scene with your siren on, or beating them up till they're knocked out and you can cuff them.

 

Random crimes that occur include an LA Vampire who's stolen an ambulance with blood supplies, rapists trying to get jiggy with a hooker on the street, kidknappings, rapper drive by shootings, pyromaniacs, muggers, angry sports fans rioting, street racers, DUIs...

 

 

Anywayz, I think it's a very good and addictive game so far. If you play it without expecting anything as awesome as GTA/ GTA VC and play for a few hours you should enjoy it...and you'll really enjoy it if you're a rap fan

[Guest cpac]

My sentiments exactly metallica. True crime is a very fun game with good qualities to it. Of course there are some problems with the game and it turns people off to it. Especially when they compare it to grand theft auto 3 or vc. I do think true crime stands up great on it's own and is a must buy....

[DangerousDamon 0]

it's a very fun game. but sometimes i hate that damn bad cop/good cop thing. i have a -25 bad cop rating, and it takes forever to bring it up.

 

 

 

time to pat down old ladies for shotguns.

[Damaramu 0]

I'm confused! Rent or not rent!?

I'm leaning towards rent.......

[Nevermortal 0]

Rent.

[caboose 0]

I purchased True Crime a couple of days ago and am only a few episodes in, but I find myself preferring it to GTA already. Maybe only because I've played GTA3 and GTA:VC to death but True Crime is a very nice alternate to GTA. Definatley rent it first though, as it takes a while to fully get sucked in.

[Guest pinnacleofallthingsmanly]

Rent it.