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Very Good Game but probably not Vice City

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 82 / 86
Date: November 05, 2003
Author: Amazon User

True Crimes of LA is actually a pretty good game. You get to explore a much bigger city than in GTA: Vice City, but the stale gameplay and such can easily bring this game down a notch. While more realistic in everyway, True Crime can be considered one of the more innovative games of this time!

First the graphics. The graphics in this game are ASTONISHING! They're almost realistic in everyway! Surprisingly enough the game looks like REAL L.A. (with the exception of there not being much traffic.). So as far as eye-candy goes, True Crimes does a brilliant job here.

Now the sound. Again, no mistakes here! Good sound overall, and you can't go wrong here. Sound effects are great as well as the music. Again, you're not going wrong. The only thing I can say is that if you don't like Rap, you may not like the soundtrack as much.

Gameplay is probably where te game begins to faulter. The game has a "Good Cop/Bad Cop" system which isn't a bad idea. Should you do things the way a cop in real life would (i.e. you don't kill those you capture, you only injure, you fire warning shots and only shoot people in the leg and such) then you'll be considered a "Good Cop". Do the complete opposite and you're a "Bad Cop." There is a meter that tells you on which side of the bar you fall on.

Good Cop/Bad Cop isn't too badly done, but it really brings down the difficulty level of this game. It's fun to drive around but the game is so simple to keep to one side. If you see someone rob a bank you can easily just hit them with your car and not kill them, which results in you being a "Good Cop". If you hit him and kill him, you're a "Bad Cop". This becomes simple gameplay should you approach it that way.

What also makes gameplay simple is that you can choose to redo any failed missions. Clearly you could try them over and over again until the game is done with. BUT you could continue and leave mission failed. If you do this it effects future missions. Missions are very realistic. You can go undercover and hope you don't blow it even. You can do various things that a cop would do. You can search them and see if you find drugs, weapons, etc. or you could flash your badge, which will result in a suspect running or something else.

What's not to like about the gameplay? Well, it's too simple for one thing. I already talked about how you could hit a suspect with a car and not kill them, and this finishes missions easily. The other part is that you could easily complete missions without shooting (just knock them out). The auto-aim is very nice however.

The other bad thing about the gamplay are those camera angles. You'll find yourself constantly repositioning the camera just to see some of the action. Because of the camera you could be "jumped" and never know who did it, or get shot from behind.

The game presents a branching story. The outcome depends on the missions you succeed in and whether or not you're a "Good Cop" or a "Bad Cop". There are tons of ways to go through the story but the final confrontation is the same. You "could" become a bad guy but it makes no difference.

The story is actually more like something you'd see in an action movie. You've got your average jerky character (Nick Kang) who doesn't want a partner and constantly refuses to work with his and goes at it alone. His father used to be a part of the LAPD but died working a case. Sound familiar? It should, and it's full of chase scenes, one liners, and everything else you could want in an action movie.

So while larger than Vice City by A LOT the game is actually fairly linear. The storyline is decent (although the main character takes a bit of time to like), the gameplay is nice and overall the game is pretty good.

The Good:
+Great graphics and sound!
+Though quite linear, TONS of missions
+Lots of weapons to choose from
+Branching story
+Multiple endings
+HUGE City to explore

The Bad

-Main character is unlikeable at first
-Annoying Camera Angles
-Missions are too simple

The game overall is pretty decent. You've got a lot of freedom to enjoy and a huge map to explore. A great experience.

I am so excited!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 36 / 42
Date: September 05, 2003
Author: Amazon User

True Crime is dubbed as being the next GTA III. That's a pretty big bet, considering how good of a game and how sought after Grand Theft Auto III was a couple of years back. However, I believe that True Crime may be able to live up to what it says it can. First off, True Crime Streets of L.A. is being developed by Activision, a videogaming heavyweighr. Activision has the potential to make this game a hit. I just question how willing they are to make it good. So far, it looks to me like they are doing a fine job. At E3, the booth for True Crime was a hotspot for gamers, and the game was very impressive for all who saw it. The graphics were better than the GTA games, probably at least on par with the great graphics in The Getaway. True Crime featured 240 square miles of re-created L.A. territory, and the city looked great. The game just had the atmosphere of L.A. There was Beverly Hills, Hollywood, and even ghetto paradise within the game. There were hot rides in hot areas of the city, and old Buicks in the not-so-nice parts as well. (I prefer the ghetto life!) The people were good too. There were gangstas, ho's, businessman, snobs, everything that you would actually see in real-life L.A. Landmarks were recognizable, from the skyscrapers to the Mann's Chinese Theater. The sound was just flatout AWESOME as well. Cars were realistic, pedestrians chatted, music pumped in the background. And as a bonus, there will be over 50 beats from real life west coast rappers like Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. I am psyched about that!! I am a huge rap fan! The sound to me seems just as good or possibly better than the awesome sound effects in GTA Vice City. You play as a cop, Nick Kang, who can either be good cop, or bad cop, whichever road you wish to put him on in the game. And the game will tilt that way too. Be a baddie, and you'll be swarmed by vigilantes and even your fellow police. Be a good guy, and the game may be a little easier or a little harder, depending on your view. So far, True Crime looks awesome. It could give the GTA series a run for its money. Roll out the red carpet this fall. Here come True Crime Streets of L.A.!

True Crime not all it's cracked up to be

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 27 / 44
Date: November 15, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Admittedly, being able to drive around 240 sq. miles of Los Angeles is a neat feature. But I was disappointed with the game as a whole.

Unlimited ammo for your pistols is unrealistic. You have to fight a dragon. A dragon!!! How can you call something "True Crime" when you have to fight a freakin' dragon!?!

The replayability of this game is about zero. Once you finish all the missions, all you can do is drive around looking to bust street crimes. What you can play as Snoop Dogg? Whoop-dee-doo.

Rent this game before buying it. I bought it, played it for two weeks and returned it for credit on SOCOM II.

Not GTA but just as good

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 13
Date: September 07, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I've played this game on a demo on the ps2. It is extremely fun and it has many elements that make it worth buying in the future. Unlike GTA it has advanced hand to hand combat in which you can perform combos to take out your enemy. The gun play is truly awesome also. You can do "bullet-time" in any direction as much as you like unlike Max Payne in which you were restricted to only using it when you were able to. Also the driving is not like GTA at all. It actually is life like. The car turns and peels out just like a real life situation. The graphics are outstanding and can be compared to GTA: Vice City. You can't roam around as much as you like which can be a downside for those who excelled in the shooting of pedestrians and going on killing sprees and doing hit and runs in Vice City. All in all i feel this is a great game, and will serve you hours of fun, will soon be an awesome hit!

Good game, but I was a little disapointed

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: November 30, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I had been hearing so much about this game, and couldn't wait for it to come out, then I finally played it and was a little disapointed. I wanted to like this game so much more, but there were big-time flaws. Don't get me wrong though, there are also some good features as well.

You are Nick Kang, fresh out of suspension and onto LA's E.O.D. squad. Time to take the streets back and find out what happened to your father. Drive, fight and shoot your way through a huge, accurate recreation of Los Angeles. While playing the game, there is a good cop, bad cop meter. If you use deadly force on a suspect or kill an innocent, you get bad cop points. If you arrest a suspect or bust someone with drugs or a weapon you get good cop points. If you have a good or bad cop rating affects the storyline and the outcome of the game which is cool. The storyline: OK, the storyline is alright at first for a video game, but then it takes a "Big Trouble in Little China" twist and all of the sudden your fighting flying-demon heads and demonic concubines. Then the final ending is also pretty damn stupid, after defeating the last boss there is no additional information to the story. Also there aren't that many missions, and they are pretty easy. I got 100% mission and upgrade completion in 2 days.

The gameplay is really what prevented this game from being outstanding. When driving, it feels like you're drving a tractor on an ice-rink. The handling sucks, the cars are slow, and the controls aren't very good. When in shooting mode, you have an auto-aim which works pretty good, or you can zoom in for manual-more-precise shots. The problem is that takes a few seconds and you usually get blown away while doing it. When there are guns on the ground you can kick them up and catch them and start shooting which is cool. The fight mode has some cool moves and combos, but when fighting certain characters it doesn't make sense. There aren't certain moves or buttons to counter the other persons moves, you just have to hit random buttons and hope it will hit them some of the time. You can also pick up knives and penetrate an enemies skull to kill them, which is really cool. There is also a "Metal Gear" style sneak mode where you stay silent, hide from enemies and use a tranquilizer gun.

What adds to the entertainment value of the game are some of the other features. While driving around you get calls from dispatch about crimes in your area and you can but these criminals if you want. Some of funnier ones were: busting people at an anti-videogame rally, saving talk-show host Jay Deleno's car, stopping a truck full of fake Puma gear, and arresting a diseased prostitute.You can also walk around and shakedown anyone you want, searching them for weapons or drugs, there really is no point to it though, it only gives you good cop points. Throughout the game you also get to fight crazy bums and strippers!

The graphics are good, no problems there.

The soundtrack is outstanding, this best video game soundtrack I've heard so far. If you don't like rap you probably won't like it though. Voice-overs by Christopher Walken (nice!) and other celebrities, and Nick Kang has some funny lines.

Overall a good game, but not quite as good as I had hoped. The gameplay and story just weren't cutting it. It is worth a play-thru though, but I say rent it before you buy.

I'll tell it like it is. You decide if you'll like the game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 10 / 13
Date: November 10, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game because I wanted to play a GTA-type game with the streets of LA, which I am very familiar with (Grew up near Crenshaw and Pico.)

I like the graphics. It's well done. The city might not resemble LA all that much except for few well known landmarks (e.g. the Staple Center). I like that you can fight hand-to-hand even though you can pretty much beat anyone if you press the buttons fast enough. The driving engine is simple enought although at top speeds, it does get kind of tricky. The missions are way too easy (they call driving to a spot on a map a mission.)

The controls and camera are what make this game from becoming real enjoyable. The controls aren't just tight and responsive enough.

Finally, the music. You are either going to like it or hate it. I like a little rap here and there but nothing but gansta rap with f-bombs littered all over the place. It gets REALLY annoying unless gansta rap happens to be your favorite genre. Activision needs to realize that someone like Nick Kang, the main character, might not even listen to rap. Again nothing wrong with rap, just a little variety would have been nice. Maybe even different styles of rap would have been nice.

This one is a rental. You could probably finish it in a weekend.

Worthy Successor to GTA 3!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: November 17, 2003
Author: Amazon User

To anyone who thought that GTA 3 was revolutionary, but was disappointed with the Vice City's emphasis on gimmicks and movies over gameplay, and the Getaways lack of any useful Navigation system, this game is for you. Out of all the GTA type games out there (GTA 3, True Crime, GTA Vice City, Simpsons Hit and Run, and The Getaway), this is definitely the second best game on that list.

This game starts off with a huge part of L.A. While not a replica of the city (like the Getaway is with London), it has all the streets, parks, landmarks and freeways of the LA area. When I mean huge, I mean huge. While on an uncongested freeway, burning rubber, it still takes a considerable amount of time to get from one side of the map to other. The city map is a little too vague, but the on screen map in intuitive, and more importantly, street names are presented on screen, so you'll know if you're on Santa Monica Blvd or if you're on Highway 405. Also, the cars handle really well, the traffic is sparse and smart, and with your customized music, it's a joy to just zoom around.

This brings up the music portion. It's almost all rap, with a few heavy metal songs filled in. I'm not talking just some no name artists (but most of them are), but there is also major names, like Snoop Dogg, Warren G., N.E.R.D, and heck, I think there is MegaDeath as well. All the music is made to fit the atmosphere. The best part is, it's customizable. There are three different sections for three different types of gameplay (cruisin', slow action, fast action), each with about 15 unique songs each to play or not play. Simply amazing - I would say over 40 songs. The only problem is that you can't mix one type of music (e.g. slow action) with another type (e.g. cruisin'). So while I like the N.E.R.D song "LapDance", I can only hear it in certain situations.

Now to the gameplay. There are three basic types of missions - outdoor ones involving driving through the city, indoor one with gunfire, and indoor ones with martial arts fighting. All of these missions are short, so there is not much repeating or backtracking. The outdoor ones are the ones where it shines. The city is immense. Unfortunately, the missions do tend to be on the easy side, and are either tailing, racing, escaping, or just get to a destination. The indoor ones are not quite as fun, but the auto-aiming combined with bullet time movement makes it enjoyable, despite the camera conspiring against you. The fighting is slightly more annoying, as it is more button mashing than anything else, but again, it's doable. I hate all fighting games, so to me, it was the weakest type of mission.

The missions are combined into episodes. Each episode has six to eight missions, and there are eight missions to get to the best ending. There are two alternative endings that branch off, giving a grand total of 12 episodes in all. The best part is that all the missions are straight forward. You don't have to look into guidebooks or ask your friends for special tricks to beat any of these missions. Even so, beating all the missions are not required, so if there are some missions that are annoying or hard, you can skip them. This might result in alternative missions or missing some other missions altogether. Either way, you're never stuck.

There are also side mission you can do to upgrade your skills, or you can search random people on the street, or stop crimes and run down common criminals.

The only problem I have is one episode where it detracts from any sort of realism and where you fight demons, zombies, and dragons. A couple of these missions were extremely repetitive and so badly designed that it almost made me lose respect for this game.

All in all, it's a fantastic, immense, and polished game that I can't recommend highly enough.

Pros:
Huge city
Music
Customization of music
Graphics
Nothing too difficult
No gimmicks, guidebooks needed

Cons:
Dragons and demons missions
Too many indoor missions
Fighting was pretty lame
Camera angle is bad in tight spaces

Difficulty Level: Easy/Medium

Frustration Level: Low

Hours to Complete (100% of all episodes, all endings): 20 hours

rent it first

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 9
Date: February 20, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The game was ok I'd recommend renting it first. When you first start the game you have no idea how to use the controls (I switched them to GTA controls afterwards), the plot is pretty boring and the game is about 3 hours long if you don't watch any of the movies otherwise it's 5. They say there is 100 missions but about 50 of them are either movies or driving to a destination and 45 of them are pretty simple and extremely easy to beat. There are 3 different endings to the game, 2 bad and 1 good (duh), the only way to get a good ending (and the bonus break dancing movie lol) is to get a good cop rating which is extremely easy unless if you shoot the crap out of any criminal you see (that doesn't shoot you) and kill alot of pedestrians or hostages. The best part is the random crimes all over the city, whereas there are robbery's, bum fight, armed and unarmed theives, and so on. This game, dispite how it looks, is not a really great shooter game. You can only carry 2 main guns at once with unlimited ammo, but only the ones assigned to you (you can get better ones at the 24/7 training facilities) you have auto aim and when in 1st person aim you can not move aside from aiming. You can get upgrades at 24/7 facilities like fighting facilities (they teach you new moves, you don't need to go to the facility to use them, you just need to know what the buttons are. try this one it's my favorite O,X,square when the opponent is phased :)). Driving facilities teach you how to go faster and how to make better turns. gunning facilities give you different auto attach on items for the gun (a light, a zoom, and some other stuff without an exact name). Each time you finish an episode you get a (special) upgrade you can either get a better/new car, a better/new gun, or a new/better grapple/throw down move ( you might need to go to the 24/7 to use this one im not sure).

Looking foward to it...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 12
Date: October 08, 2003
Author: Amazon User

True Crime may be another GTA clone, but it has some new features. You don't restart missions: you keep going and see what that action will lead to later in the game. For example, if you kill a police informant, you may not get the guy you are looking for. It sounds so cool to me. The game will be released in less than a month now, so I can't wait. I don't think the game will resemble GTA gameplay wise. True Crime will have good weapons, and the cool think is that you can carry duel guns with you. And it can be two different guns as well. You can carry an AK-47 in one hand and a handgun in the other, so cool... If you loved GTA: Vice City, you WILL love True Crime: Streets of L.A.

We Have to Wait

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 15
Date: October 03, 2003
Author: Amazon User

All of us can hear,feel and smell the Extraorinary hype surrounding the upcoming release of True Crime : Streets of L.A , many said that it will beat Vice City and sets a new rules for this genre of gaming , and after playing a Demowhich contains a three missions i can mention the Follwoing Uppers and Downers for this Game:

UPPERS:
1)Solid graphic and nice texturing which gives a very realistic feeling for the game .
2)As many revierwrs and game analysts stated , the game recreated the whole city of L.A with Marvelous Details .
3)Implementing the ability to do combos of fighting moves which gives a new tast for the fighting sections of the game .
4)Improved AI which gives a more realistic touch to the game .

Downers:
1) The game takes many elements from Vice City , the mission which flickers on the screen , they haven't even changed the position of the mission's screen which is placed in the down left side of the screen , the same as Vice City .
2)The HIP HOP soundtrack is not original at all , i think a musical score would have been better for the game , and would have added more depth for the game .
3)The useage of the Bullet Time Technique which in my opinion has become OVERCONSUMED in the all the kinds of Entertainment ....from the Movies to even the Video Clips.

This game actually is an enjoyable to play , but to judge on it more accurately we have to wait till we play the full game , and then we will see if it will take a place in the shortlist for the best games ever made or not .

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