Grand Theft Auto 3 truly revolutionized the gaming industry. Suddenly everyone’s trying to make “open-ended” third person shooters. One of them is True Crime: Streets Of LA. It tries valiantly to improve on the weakness of GTA3 and GTA: Vice City…namely, the graphics, and the fighting options.

See, in the GTA series, you can get into fistfights, but they’re controlled by only one button. My lone mouse button makes Tommy Vercetti punch, kick, and head butt, and I have no real control over the brawl. In TC, you control Nick Kang’s kung-fu fighting, complete with punch, low kick, high kick, and blocking controls, and combos you can bust out when your enemies are stunned. This is pretty cool for a while…and as you train you can acquire running attacks, ground attacks, and more powerful combos and grapples. Then you realize that fights just turn into button-mashing contests. And that when people gang up on you, you can just fight them one at a time, while the others just stand around in kung-fu stances.

In True Crime, gunplay is more detailed as you can precision shoot, making time run slower. You can go for the head shot or a neutralizing body shot. You can shoot out tires in cars (that’s in Vice City but not in GTA3). You can even go into Matrix/Max Payne type slow motion dives with your guns. But in this game, you can do it as much as you want, there’s no “focus” meter or anything like that. Likewise, gun fights beome a bit monotonous. And those car fights become boring too…just drive up close to them and shoot the back of their car until it blows up. No precision aiming needed…I actually shot down a PLANE this way…and it was a big jumbo jet.

True Crime tries its best to be “open-ended” but it’s iffy. To get to the “best” story line, just complete all the missions and maintain a “good cop” rating. You get “good cop” or “bad cop” ratings depending on what you do. You can be a “good cop” by going for neutralizing shots, stunning enemies instead of killing them, busting people with drugs or guns, and you can be a “bad cop” by going for head shots, and running over pedestrians, and not giving a crap about hostages and killing both the hostage and hostage-taker. It’s cool though, how you can fail a mission, and still continue with the story. If you fail to sneak into one place, it’ll show you getting dragged to the boss by the bodyguards. If you do sneak in, you get to fight those body guards and visit the boss on your own terms. It’s those little things that are cool but there are only three plot lines and you have to do missions in order. It’s not really open-ended.

Gameplay is a little weird. When you have time to explore the city, solving “street crimes”, you’ll realize driving isn’t as smooth in True Crime as in the GTA series The running around feels stiff too. It just feels weird. But elsewhere, it’s fine. Shootouts in this game are more intense than the GTA kind.

“Street crimes” you can solve when wandering in LA are boring. To do it properly, you must go up to that fighting couple, flash your badge, fire a warning shot, beat em up for a while until they surrender, then handcuff them. It’s really dull. I usually go in my slow-motion dive and shot the bastards. But that’s not too much fun either. Also, there just aren’t many unique street crimes, they repeat over and over.

The story is boring and even has someone diving shouting “Noooooooo” taking a bullet meant for you. Corny, huh? It also has your handcuffs magically open. In cut scenes you dodge bullets, but you can’t in actual gameplay (which greatly disappointed me). Oh yeah, in one level, you fight a fire dragon. Yeah, a dragon.

Nick Kang, your character, is cool though, and it’s fun to play as him. Try to pull out your guns during a kung fu battle and he’ll say things like “No guns for you!” in a Chinese accent and “Must…overcome…the dark side.” Almost run over a pedestrian and he goes, “Watch where you’re walking!” He’s a good cop who just sometimes isn’t subtle enough and gets him in trouble with the FBI. Nick is more of a character than Tommy Vercetti, and he struggles to find out what happened to his father, a cop, who mysteriously disappeared. But the game makers stress that father part so much that they make it corny. He’s got funny lines and the coolest Asian dude ever in a video game. But even in the character department, GTA is victorious. Nick is the only compelling character in the game…Rosie, his partner, is totally devoid of any interesting character traits. The GTA series has brought us Maria, the stupid girl, Asuka, the SM woman, Lance Vance (I love his one line, “Now enough of this lonely tough guy crap…one day, I’m gonna save your *butt*, and you’re probably going to want to kiss me!” to Tommy), Phil the crooked cop, Rosenburg the lawyer, Hilary the driver, etc.

The music in this game is great. It’s got great rap songs from people I never heard of before. My favorites: “I’ll Do Anything” by Damizza and N.U.N.E. and “Mo Money.” I don’t think the Donnas songs they added for the PC version really fit in this game though…


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I remember one GTA3 mission when I had to kill the Mafia boss (Salvatore) before he reached his mansion. I got near the club and as he got into his limo, his bodyguards spotted me. They had shotguns. So I drove away and beat the boss to his mansion. Then I proceeded to hi-jack car after car and made a barricade so he wouldn’t be able to drive into the entrance of his mansion. Then I jumped on top of one of those cars with a gun in hand. As the boss and his bodyguards approached I shot them all, with them trying to break through that barricade. This is the beauty of the Grand Theft Auto series. This is open-ended, not the boring “street crimes” you can choose to or not choose to get involved in. I could’ve just tailed the don’s limo, or I could have tried to shoot and kill everyone as they got out of the club. In each mission in True Crime, there is really only one way to win. And that’s what makes GTA infinitely superior to True Crime.
We gamers can only hope that Rockstar learns from what True Crime tried to do…already from previews of GTA: San Andreas, I know that the drive-by function has more options to it…

As flawed as True Crime is, I had hella fun playing it, but I beat it in a week, during school, while maintaining mostly B’s. Vice City took me two weeks, during summer vacation. There’s just so much more stuff to do in Vice City. My advice is to rent True Crime, beat it in a few days, then forget about it. It is fun, though…and most of you probably aren’t as interested in the story and character development as I am. I’m such a snob…


Recommended: Yes

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