Review #519: True Crime - Streets of LA

 Criminally underrated.

You've the right to remain dead.

 True Crime Streets of LA was created to take a piece out of GTA's pie, no doubt about it, but the end result was surprisingly competent. It received great reviews at the time, but it didn't score as high as GTA on most publications. Considering this game came out after Vice City... it's a true crime how underappreciated this game is, and in a few ways feels ahead of its time.

 You play as Nicholas Kang, a pastiche of every loose-cannon cop trope out there, who is the star of a generic pastiche out of every cop movie out there. Think Dead to Rights but with extra cheese. Is it enjoyable? Yes. Is it a good story? No way. The latter chapters included a few supernatural elements that came out of nowhere and don't really fit in with the rest of the game, as cheesy as it is, since it's not much of a tribute or a parody since it takes itself 100% seriously when it comes to these things... which is a bit surprising. The game is a bit light on extra content, there're only random crime occurrences to solve as well as a few optional challenges, which upgrade Nick's abilities, but the main story is pretty lengthy and features three different routes with three different endings. As a matter of fact, you can skip most missions if you wish, and if you fail a few you get alternate missions. The game is divided in episodes, so you can replay any mission at any time and jump through routes as you please.

You'll have tor rely on your minimap, since the full map sucks!

 For an open world game, it's pretty linear. You don't get to choose between which missions to do, each episodes has a string of missions for you to complete. Unless there's a time limit or you're confined inside a building, you're pretty much free to explore or 'borrow' cars as you wish, albeit there're no secrets to find. The game's in-game map is completely useless, it's a jumbled mess of streets, and it doesn't mark places of interest, such as hospitals or the facilities in which you can upgrade Nick's abilities, so you just have to ride around until you're close enough so that they appear on the minimap. At least there's a permanent marker directing you to your next objective.

 There're two important numbers you'll have to keep up with: Shields and Karma. Karma can be positive or negative, and it's affected by how you operate as a cop. Killing criminals gives you bad karma, as opposed to neutralizing them, for example. Karma doesn't play a big part in the game, it merely affects a few small mechanics, like making civilians attack you if you're a bad cop. Shields are earned as you solve crimes, so whether you kill or neutralize a criminal you'll still get shields, and these can be spent on facilities to upgrade Nick's abilities. You can choose guns, to enhance your shooting abilities, combat, to earn new moves, or driving, to earn new maneuvers. Protip, get the first few combat upgrades, to get Ground attacks, and then get every gun upgrade, since the last upgrade turn your limitless ammo-guns the best weapons in the game. You don't really need the driving upgrades or the finishing combat moves. There're also a few exclusive upgrades that are earned after finishing every mission in a chapter, but the only ones that matter are the gun upgrades, since they give your guns a better firing rate and more ammo capacity. End-of-chapter driving upgrades give you new cars, which you don't really need, and combat upgrades give you grappling moves, which are useless.

Civilians are always fast to comply. Just tap L1 and they'll leave their cars!

 You'v probably realized by now that the game made a big deal out of its three gameplay mechanics: Shooting, Driving and Combat. There's also Stealth, but nobody cares about it. And everything kinda works. Driving is a bit stiff and 'borrowing' cars can be a bit unresponsive, as sometimes Nick has a hard time deciding what to do when you press L1. That said, the driving itself is not too bad, and you can shoot in almost any direction while driving, as a matter of fact, you can hold R1 as you drive to enter manual aiming. As you drive. What other game of its era had that? Then there's on-foot shooting. You get unlimited ammo on your default guns, you can stick to surfaces by holding X, although it's a bit wonky, and you can enter manual-aiming in first person by holding R1 instead of just tapping R1 to shoot. At first the shooting is kinda garbage since Nick is a bit slow when it comes to auto-aiming, but get a few gun-upgrades and you'll be mashing R1 and bringing the entire neighborhood down. You can also pick up weapons from fallen enemies, but after you max out your guns they become a bit of a handicap. There's also slo-mo diving or rolling to evade bullets. The shooting is alright, although on closed-environments the camera can be a bit of a pain in the butt... but just mash R1 and you'll be fine. For whatever reason, sometimes Nick won't shoot when you mash R1, I think it has to do with enemies running on the side of whichever weapon Nick has(He always dual-wields) gone out of ammo, so he doesn't realize that he can shoot with his other arm. As a whole, shootouts are arcadey fun, but it's a bit janky.

 Then there's the combat... which is just button mashing. You mash X, Square or Triangle for Low, regular and high attacks. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the combat, but the animations are still relatively decent. Landing enough hits on an enemy makes them drowsy so that you can execute a special move on them. Circle can be used to grapple with enemies, but it comes out so slowly that they will easily evade it. The best moment to initiate a grapple is when they are drowsy... but why would you if special moves are so much more satisfying? As a whole, combat is pretty alright, definitely better than anything GTA 3, VC or SA had to offer. Lastly, stealth missions. The only problem with these is that sometimes you attacks don't come out. Holding Square or triangle as opposed to just tapping them seems to increase the chance of the attacks being carried out. It's a bit wonky, but it's not too bad. The camera can be a bit of a chore on these, but enemies give ample time to be subjugated after they see you before you lose the mission. They are pretty sure, so having to do them again from the start isn't too bad.

Once you unlock the best guns you won't need to dive, since enemies will go down in seconds flat.

 True Crime was definitely ahead of its time, and it was very ambitious. Everything it does, it does relatively well albeit suffering with a few hiccups... and that's the game as a whole: It's really good, but very rough around its edges. Still, I think it's easy to put up with its shortcomings since the game is so much fun to play. It also features a soundtrack made up of licensed rap, heavy rock and metal songs that fit the game oh so well. It's funny to think how much critics loved GTA and spurned other open-world games, specially considering how modern GTA games play more like True Crime than, well, classic 3D GTA games.

 Problems? It's got a few. But True Crime - Streets of LA is easily more than the sum of its parts. It's sad how the franchise died after a bad sequel.
 8.0 out of 10