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As a rare reviewer who was not overly fond of Grand Theft Auto 3, I still saw it as a great contribution of ideas to gaming, just poorly executed. True Crime: Streets of LA is one of many games that have come since and have borrowed heavily from GTA3. Unlike most, it does it well, surpassing GTA3 in many ways.
The most important improvement is in the story. While GTA3 featured a fragmented storyline with little emotional development, True Crime focuses solidly on the tale of Nick Kang as he fights to avenge his father’s death. However, the plot is not linear, reacting to your success or failure on each mission. Fail, and the story will reflect this moving forward rather than simply making you replay the mission until you get it right. In some cases, it provides just a short deviation from the story’s progress, but at two points it breaks off on new paths leading up to three positive and three negative endings. Not only does this make the story more interesting, it also makes the game more playable to less skilled gamers, who can skip a few harder missions and still move on.
There are a few main gameplay styles present. First is the framework for the game as you drive around L.A., which was mapped in detail for the game, solving random crimes while heading to the next story location. This provides something near a cop simulation, although the variety of crimes is limited, and after a while, you have faced every scenario.
In the actual missions, you may be asked to tail another car (taking care not to get too close), lose someone following you, shoot or sneak your way through various buildings and engage in hand to hand combat. Your driving, shooting and fighting skills all are upgraded during the game through challenges, which add a brilliant extra element to the game. The stealth levels are particularly entertaining, and there is a certain cinematic feeling to some of the shootouts. Unfortunately, the hand-to-hand combat is very poorly done, giving you limited options and very little room for strategy. All four of the missions I failed to complete were fights. They feel cheap, and your enemies seem inhuman. It is also tricky when you face more than one opponent, as the battle system does not properly deal with more than one at a time.
The controls generally hold up in all styles. The shooting is especially strong relative to similar games, as the auto-aim works well, but does not allow you to be wild without ramifications. The fighting controls work for what you are given - the AI programming is more of a problem-causing issue. The one element of the controls that does not work well is the camera - it often goes spastic in tight areas - this rarely causes serious problems, though.
With the story being important to the game’s success, everything depends on good production. Between surprisingly good graphics for a multiconsole game and voice acting from the likes of Christopher Walken and Gary Oldman, it succeeds. Additionally, the script has elements of humor written in at the right moments. One word of warning though: perhaps because you play the good guy, True Crime actually features more racy content than GTA3. Some elements of the story and locations of levels are truly disturbing.
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7
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9
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8
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9
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7
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8.3
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At a solid 20 hours between all branches of the story and training missions, True Crime is not a lengthy game when compared to GTA3. However, it is short enough, with enough variety to not suffer from tedium. In the end, the solid story, however disturbing, makes True Crime a game worth playing for those who want to play a truly mature game. The new $30 price tag makes it even more attractive.
I should mention that there are some minor bugs that may occasionally cause the game to freeze. Overall, though, the effect of this is insignificant.
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