True Crime: Streets of LA

Moby ID: 10894
PlayStation 2 Specs
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Nick Kang is a young Chinese-American detective who has been suspended from the Los Angeles Police Department due to his extreme methods of policing and his ability to cause massive amounts of damage to property. However, Wanda Parks, the Chief of the E.O.D (Elite Operations Division), requires Nick's assistance in a case that involves attacks on various venues in the Chinatown district. At first Nick is reluctant to help, preferring the vigilante life and focusing on avenging his father's death. However, he eventually agrees to conduct the investigation, on one condition: he must do it his way.

True Crime: Streets of LA is a free-roaming driving and action game similar in concept to Grand Theft Auto III. The game's structure is mission-based; most of the missions are dictated by the story and initiate following a cutscene that advances it. Failing a mission still allows the player to continue playing through the chapter and undertake subsequent missions; in some cases this will lead to branching paths and optional missions. However, in order to complete the whole chapter the player must eventually succeed in all the main missions.

Nick can hijack any car on the street (usually with little to no repercussions) and freely drive through the 240 square miles of Los Angeles. Nick is capable of firing his weapon when driving; in an open top vehicle, it is possible to aim anywhere. The player can also opt for exploring the city on foot. Nick will be frequently contacted by other police officers and informed about various street crimes. He can then fight perpetrators, arrest them, knock them unconscious, or kill them to deal with these crimes.

The gameplay during the missions is separated into third-person shooting, fighting, and (more rarely) stealth sequences. All of these usually take place in relatively small, restricted environments. The shooting sequences involve Nick dealing with waves of enemies that appear in different places. Nick must react quickly, moving, crouching, or diving (with a "bullet time" effect) to avoid enemy attacks. A limited amount of painkillers can be found in such stages.

During the fighting sequences, Nick utilizes his martial arts techniques to defeat enemies in hand-to-hand combat. Nick can punch, kick, grapple and throw enemies. The player can execute combos by pressing various combinations of buttons consecutively. It is also possible to pick up primitive melee weapons lying around, or take them from enemies. Both shooting and fighting stages have destructible environments.

Stealth missions typically involve Nick traversing a hostile area without attracting the enemies' attention; the mission is failed if an enemy hasn't been dealt with silently, or shortly after he has discovered Nick. The player has the option of killing enemies or knocking them down; the latter awards the protagonist "good cop" points. Conversely, "bad cop" points are given to Nick for killing innocents or surrendered criminals. Depending on Nick's rating in these categories, the storyline branches during later chapters, leading to different endings.

Spellings

  • 真实犯罪:洛城街头 - Chinese spelling (simplified)

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409 People (328 developers, 81 thanks) · View all

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Critics

Average score: 72% (based on 60 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.2 out of 5 (based on 84 ratings with 6 reviews)

There are good clones and there are bad clones

The Good
How would you like to play GTA 3 as being a cruel cop? So here comes True Crime (TC from here on). And suddenly you have the chance to be cop in a GTA environment. This is a good concept for a game, although the "drive 'n' fight" scheme has been reproduced quite a few times, here we have another specimen, in fact a, what I believe, GTA 3 clone where you get to play the good guy here by the name of Nick Kang. The story here quite a grande cliché, where your father was a cop all right and he got killed while chasing a drugs case and now you got to find out what happened to him etc etc while pulling out this huge drugs, money etc etc case which involves the Chinese and the Russian mafia and the North Korean army (!)... Ahhh! Always those Russians... Anyways, it's nothing you never heard of before. A classic Charles Bronson - Clint Eastwood style tale, only starring a guy in his late twenties, early thirties.

OK, best part of the game is the kinematics. They simply rule! Very well directed and set, the cut scenes are brilliant to watch. And surely they are a nice addition to the plot of the game.

The game it self is quite simple in concept. You have a huge city area of Los Angeles to cruise in, modeled and laid out after the real thing and all you got to do is cruise from one point to the other (either in timed or free time missions) in order to begin your fighting missions and complete the episode parts. So a typical mission will have you ordered to go to a point in the city to check out something or to 'meet' someone. If it's not a timed mission you could always check out the criminal activity on the streets. The station issues distress calls about various incidents in your vicinity, from there on you can follow the red dot on your map to locate the incident, get out of your car (if you got there by car lol) and either solve this like a good or a bad boy. What do I mean here is that playing the good cop would be to beat the crap out of the poor criminal, or being the bad cop would be to start blazing your gun at him no questions asked. Whatever you do affects your reputation, so if you kill everybody without asking or showing a badge first will have you blacklisted in no time, on the other hand, if you do show your badge, some rare times criminals surrender on the spot. On the other hand, if a criminal starts to shoot first at you, then yeah let the guns do the talking freely. Of course, anytime you could walk the street and do some police searching on people to find either drugs or illegal guns on them. You'll be amazed when you'll see how many people are carrying a gun or some dope on them these days!!! As a civilian says here "This place has gone to hell lately", true! Doing such a street search arrest which turns out to be a success, is gaining you a good reputation point and some extra badge points. So finally you get to your destination which could be a level of 3 different kinds of gameplay: either sneak in, kung fu combat or a gunfight. The goal here is to defeat all enemies in order to get to the key person you're after and by arresting him (if he doesn't get 'silenced') he'll give you info for a lead, which will continue the story basically.

Of course you could always improve your driving, Kung Fu fighting and gunfight skills by visiting the appropriate training facilities on the map. But these improvements won't come cheap. In order to get an additional skill you will need 100 badge points (which you gain from arresting criminals). If you fail the test for the first time, then you need another 100 badge points in order to re-take the test. Succeeding in the test earns you the extra skill.

So the whole plot is divided in episodes, and each episode in parts. Thankfully enough you can complete the whole story by following a variable pattern of episodes, cause you can also choose the outcome, say that you get stuck in a part and there's no way you can get to it's end. Okay, noooo problem! Just click continue story after you have failed the level a few times and you'll find another way around to route the story properly. Ultimately you have to finish the whole story by having as many good cop reputation points, in order to see the best finish, at least that's what the developers claim. There are 3 finales to the story: A bad, a medium and the best (!)

The graphics of the game are very nice, not something spectacular but good enough to support the good vibe of the game and not bore you to death. Detail is kept to an adequate level all around, either in car or while in gunfights inside buildings and stuff. The 3D department here is not the best I've seen either but I think I'll let it pass, as it is not troublesome to your aesthetic senses. Definitely the graphics do have a more realistic look than those of GTA3, which had a comic book feel on them. Equally brilliant is the animation of Nick Kang, his crew and the civilians. There are some spectacular Kung Fu fights here, very well animated and choreographed, really enjoying stuff. Not all of them are so easy as a street criminal fight, but it's really worth the effort. In my opinion, the hand to hand combat is one of the shining aspects of the game.

Sound-wise, ehhh, we do have a nice selection of Rap and Nu-era Thrash / Hardcore soundtracks licensed from real bands like Genitorturers, The Donnas (they rule!), Stone Sour, Prototype, Dry Kill Logic, Static-X, Snoop Dog etc. and other than that there's only the sound effects which, as far as human, voices and effects are concerned they are good enough to support the game.

The Bad
Okay, the worst thing about TC are the controls. I mean here you have a plethora of actions and things to do, where it's virtually impossible to keep track of all the available action options, especially when things come to heat!!! This thing is even more worse than MS Flight Simulator (well, not really, but there are loads of controls)!!! Furthermore the controls layout is one of the most awkward, frankly one of the worst I've seen. And while the game is supposed to let you change the controlling keys to your favor, IT DOESN'T WORK!!!! At least in my freshly bought copy, in the controls options the keys change menu won't accept any other keys!!! I searched the web with the hope that I would find a patch to rectify this, but I didn't find anything. I wonder how the game was in the consoles cause there's an awful lot of controls. Honestly the controls really put me off on this one and I got really frustrated about them.

Regarding gameplay the cars handling is crap to say the least... I've tried to use the mouse as an option for steering but I would need a mouse pad the size of a baseball field to turn my car around!! Even in a high sensibility setting it just takes an awful lot of mouse movement and hand gymnastics to drive around a block. The driving extras that you get to unlock in the progress of the game only do a hint of improval, but then again where's the true driving that Activision claims on their lovely made trailers???!! GTA 3 is way better in the driving sections than this one!

Talking of cars and driving, the sounds of the cars just simply suck!!! Just get out of the car and you'll get a buzzing continuous sound from your speakers as long as you stay near the car, walk away from it and yes! You guessed it! That was the car's engine sound!! Jeez...

Another silly aspect of the game is the main character: Nick Kang. I mean, OK he does look like a tough nut to you (or not). He is a badass cop who's on the lookout for some answers and a bit of revenge. A bit like Maxie! (Payne). So he does have to be bad to the bone! So far so good. Why do they have to destroy his image completely by making him saying all kinds of stupid punch lines like "Hello, this is Nick Kang and I'll be your car-jacker today" when he hijacks a civilian's vehicle, or "Time to hit the road Jack...err Nick". I mean, his lines are some of the worst humor I've seen in a game lately. In fact he doesn't shut his mouth for a whole minute in the game, saying all kinds of silly lines and things, making you more angry. Badass cops do not talk much!! No wonder why Rosie (his team-partner) hates his guts! I don't thing this guy will ever pull a bird if he goes on like that, saying every ten seconds so STUPID lines! The only good line he pulls out is when having a Kung Fu fight sometimes (if you're doing well) he says "Man! You should be playing Street Fighter"

Finally the gunfights... I mean, what's this??? I've played better gunfights in other genre mixing games. I found the controlling of Mr. silly Kang in a gunfight quite awkward and kinda sloppy. And if you think that you'll be able to strafe left or right, well just forget it!

The Bottom Line
Here's what happened to me with this game. I just bought it just because it looked cool on the box (marketing worked perfectly here). Nick silly Kang looked like a tough -no talking just shooting- geezer. There was this 70's convertible on the screenshots of the box. Well it all happened instantly: I thought, yeah! This is Driver revamped! I never checked out info about this game, just got it on the spot. And even if I did check I would read all these good lines "True driving, true fighting... The game of the century!"

Anyways, truth is, that there's a really strange affair I'm having with this game. Although I'm so frustrated about this game and it's controls, although I hate Nick silly Kang so much and I love it every time he (I) gets exploded in his car, I really do keep coming back for more. Maybe it's because I paid quite a lot to get it, so my ego doesn't let me to admit that it's 47 euros wasted lol! But surely this game has to offer a few good points as well.

One of them are the Kung Fu fights, which are very nice and addictive. I do believe that they are the strong point of the game as it is, simply because the driving section, well it just doesn't deliver the goods and gets really frustrating after all, and finally the gunfights are frustrating and sloppy controlled too. I really do believe that there's an urgent huge need for a major patch here regarding the controls in general, the car handling and the gun pointing routines.

Other than that, it's a nice game. It's definitely not THE game, but if you liked GTA3 and Driver, chances are that you'll like this one a bit. Surely it doesn't match the superiority of these two, but it has an extra goodie: great Kung Fu fighting.

So as a word of advice, I cannot really recommend this game due to it's high price, compared to what it offers. What I suggest though is, try it somewhere before you buy it. In any case DO NOT JUDGE BY THE GAME TRAILERS!!! Surely they are very nice, BUT they don't give you a clue about the controls or the average handling!

Windows · by SifouNaS (1309) · 2004

"Nick Kang In Pursuit Of Another Dumb-Ass Criminal"

The Good
In True Crime Streets of LA you play as Nick Kang a rough cop who was once on the force but kicked off for his harsh criminal justice and now is a member of the EOD and has to deal with a case about a drug cartel which ties with Nick’s past involving what really happened to his father.

The game has a freeform style play in which in between missions you can bust random crimes doing them well gets you career points while doing them bad like killing innocent by-standers or killing the criminal instead of arresting them takes away career points and the end of a chapter you can get a upgrade for free one of the three Fighting, Shooting, and Driving and you can also participate in street races to get new cars which are kept in a garage there are a total of 4 cars. The missions vary from fighting a opponent in one on one combat running through shooting everything that moves or sneaking into a criminal stronghold.

The visuals are better than those seen in GTA, much better than that and does many things better than GTA like gunplay and aiming and better hand to hand combat as a matter of fact the only thing I can think of GTA does better is Vice City’s 80”s music getting to the music.

There are some good tunes in there but too Rap for my taste and modern rock n roll stinks, luckily this game supports custom soundtracks and you can even designate songs to play and certain parts softer songs for softer moments like casually cruising and harder stuff for balls to the wall action.

The Bad
This game does have its fair share of problems like the controls take a time to get used to and some of the later missions are hard and annoying and sometimes the way the targeting works messes you up like for instance you’ll be shooting a bunch of guys and when you kill one the target switches but not always to the one guy you want to kill next like the closest person to you.



The Bottom Line
If you want a fun game with action packed goodness or always wanted to drive around LA for hours then this game is for you but get the Xbox version cause it has custom soundtracks and best performance.

Xbox · by Classic Nigel (108) · 2008

I didn't even know you could top Vice City!

The Good
True Crime is packed with features and gimmicks that make this game enjoyable. First of all, the different elements of the game add a lot of variety: There's the driving, the shoot-outs, fighting, sneaking, chasing and arresting suspects. And a lot of little fun stuff you can do, like randomly searching pedestrians (with Nick sometimes uttering a disappointed "Damn! Nothing!" when encountering somebody innocent).

One of my favorites features of the game is that it is set in an actual city, namely Los Angeles. The city has been recreated very accurately and with great detail; I live in Southern California and recognized many spots in the game. It's great to play a game and say, "hey, I've driven on that street!"

Technically, the streaming is flawless. Only if you look close can you see how freshly loaded data fades into the world. (And I've worked on a streaming system for a PS2 game, that definitely isn't an easy task). The only technical flaw is the collision system - you often find people clipping half-way through the walls, and if you drive fast enough, you sometimes can even penetrate walls with your car. In the worst case, you can go through a wall into a section where you are not supposed to be and can't get out. But collision too is a nasty thing to program, so I won't complain.

Even though the game is laden with different sub-game types (driving, fighting, walking), each sub-game has been developed with great detail and offers many specialized movements and techniques. Better still, as you progress, you can learn new moves, like additional attack moves or special car maneuvers.

The cut-scenes are very well done; decent voice acting and excellent motion capture. The script itself isn't brilliant, but good enough for a video-game. The fact that the storyline splits depending on how nice or reckless you are adds a lot to the game too.

Some people complained about the main character's corny one-liners and flat personality. I think it's appropriate, he's the typical hero of a crime story. His one-liners are sometimes funny enough, and sometimes he even admits his uncool phrases ("Man, that was corny!"). The voice talents are also mostly very famous actors (although some of them not quite as high-profile as those in VC).

The soundtrack is fantastic. Activision has chosen to license contemporary rap and metal. The rap soundtrack is perfectly fitting and has brilliant artists like Snoop Dogg, Westside Connection and Bone Thugs 'n' Harmony. What's even better is that all the tracks are the unedited versions - I can't remember hearing anything that explicit in a video game. The ingame dialogs as well deserve the game's M-rating - they are not as explicit as the soundtrack, but nevertheless not watered down in any way.

Once you get tired of the game, you can always try to unlock the secrets that are built in, the most famous one being "Dogg Patrol" where the player's model turns to Snoop Dogg and most of the ingame voice-overs have been re-recorded by Mr. Dogg himself. Months after letting True Crime collect dust, I re-discovered it and spent countless hours in Dogg Patrol, which is a must-see. Snoop Dogg's one-liners are hilarious (and very explicit!)

The Bad
The controls are good, but some parts require some time to get used to. This is not surprising, given the vast amount of possibilities the game offers. Still, I sometimes have problems properly controlling the camera or aiming.

The missions are sometimes very short, like "go from A to B". You can make them longer by resolving some of the random street crimes that occur, but if you opt not to, the game itself is not too long and you end up in the cycle of loading - short mission - loading - medium-length mission - loading - short mission.

In the "Good Cop" storyline, the plot takes a sudden dumb twist in Episode 6. I mean, extraordinarily dumb. I hated that episode, it totally killed the atmosphere and idea of the entire game (but luckily, the subsequent episodes were normal again). The final revelation in the Good Cop storyline is stupid and unbelievable as well.

A few missions seem to rely a bit too much on what you have at that moment - you can always carjack yourself a better car or try to get better combat moves. If you are in a "get from A to B in 30 seconds" missions and happen to have a slow car, you're in trouble. The good thing is though that you can jump back to the storyline overview at any time and re-do older missions, thereby getting the chance to upgrade your ride.

And another little quirk: The good cop/bad cop rating system is very cool, but the sneaking missions kind of spoil it a bit: Each enemy you knock out in those missions gives you one (normally hard to earn) "good" point, so it's really not that hard to keep your balance positive by just playing these missions.

The Bottom Line
Fun. Fun. Fun. This game offers a lot, and I enjoyed it immensely. It has a few quirks, but if you like this kind of game, you won't be disappointed. Even after you have seen all the cut-scenes and solved all missions, you can always cruise through the streets, enjoy the soundtrack and deal with the numerous random street crimes.

It will get boring after a while, and there are less secret little things scattered than in Vice City (at least as far as I can tell), but that probably goes for most games. Due to the Los Angeles angle, I could relate to this game more than to similar other ones - it just feels a lot more "real".

PlayStation 2 · by EboMike (3094) · 2004

[ View all 6 player reviews ]

Trivia

When you go to a gas station/garage to have your car repaired, Nick sometimes says "Now the cops are not gonna find me! Uuh... wait..." This is a reference to the Grand Theft Auto series where you can have your car repaired/repainted so the cops will not recognize your car. Too bad Nick is a cop in True Crime!

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by JPaterson.

PlayStation 2, GameCube, Windows added by Corn Popper. Macintosh added by Riamus.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Indra was here, EboMike, tarmo888, Zeppin.

Game added November 6, 2003. Last modified March 7, 2024.