Rating:   60 Ratings     12345  

     Let's give credit where credit is due: Grand Theft Auto created a whole new type of game, and no one to this point has been able to match it. They now have been blown away. GTA meets Dead to Rights is a meager beginning to describe this action game. Activision broke the mold here by expanding on those incredible games, but taking them to a much more in-depth level. Even though True Crime: Streets of L.A. isn’t a totally original idea, it does take the genre to new uncharted territory. It takes everything you love about GTA and The Getaway, and adds new dimensions to the game-play.

     Players take the role of Nick Kang, an uncontrollable undercover operative fighting to bring down the crime syndicates of L.A. in driving missions, gunfights and martial arts showdown across hundreds of square miles of the city. Skills are built as you progress, learning new fighting moves, and more sophisticated shooting and driving maneuvers. You must protect the city by taking down or harassing the scum of the streets. You have the ability to bust drug dealers and prostitutes, shakedown informants and confront gang member to get the job done.

     For maximum re-play ability, a changeable, branching story line gives you the freedom to complete missions as you choose. However, you have to face the consequences of those choices for better or worse. Successes or failures lead to entirely different game experiences, unveiling multiple story-lines with no repeated missions. With over 100 story based missions with pass or fail objectives, you’ll never be able to play the same game twice.

     What helps make this game even more interesting is that even with all the freedom you have at the beginning, you gain even more things that you can do within the game later on. This is through the upgrade system, which is a series of locations found throughout the city that will teach you new abilities. Players will be able to visit popular Los Angeles landmarks, buy services from local gun merchants, mechanics or even doughnut shops. You have the option to improve Kangs abilities by visiting auto simulators, dojo’s and gun ranges around town if so inclined.

     True Crime has put forth much effort into making this a unique gaming experience. Christopher Walken and Gary Oldman are apart of the voice cast, and with a fully loaded compilation CD featuring all original West Coast hip-hop tracks, this makes True Crime a ferocious competitor in its league. The music offered is an assortment of hip-hop and rock songs, which are a mixture of, licensed music and tracks created just for the game. In the options, you can customize tracks to be played under one of the three conditions: cruising, fast action, and slow action. While it shows a lot of effort went into having a wide assortment of licensed music, it would have been nicer to have a larger variety of genres.

     The greatest strength of this game is the integration of story and layers of game design into one cohesive package that's makes the whole thing flow more like an interactive movie than anything. True Crime gives you a purpose and a consequence for every criminal you bag and every civilian or cop you blast and the events of one mission are tied to the next mission all the way to the multiple ends of the game. What you get here is a game that builds on top of one of the best selling games of all times, and fixes many of the issues that have plagued it. It would be an unfortunate mistake to pass this up.

-Christine Beals 10/30/03