Punch, Kick, Drive, Shoot, Smile— Repeat as Needed
When first looking at True Crime™: Streets of L.A.™, it’s tempting to treat it as just another entry in the recently crowded crime game genre, but that would be a mistake. A big one. Get it?
Sorry, got a little carried away with my tough cop routine, but once you’ve played True Crime: Streets of L.A. you’ll understand why. Nick Kang, son of a detective killed in the line of duty, has taken up the mantle of his father, and he’s determined to take a bite out of crime, or at least kick it in the head and shoot it a few times--just to get its attention. Busted off the police force for “excessive violence” (wimps), he’s been recruited by a special squad to work the streets of L.A. the right way--his way, the shooting and kicking way.
Nobody stands in Kang’s way.
The game’s non-linear approach to storytelling is something many have tried, but True Crime: Streets of L.A. manages to really make it work. Scripted events are mixed liberally with random events, steering Nick toward one of several endings without ever placing an obvious decision menu in front of the player. If you decide to kill a suspect instead of questioning him, that will lead you down a different path. Playing the game again with different decisions will lead you to an alternate ending, but you can’t be sure exactly which decisions determined your fate. If you had let him live, would things have been better, worse, or just different? Give it a try.
Progression isn’t limited to the storyline, either. You can sharpen your own skills as you play through the game, and also increase Nick’s capabilities by playing through various mini-games. Go to driving school and learn how to pull off a bootlegger reverse. Stop by the dojo for some pointers on hand-to-hand combat, or drive by the shooting range for a little target practice.
And speaking of drive-bys, True Crime has freed you from the “both hands on the wheel” school of driving. Tired of chasing that carjacking punk? Lean out the window and let him have a few rounds from your pistol to show you mean business. In True Crime: Streets of L.A. you can drive and fire your personal weapon at the same time, in what amounts to a very satisfying change from other games of the genre.
“You don’t want to mess with me.”
Once you get him to pull over, jump out and give him the business up close and personal. Nick likes to show criminals the error of their ways, and his methods sometimes don’t leave a lot of room for rehabilitation, if you know what I mean. But there is a dizzying array of ways to let your fists (and feet, and bullets) do the talking.
Tossing thugs around the ultra-destructible environments is sheer joy, but once you realize that you can disarm the bad guys and turn their weapons against them, well the Hong Kong cinema buff can ask no more from life. After seeing the way that acrobatic moves can be combined with gunplay, it’s clear they’ve got to get Chow Yun Fat to play Nick Kang in the feature film.
But the game is also about L.A.—it’s right there in the title—so how does the game’s version of Los Angeles stack up? Brilliantly. The textures look great, and the game engine purrs along nicely, evenly feeding you new terrain even as you scream down the streets at high speed. I never noticed any stuttering or pop in during my time playing the game.
Just another day as an L.A. supercop.
The Los Angeles landscape has been modeled from actual maps, in a truly massive effort that gives you 240 square miles of city to explore. Realistic cars populate the streets, giving you a wide variety of potential vehicles to “commandeer for official police business.”
You’re not the only one casting his eye on a nicer ride, though. Carjackings are one of the game’s random events, and you’ll get to chase down a few if my experience was any indication. In fact, I actually had a car hijacked out from underneath me while I was commandeering it from the citizen driver! There’s nothing more fun than getting a call on the radio about a carjacking while you’re watching it drive away. “Yeah, I know,” I shouted at the TV, “It’s MY CAR!”
If the crime game genre has room for one more entry, True Crime: Streets of L.A. is a worthy contender for the position, building on the success of its predecessors and adding a lot of new ideas and capabilities to the mix.
