Reviewed: February 5, 2004
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Activision

Developer
Luxoflux Corp.

Released: November 4, 2003
Genre: Action
Players: 1
ESRB: Mature

8
7
7
8
8.7

Supported Features:

Xbox and GameCube owners who have been starving for their taste of the GTA pie were quick to jump on this title. Rockstar has since released their Xbox versions of Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City, perhaps stealing a bit of True Crime’s thunder, but that doesn’t make this game any less remarkable.

If I had to actually compare True Crime to any other game it would be Mafia. Where GTA gave you a virtual blank canvas and the freedom to paint your criminal career however and whenever you saw fit, True Crime follows the more linear approach of storytelling with defined goals and mission objectives. Sure, you are still free to wander the massive city of L.A. recreated in stunning detail with several hundred square miles, but the experience isn’t as rewarding when you deviate from the narrative.

True Crime has some very ambitious design elements, mixing in plenty of driving, shooting, foot chases, exploration, martial arts, and even a clever blending of RPG elements that allow you to have your lead character evolve throughout the game. The game diverges into several paths with multiple endings based on your performance. Perform your duties poorly and you can finish this game in less than six hours. Stay on your toes and you can prepare to spend a week of solid gaming in virtual L.A.

Karma plays an important part on how the overall game flows and unfolds. If you follow proper police procedures you get good karma. If you shoot first and cuff later you slip close toward the “dark side”. Yes, it’s a system very much like the Jedi Knight games only this time it actually affects the total game and not just a few aspects of it.

As previously mentioned, there are some RPG elements to Nick. You can visit the Dojo, shooting range, or driving school to improve your existing abilities and learn new moves and such. Again, you are free to do this whenever you want, but sooner or later you are going to need to get this story started.

The game is broken down into episodes with multiple missions in each. When you complete enough of the missions in one episode you are then allowed to move on to the next and further the story. The nice thing here is that you aren’t required to complete every mission, so if you get stuck on a particularly difficult mission you can skip it and move on.

Skipping or failing a mission results in the story unfolding differently, which isn’t a bad thing. It means you get to see some new movies and you can play the game through multiple times and get a fresh experience. Those of you who manage to complete every mission in an episode will get a bonus level that rewards you with your choice of a new car, weapon, or combat move. If you aren’t a perfect cop then there are other ways to earn these rewards.

There is a whole lot of content in True Crime and it is carefully balanced so you don’t fall into a rut or lose track of the main objective. To do well in the game you have to improve your skills and abilities by using the training facilities. But to enter these facilities you have to earn shields by doing normal police work, either story related missions or just random radio calls you receive while driving around town. This clever balancing act disguises what is otherwise a linear progression of missions by giving you the freedom to do what you want when you want.

Those of you wanting to rush through the game will find you can skip a lot of the training but in doing so you will only cheat yourself out of a very rewarding gameplay experience. By continually improving your skills you will increase your driving ability, shooting precision, and combat skills become a more effective crime fighter. By doing a bit of preemptive work you can ultimately make the game easier to play.

Karma is an ongoing issue but only comes into play further into the game where you must have good karma to continue to the desired ending of the game. Exploring the dark side of the story is certainly interesting enough to check out and just one of the many ways True Crime extends its replay value. You can even turn rogue cop and get the SWAT team chasing you down to a rather unsatisfying conclusion to your career.

Karma, much like everything else in True Crime, is a careful balancing act. Early on you will probably slip into the dark side as you make mistakes, run over pedestrians, shoot an innocent bystander, etc. but you can just as easily repair this damage with a little “extra credit”. Driving around town and solving random crimes will slowly build up that good cop rating.

L.A. is an interesting mix of having a huge detailed city that is strangely under-populated, both in traffic and pedestrians. One thing that is impressive is that the traffic is very good about obeying the signals. This is good in that you can predict what the other cars are going to do but annoying when you are in hot pursuit and are forced to stop behind a pack of cars at a red light.

There is plenty of criminal activity going on thanks to the random crime generator. Your radio will constantly being going off about some robbery, carjacking, mugging, or other illegal activity. Getting to the scene, stopping the crime, and peacefully apprehending the suspect(s) will give you good karma and reward you with valuable shields you can use at the training facilities. Some crimes include multiple perps and you have to catch them all to get the credit.

Criminals are very intelligent in True Crime. They will fight back until they deem it necessary to run in which case they are likely to commandeer a vehicle and make their dash for freedom. Foot chases quickly turn into high-speed pursuits and you get to shoot out tires or disable the car and resume the chase on foot.

The final thing to discuss is the controls, which are awkward at best. Eventually you will get the hang of the targeting system that gets even more challenging when you have to shoot while driving. The movement and camera view are controlled with the sticks and the buttons all work well for their intended purpose. The martial arts combat is nearly in a class of its own with sophisticated punches, kicks, blocks, and combos. This is some of the best fighting since Enter the Matrix and when you visit the Dojo’s and learn even more moves it gets even better.

The game world is very dynamic. If you can see it on the screen it most likely can be damaged or destroyed in some way. There are plenty of particle effects, smoke, fire, and gratuitous damage to the environment when you drive your car through something or throw a perp into a table or chair that smashes to bits.

Character animation is amazing, especially in the martial arts combat. Nick performs a variety of moves smoothly and they chain together in some convincing combos. The cars also move with a weighty feel careening around corners and bouncing up over curbs and they show real-time damage. The physics engine is realistic enough to keep the game fun and believable.

The cutscenes all use game graphics for seamless integration of story and gameplay. Everything is shot with very cinematic camera angles and movements to recreate that movie experience. The lip-synching is dead-on with the professional cast of voice actors who deliver the thoughtful and convincing script giving the entire presentation a very polished look.

All is not shiny glitz and glamour in L.A. however, and True Crime is not without its fair share of glitches and oddities. As cinematic as the camera is during the movies it can often get hung up during gameplay. This leads to some glaring clipping issues that will have you seeing through buildings or even viewing an endless void beyond the “world”. Sometime a solid object gets between Nick and the camera and instead of going transparent like most games you simply are unable to see the action until you move.

There is also a distinct lack of original cars and pedestrian models on the street at any given time. Those who played GTA or Vice City on the PS2 might remember that you can only find about a third of the available car models on the street at any time. The Xbox versions of GTA fixed that nagging issue but True Crime falls victim to what is apparently a RAM issue. Only a select few car and people models can apparently fit into what’s left of the Xbox memory after the cityscape eats up its sizeable chunk. It doesn’t affect gameplay but it hurts the reality factor.

The all-star cast features voices too numerous to mention but when Christopher Walken kicks things off with the opening narration you know you are in for something special. The script is professionally written and even the random lines of the pedestrians and suspects are varied and often humorous. The entire package is right on par with GTA quality but I still enjoyed the conversations and cutscene content in Vice City more than I did here.

Sound effects are all very nice and range from authentic engine roars, gunshots, and the thuds of kicking and punching to the smashing of wood, screeching of tires, and plenty of ambient city noise to bring L.A. to life. It’s all mixed in Dolby Digital for 3D spatial goodness.

Much like GTA’s hidden packages and unique jumps, there are plenty of hidden (well not exactly hidden, more off-the-beaten-path) bonuses and fetch quests. One of the more popular ones includes finding 30 bones hidden around L.A. to unlock Snoop Dogg as a playable character.

True Crime is a substantial game full of quality content. I doubt you could finish it during a typical rental period but if you plan on playing this game you should be buying it anyway. It’s a good and lengthy quest that should be experienced and not rushed through.

This version of L.A. is a living, breathing city where your actions have a direct bearing on immediate events and could even impact the story much further than you can possibly imagine. It’s this opened-ended type of storytelling mixed with diverse gameplay that makes True Crime: Streets of L.A. one of the best action games you can play on the Xbox.