We've seen our fair share of console-ported PC games lately, but only a few of them have been really great. Some ports have had so many bugs and glitches that they should have never been released so soon, and True Crime: Streets of L.A is no different. Before we completely destroy this game by mentioning the many bad aspects of it, let's first discuss the very few good points that make this game worth a little bit of your time.
True Crime: Streets of L.A takes place in, yep you guessed it, Los Angeles. You take control of Nick Kang who was recently suspended from the police force due to repeated incidents of excessive violence and property damage. He is your typical cliché characters where one cop follows the rules strictly to the book, and their partner is a loose cannon ready to blow. Nick Kang is that loose cannon, and he has now been recruited as the first field agent for the E.O.D because of his techniques for getting things done. E.O.D stands for Elite Operations Division which was created in 2003 to combat the toughest and most controversial cases in Los Angeles. But you're not alone on this one. You're backed up by a small cast of crime fighting friends.
You follow the orders of "The Chief" who is in charge of the E.O.D. Your partner is Rosie Velasquez, a gang member turned cop. Oddly enough, being a former gang member, she doesn't approve of Nick's violent ways of doing his job.
Obviously it's up to you to stop them, and your success or failure on your missions changes the course of the game. More missions become playable as you succeed in earlier ones. If you fail a mission you can either replay it or skip ahead to another mission.
There are three main areas that make up the overall gameplay of True Crime: Streets of L.A. You have the ability to fight people by using martial arts, using guns to shoot, and you can also drive. These three elements act pretty well together and give you more freedom when completing your missions. If you are chasing a criminal you could either fight them face to face, shoot them in the legs, or run them down with your car. This brings us to another point in the gameplay. In between missions, instead of heading off to your next mission, you can just drive around and do whatever you want. Occasionally a crime will be reported, and it's up to you if you want to continue cruising around or go and solve the crime. There are many different crimes that occur, but they mainly consist of illegal street racers, drug dealers, hostage situations, gun battles, people beating each other up and a crazy lunatic stealing a prison bus. Hey, it happens.
Gameplay
When arriving on the scene of a crime the criminals will respond in different ways. If you show them your badge, fire a warning shot into the air, or if they hear your sirens they will either run or stay there waiting to be handcuffed. Sometimes they trick you by waiting to be handcuffed, and then when you get closer they start to attack you with anything they have which can include broken bottles, knives, guns and of course their own brute force. At times they will get desperate and try to steal other people's cars in an attempt to flee.
At this point it's your choice whether you want to just end it right there and shoot the person, or if you want to knock them out and handcuff them. Sometimes they will steal other people's cars in an attempt to flee from you, but a few carefully placed shots to the back of the car will cause it to explode in flames and flip over. It's usually fun patrolling the streets of L.A, but these crimes do get repetitive and boring after a while.
One nice feature is the use of a 'Good Cop, Bad Cop' status bar. This bar is affected by how you complete your missions. If you use unnecessary force on criminals, or if you kill innocent bystanders, then you'll lose points at which point the police will be after you when your meter gets too low. Keep those criminals alive and make sure that no civilians are caught in the line of fire and then you will eventually be rewarded by unlocking new places to hone your martial arts skills and learn new moves. You can also head on over to the shooting range to get weapon upgrades. Well, all of this sounds like it would make for a good game, but it really doesn't. The technology side of this game does not fair very well at all.
The graphics are not at all spectacular. Even at the highest resolution the textures look plain and not detailed at all. It does tend to look a little bit better with antialiasing and anistropic filtering turned on, but a game shouldn't need these two features just to look decent. If a game does need AA and AF just to look ok, then you know there is something wrong. The graphics resemble the looks of a console game and definitely don't take full advantage of the power of what a PC can really do.
The sound effects also have a number of glitches. Occasionally the sound will cut out for a few seconds. Furthermore, the sound of your car's tyres screeching just seems to repeat way too much when you are making the slightest turns. Some other annoying sounds include the police sirens, which usually just sound pathetic as they drive by.
Some of the other problems that we noticed were Nick's feet mysteriously sinking into the sidewalk and shadows not showing up correctly on the cars. The shadows are constantly reappearing and disappearing on the cars, creating what looks like texture corruption.
Another very noticeable problem with this game is the fact that the controls are just so confusing. There are far too many buttons that do all different types of things. So it may take you a little while to actually memorize everything that you can do and what button it's assigned to. Using a gamepad controller would have helped out to make the controls less confusing, but for some strange reason the developers did not include support for a controller, which is odd considering that this game is a straight port from the console version.
Conclusion
True Crime: Streets of L.A for the PC does include a multiplayer, which the console version doesn't have. However, this four-player battle in which you can play such game types as normal gun and dojo fights really doesn't bring anything new to the table in terms of gameplay. Basically, True Crime: Streets of L.A is a very unpolished game that should have never been released so soon. Think twice before dishing out $39.99 on this game.
True Crime: Streets of L.A takes place in, yep you guessed it, Los Angeles. You take control of Nick Kang who was recently suspended from the police force due to repeated incidents of excessive violence and property damage. He is your typical cliché characters where one cop follows the rules strictly to the book, and their partner is a loose cannon ready to blow. Nick Kang is that loose cannon, and he has now been recruited as the first field agent for the E.O.D because of his techniques for getting things done. E.O.D stands for Elite Operations Division which was created in 2003 to combat the toughest and most controversial cases in Los Angeles. But you're not alone on this one. You're backed up by a small cast of crime fighting friends.
You follow the orders of "The Chief" who is in charge of the E.O.D. Your partner is Rosie Velasquez, a gang member turned cop. Oddly enough, being a former gang member, she doesn't approve of Nick's violent ways of doing his job.
Obviously it's up to you to stop them, and your success or failure on your missions changes the course of the game. More missions become playable as you succeed in earlier ones. If you fail a mission you can either replay it or skip ahead to another mission.
There are three main areas that make up the overall gameplay of True Crime: Streets of L.A. You have the ability to fight people by using martial arts, using guns to shoot, and you can also drive. These three elements act pretty well together and give you more freedom when completing your missions. If you are chasing a criminal you could either fight them face to face, shoot them in the legs, or run them down with your car. This brings us to another point in the gameplay. In between missions, instead of heading off to your next mission, you can just drive around and do whatever you want. Occasionally a crime will be reported, and it's up to you if you want to continue cruising around or go and solve the crime. There are many different crimes that occur, but they mainly consist of illegal street racers, drug dealers, hostage situations, gun battles, people beating each other up and a crazy lunatic stealing a prison bus. Hey, it happens.
Gameplay
When arriving on the scene of a crime the criminals will respond in different ways. If you show them your badge, fire a warning shot into the air, or if they hear your sirens they will either run or stay there waiting to be handcuffed. Sometimes they trick you by waiting to be handcuffed, and then when you get closer they start to attack you with anything they have which can include broken bottles, knives, guns and of course their own brute force. At times they will get desperate and try to steal other people's cars in an attempt to flee.
At this point it's your choice whether you want to just end it right there and shoot the person, or if you want to knock them out and handcuff them. Sometimes they will steal other people's cars in an attempt to flee from you, but a few carefully placed shots to the back of the car will cause it to explode in flames and flip over. It's usually fun patrolling the streets of L.A, but these crimes do get repetitive and boring after a while.
One nice feature is the use of a 'Good Cop, Bad Cop' status bar. This bar is affected by how you complete your missions. If you use unnecessary force on criminals, or if you kill innocent bystanders, then you'll lose points at which point the police will be after you when your meter gets too low. Keep those criminals alive and make sure that no civilians are caught in the line of fire and then you will eventually be rewarded by unlocking new places to hone your martial arts skills and learn new moves. You can also head on over to the shooting range to get weapon upgrades. Well, all of this sounds like it would make for a good game, but it really doesn't. The technology side of this game does not fair very well at all.
The graphics are not at all spectacular. Even at the highest resolution the textures look plain and not detailed at all. It does tend to look a little bit better with antialiasing and anistropic filtering turned on, but a game shouldn't need these two features just to look decent. If a game does need AA and AF just to look ok, then you know there is something wrong. The graphics resemble the looks of a console game and definitely don't take full advantage of the power of what a PC can really do.
The sound effects also have a number of glitches. Occasionally the sound will cut out for a few seconds. Furthermore, the sound of your car's tyres screeching just seems to repeat way too much when you are making the slightest turns. Some other annoying sounds include the police sirens, which usually just sound pathetic as they drive by.
Some of the other problems that we noticed were Nick's feet mysteriously sinking into the sidewalk and shadows not showing up correctly on the cars. The shadows are constantly reappearing and disappearing on the cars, creating what looks like texture corruption.
Another very noticeable problem with this game is the fact that the controls are just so confusing. There are far too many buttons that do all different types of things. So it may take you a little while to actually memorize everything that you can do and what button it's assigned to. Using a gamepad controller would have helped out to make the controls less confusing, but for some strange reason the developers did not include support for a controller, which is odd considering that this game is a straight port from the console version.
Conclusion
True Crime: Streets of L.A for the PC does include a multiplayer, which the console version doesn't have. However, this four-player battle in which you can play such game types as normal gun and dojo fights really doesn't bring anything new to the table in terms of gameplay. Basically, True Crime: Streets of L.A is a very unpolished game that should have never been released so soon. Think twice before dishing out $39.99 on this game.
