True Crime: Streets of LA
Posted September 10, 2004
The GTA killer it wasn’t, but True Crime: Streets of Los Angeles was a decent game in its own right, on consoles. Can it make the leap to the hearts of PC gamers who want their action on their desks instead of couches? Luxoflux and Activision sure have made an effort to bring TC to a new breed of gamers with some additional features that the console guys missed out on, such as more music, more firepower and multiplayer(!!) action.
Gameplay:
Rather than bore you with details about the story that you read about more than eight months ago in Aaron’s review here I will tell you that the story still involves the loose cannon Nick Kang, and still takes place in 240 square miles of rendered Los Angeles. Yes, you can still frisk random people on the street to search for illegal drugs or weapons, and yes you can still commandeer vehicles from innocent civilians, and yes, you can still take the path of the righteous cop or the heinous cop in True Crime, but all the flaws that were in the console versions are still here in the PC Version.
What flaws you might ask? Well, here’s a start: The random crime generator still fires off far too many crimes in my vicinity, and even recycles the same crime repeatedly. I can’t count how many times I stopped street racers and serial killers from continuing their lives of crime. When a game begs to be played for long periods of time by flaunting it’s near endless gameplay repeats the same side mission three times in a row, something should be tweaked. Another nitpick that I had that I know was addressed somewhere on the web when the console versions came out that was not remedied here, is the case of the license plates that must contain nitroglycerine. Any well placed shot to the license plate region of a vehicle will result in a blown up automobile…I even managed to blow up the SWAT team Hummer in this method. While a very minor complaint, it was mentioned in early reviews on the net, and Activision had more than enough time to get the developers to address this issue. But they didn’t.
Another flaw that I saw with the game both on the Xbox version and even more apparent here, was the dreaded popup. By no means do I have a behemoth of a PC which blows through games, but in the same vein, it is more than capable of handling today’s newest games; but pop up in a game where it might be nice to see more than one block in the distance is not acceptable. Imagine driving down the street and not seeing any traffic beyond the block and a half, it makes it quite tough to anticipate which way to weave through the surprisingly light Los Angeles traffic. I should mention however that only the vehicles and pedestrians caused the pop up, the city was rendered far enough away that I was able to anticipate turns and notice landmarks in the distance.
Now the biggest flaw in my opinion is the lack of gamepad support. A game that tries to be two distinct flavors in one package is bound to have complex controls on even a console, now take this game to the PC and the controls become even more convoluted. Just getting the hang of making my way around the city took some time, and then to throw onto that some intense firefights(which are quite often very high energy thanks to a great soundtrack) and you have a lot of mistakes that are made from pressing the wrong button. Is it ‘E’ or ‘6’ to kick…or was that to frisk a character? Generally not something I like to have to think about too much when playing an action game. If gamepad support had made it into the game, I am sure the frustration level would have been dramatically dropped down.
Graphics:
Graphically, TC:SOLA won’t blow you away, it is after all a port of an ‘All Three’ console game that is closing in on a year old. But the translation does look quite nice, and high resolution textures are here to greet you. Quite honestly I don’t remember the level of detail in the Xbox version during the in game cinemas, but here on the PC version you the cinemas seem to be quite detailed with facial expressions that convey a lot of emotion, and nice lip syncing to go along with the voice acting.
Audio:
All the old character voices are still intact here in the PC version, Christopher Walken, Ron ‘Hellboy/Beast” Perlman, and Michael “Mr. Blond” Madsen all lend their voice to the game to try and propel it into the next level. While decent voice work, the writing could be much better, as Nick Kang’s one liners grind on the nerves throughout the game.
All of the original music from the consoles has made it here too, so all the hip-hop you could ever want is here. For those who are not fans of rap, 30 additional metal and hard rock songs have been added to help round out the soundtrack.
Conclusion:
New features have also been added to the PC version to help entice the guys who were waiting, but honestly what was added doesn’t add too much to the game. Multi-player options are here, with four separate methods of playing, but good luck finding people on Gamespy to play with, I had a very tough time getting a game going on there in any of the five modes. The modes offered vary from Street Racing to fighting battles where all the moves are unlocked for your beating pleasure, with or without guns. Also included is a mode called The Beat where you try to bust a preset number of criminals in an allotted amount of time, and one where the host chooses one player to be a suspect and the other players are the cops who try to catch said player; a decent mode when enough players are around to made it enjoyable.
Also included as extras are some trailers for the game, and some training videos which are basically trailers for the game. Each lasts for under a minute, and might be worth watching once to see how the game was marketed, aside from that they serve no real purpose.
But the big question remains, is this worth your hard earned cash? I’d classify this as a rental, however because of the rarity of PC rental places that might make it a little tough. Too many flaws remain in TC to warrant a purchase by someone who was hoping this could be the GTA killer. One good thing I can say though, is that having an intense firefight to the sounds of I Mother Earth’s song Levitate was a thrill.
Gameplay:
Rather than bore you with details about the story that you read about more than eight months ago in Aaron’s review here I will tell you that the story still involves the loose cannon Nick Kang, and still takes place in 240 square miles of rendered Los Angeles. Yes, you can still frisk random people on the street to search for illegal drugs or weapons, and yes you can still commandeer vehicles from innocent civilians, and yes, you can still take the path of the righteous cop or the heinous cop in True Crime, but all the flaws that were in the console versions are still here in the PC Version.
What flaws you might ask? Well, here’s a start: The random crime generator still fires off far too many crimes in my vicinity, and even recycles the same crime repeatedly. I can’t count how many times I stopped street racers and serial killers from continuing their lives of crime. When a game begs to be played for long periods of time by flaunting it’s near endless gameplay repeats the same side mission three times in a row, something should be tweaked. Another nitpick that I had that I know was addressed somewhere on the web when the console versions came out that was not remedied here, is the case of the license plates that must contain nitroglycerine. Any well placed shot to the license plate region of a vehicle will result in a blown up automobile…I even managed to blow up the SWAT team Hummer in this method. While a very minor complaint, it was mentioned in early reviews on the net, and Activision had more than enough time to get the developers to address this issue. But they didn’t.
Another flaw that I saw with the game both on the Xbox version and even more apparent here, was the dreaded popup. By no means do I have a behemoth of a PC which blows through games, but in the same vein, it is more than capable of handling today’s newest games; but pop up in a game where it might be nice to see more than one block in the distance is not acceptable. Imagine driving down the street and not seeing any traffic beyond the block and a half, it makes it quite tough to anticipate which way to weave through the surprisingly light Los Angeles traffic. I should mention however that only the vehicles and pedestrians caused the pop up, the city was rendered far enough away that I was able to anticipate turns and notice landmarks in the distance.
Now the biggest flaw in my opinion is the lack of gamepad support. A game that tries to be two distinct flavors in one package is bound to have complex controls on even a console, now take this game to the PC and the controls become even more convoluted. Just getting the hang of making my way around the city took some time, and then to throw onto that some intense firefights(which are quite often very high energy thanks to a great soundtrack) and you have a lot of mistakes that are made from pressing the wrong button. Is it ‘E’ or ‘6’ to kick…or was that to frisk a character? Generally not something I like to have to think about too much when playing an action game. If gamepad support had made it into the game, I am sure the frustration level would have been dramatically dropped down.
Graphics:
Graphically, TC:SOLA won’t blow you away, it is after all a port of an ‘All Three’ console game that is closing in on a year old. But the translation does look quite nice, and high resolution textures are here to greet you. Quite honestly I don’t remember the level of detail in the Xbox version during the in game cinemas, but here on the PC version you the cinemas seem to be quite detailed with facial expressions that convey a lot of emotion, and nice lip syncing to go along with the voice acting.
Audio:
All the old character voices are still intact here in the PC version, Christopher Walken, Ron ‘Hellboy/Beast” Perlman, and Michael “Mr. Blond” Madsen all lend their voice to the game to try and propel it into the next level. While decent voice work, the writing could be much better, as Nick Kang’s one liners grind on the nerves throughout the game.
All of the original music from the consoles has made it here too, so all the hip-hop you could ever want is here. For those who are not fans of rap, 30 additional metal and hard rock songs have been added to help round out the soundtrack.
Conclusion:
New features have also been added to the PC version to help entice the guys who were waiting, but honestly what was added doesn’t add too much to the game. Multi-player options are here, with four separate methods of playing, but good luck finding people on Gamespy to play with, I had a very tough time getting a game going on there in any of the five modes. The modes offered vary from Street Racing to fighting battles where all the moves are unlocked for your beating pleasure, with or without guns. Also included is a mode called The Beat where you try to bust a preset number of criminals in an allotted amount of time, and one where the host chooses one player to be a suspect and the other players are the cops who try to catch said player; a decent mode when enough players are around to made it enjoyable.
Also included as extras are some trailers for the game, and some training videos which are basically trailers for the game. Each lasts for under a minute, and might be worth watching once to see how the game was marketed, aside from that they serve no real purpose.
But the big question remains, is this worth your hard earned cash? I’d classify this as a rental, however because of the rarity of PC rental places that might make it a little tough. Too many flaws remain in TC to warrant a purchase by someone who was hoping this could be the GTA killer. One good thing I can say though, is that having an intense firefight to the sounds of I Mother Earth’s song Levitate was a thrill.