True Crime: Streets of LA (GameCube) Review

The plot, if you can call it that, is like drawn somewhat from films like Die Hard and perhaps even the TV series 24. You're the good guy, a cop who bends the rules and 'whoops' criminal 'ass' into submission with his hard-line ways and dangerous ways. Whilst the content might be a load of rubbish, the cut-scenes, which push it along, are very impressive. Apart from the opening movie, which looks like something out of Pilotwings on the N64 gone wrong, all the cut-scenes look rather impressive and help even the most stupid to understand what is going on. As you go along it becomes clear that you are Nick Kang, a 'dangerous' policeman who has to bust up some Triad type Russians to avenge the death of his father, inspired you might say. Muddled in is your typical fat, black, female, police boss, with exceptional taste in fashion (sarcasm included) and the triangular bosomed, perfectly moulded behind figure of your overtly sensible and bitchy sidekick. Conveniently, within minutes of meeting her you get her shot in the arm, putting any relationship building on ice.

If you're going to bother to make out to be the coolest thing since frozen-sliced-bread, then you have to look good as well. True Crime may look good on the surface, but if your driving is a tad manic the visuals will soon frustrate. Slam into certain parts of LA and you simply go straight through it, ending up in strange black areas, which we fondly refer to as 'the abyss'. Indeed, it is quite a frequent occasion that our wild driving will lead to use ramming our convertible straight through a wall and onto the next street, briefly passing thorough 'the abyss'. Frustrating it may be, but as your driving gets a tad better it will happen less and less, but those with a calling to destroy things will frequently end up zipping through solid objects and out the other side. Solidity isn't everything, and just because buildings have the ability to posses no physical properties doesn't stop them looking damn fine.

This is a mass of LA, and if you take time to explore it there is a huge amount to see and do. Open freeways with lanes of traffic to 'avoid' are coupled with little bits of suburbia and then you have the parts coated in slime and scantily clad women. Also of note are all the pretty cars, there is some really superb variety here; from busses to bulldozers and Cortinas to Convertibles, and the great thing is you can 'borrow' any of them! Hitting L makes you get out of your car (stop first, you'll get hurt otherwise) and preferably move towards a car that has stopped already, hit L again, Nick will deliver a suitably ridiculous like: 'Hi, my names Nick, I'll be your car-jacker today', pure genius.

So, what is there to do on the harsh streets of LA? Well, you can run over people if you like, but that really won't get you anywhere, so, rather than ass about at first, you have various missions to complete. After everything is explained to you at the start, you're off; be it fighting strippers (with clothes on) or chasing down some sort of bad guy, there is quite a good spectrum of things to do, its just the fact of them are so stupid that really gets our ghost, One task, sees you following, not chasing, a limo. Sounds simple enough, well no it isn't. We finished off the mission that proceeded it with a Bus, to our glee we found out that for this mission we get to keep the bus, and with no other cars in sight we had to choose the bus, so let this be a lesson, never finish missions with busses. Rant over, and the stalking mission is just as annoying.

There is such a stupidly fine balance between being to far away and being too close, 'fall behind' too much and its game over, get 'too close' and the curtains come down. The best method is to hold down A for a moment, let go, hold it down again, let go etc. The result is you jumping down the road like a learner driver struggling to get the balance between clutch and accelerator right. However, to balance the other tripe you have the good times. The driving is superb, and the various missions where you have to simply go about solving crimes that happen right there and then (you're informed of them via radio) are some of the best. Muggers, drug-dealers, pimps, stolen Activision trucks (odd) and much more are all included and the adult content doesn't stop there.

In a way you get to choose you're route in the game. There is something of a 'good cop/bad cop' meter, let us explain. Kill an innocent person, bad cop, mince about flashing your badge and grappling just the offender to the ground before arresting, good cop. We went through a stage where we hit -58 (very bad cop). One common situation that brings cause for killing of the innocent is driving, miss a turn and you might hit an OAP head on, result: death. Chasing down a ruffian on the streets, guns flailing, will no doubt end in the good cop/bad cop meter hitting 0 with a large thud, and it wont stop falling. The almost Splinter Cell-esque stealth sections are quite superb. Early in the game you have to sneak into a warehouse that is guarded, all you have to do is creep up behind the bruisers that stand in your way, press the right buttons and snap there goes their neck in a quite wonderfully effervescent movement. It is these moment of brilliance that make True Crime a superb game, sadly there are quite a few flaws to bring it down. Thankfully, the fighting system is not one of them. Why not use a gun you may ask, well you can't. If you hit a fighting mission the game forces you to use fists only, with perhaps the advantage of stealing your enemies weapon with a strong enough hit. Low kicks, high kicks, combos, the system is very well thought out and brings in masses of depth and variety. You can build up an attack with careful motions, a right hook, low kick, high kick, block and then when an opponent is stunned perform a highly damaging combo, repeat until they lie on the floor and don't move.

So, if the driving is good (unless you drive through bits of LA that you shouldn't) and the shooting and fighting are damn fine, what does bring True Crime down? Well, there is a fourth game mode, one that takes up more of your time than perhaps quite a few of the others, what is this magical mode then? The loading and saving screens of course! Each level has a movie before it, just to help the plot move along, that has to be loaded, then the mission has to be loaded, then when you complete each individual task it has to be saved; the pattern goes on. Now, as far as we are concerned, this is the GameCube, we don't have loading times, a lazy post perhaps? Thoughts like this certainly occur often. Why in the buggary does it have to save every little thing?! It really will make you cry. Some missions like 'Kill The Sniper!' (named according to the task you have to do therein), took us7 seconds max, this is proceeded by the previous level saving, then movie for this level loading, then the mission loading and then 10 seconds later, it save again, before loading again and loading again and again and again. The type of people who blast through a game will probably spend more time looking at the tedious loading and saving screens for longer than they actually play the game, anyone willing to play the game very quickly and time themselves, we'd be interested to know the results.

And there are yet more pitfalls to be found. As we mentioned before there is something of a good cop/bad cop meter, the purpose is simple. Be a good cop, you get a plus point, be a bad cop and you go into the negative side of numbers. Depending on how you go about things will affect how you progress in the game. After a few 'chapters' the route splits, bad cop one way, good cop the other, and it is here that things start to get silly. To keep a god copy rating, god help you if you manage it, is near impossible, meaning that you end up trying to trick your way through the game, which is tedious to say the least. Only solving the easiest of crimes, ones that don't involve guns or a car hitting random passers by. After a while it becomes clear that to complete the game you have to restart it and do the whole thing inch-perfect, but why not just be a bad cop. Well if you do get a negative rating of -99 and falling then you will only see about a third of the game before you have it completed, do it all like a fairy on ecstasy and you see masses more game.

Do it how you will, but one thing is for sure, there has been a massive error of judgement here by the developers. Enjoyment that should be a fundamental part of this game has been sucked out leaving you with a bitter aftertaste of frustration and pure blind tedious gaming. It may be big and flashy, it may be the GameCube's answer to GTA, but this is by no means the Die Hard of action gaming. Disappointing.