True Crime: Streets of LA

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!

"Aw diggity damn I gotta go" A game I first discovered years ago on my dads ps2 and had fairly great memories of it. Coming back to it in my 20's, I'm finding out a lot of this game was fogged up by my nostalgia. While yes, I enjoyed this game a lot, and found all 3 storylines fun and exciting, I also found that this "open world" doesn't feel very expansive or even interesting. The only thing you can do, side mission wise, is finding random crimes (which I should mention, are recurring and don't have any ounce of story of completion). Now, the reason you want to do these is because you get reward points, and after 100, you earn a badge which you then can use to get an upgrade of your choosing (weapon, fighting, or driving). It's pretty boring ngl, especially since the open world is kinda big, just absolutely nothing to do in it. So in that aspect, the game feels pretty linear, which isn't the worst, but not great either. The poor ending was kinda lame, but the average and good endings were fun stuff, although the story doesn't get memorable until near the middle/end of the game. The missions were fun for the most part, I even enjoyed trying out the alternative missions too. Got like 93% of my upgrades until I beat the game all the way through, so I'd say I did a pretty thorough job with this game. In all, I can't say True Crime: Streets of LA held up my expectations for it, but it's a very fun if maybe slightly average game that feels different enough from GTA to feel like it's own thing. Recommended.

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)

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-

Don't listen to frank gifford. I don't know who gave him a computer to use, but he's wrong.

Sure, there are games that will and have taken the GTA go anywhere, do anything gameplay and the attitude that keeps you playing, but there was so much put into True Crime that you have to applaud it. Russel Wong must have gotten a lot of cash for lending his voice to this game, because he's all over it. There are hours of his dialogue, wisecracks and his grunts and groans as his character, Nick Kang, fights. Christopher Walken is in here as well, playing the old friend of Nick Kang's father.

The major similarity to GTA is that you can do what you want when you want, and you can go on to the next mission when you feel like it. The twist is that you're a cop and if you act violently, you become a bad cop, making cops your enemy as well.

There is a large soundtrack- about 50 songs or so- that are unedited. There are also some nice cheats and options as well for replayability.

So If you're looking for a game to hold you over until the next GTA, this is definitely it.

Sound: 8/10 Graphics: 8.5/10 Gameplay: 8.0