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Dom Robinson reviews
Activision
- Price: £39.99
- Players: 1
- Widescreen: Yes
- 60Hz: No
- Dolby Digital 5.1 sound: Yes
- Xbox Live-enabled: No
True Crime: Streets of L.A.was a game heavily promoted by its distributor and one that looked like itwould have it all, but just how wrong could I be?
You take the role of rogue Elite Operations Division maverick cop Nick Kang,whose ruthless reputation of making you the oriental version of ‘John McClane’has landed you the nasty task of taking down the Chinese Triad and RussianMafia cartel that’s turned Los Angeles into a war zone.
Sounds like the whole thing you could base a movie on, yes? Well, let’s hopenot because once you’ve played it for a while you learn that the gameplaybecomes incredibly repetitive.
As you make your way about town, you’ll realise that each mission bases itselfaround to different aspects – driving and fighting. The driving missionsincluding getting from A to B in a set time, tailing a car while trying toremain unspotted – a mission that really feels empty, or simply driving to another destination. Along the waythere’s the chance to solve street crimes that come up in your ‘copper’ capacity,but this generally involves just shooting people in the street or running themover, the latter of which is easier and after a few of these you won’t evenbother and will just want to get the level over and done with.
Also, the driving sections are always going to be compared with the GrandTheft Auto games and it’s definitely not as much fun as those. I was goingto add that this game might tide you over until the Xbox double pack of thoseis released, but they’re out now so you know the choice to make…
Then there’s fighting. It’s not as good as a Virtua Fighter game by a longshot and quite difficult to get to grips with. In fact, it suffers the sameproblems asDead or Alive 3in that as you move towards an opponent, it just pushes them backwards makingthem appear to ‘glide’ across the floor, which is really maddening. And withgames out there of the calibre of the Soul Calibur series, you justcan’t afford to do things by half-measures these days. At least you can skipthe missions, but seeing as they’re largely all the same then you may as wellswitch the machine off.
As for the graphics, they’re not very polished and contain lots of jaggies,as if you’re not really playing an Xbox game at all. The FMV sequences lookbetter though. The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is the best thing about the game,although I turned off the in-built music in favour of my own selections. Thereare scores of hip-hop tunes and if you don’t like hip-hop then you’ll, of course,turn them all off.
Gameplay-wise, handling is quite clumsy when trying to shoot lots of guys atonce since the cross-hairs don’t often focus on the nearest and most threateningbaddie to you, thus putting you at a disadvantage. Also, turning while sneakingabout on those levels that require it isn’t easy. Other things that annoyedme including the fact that it autosaves all the time, which isn’t alwaysnecessary, surely? Also, by level 4 I was at -67 in the Good/Bad coprating because I’d killed so many innocent people while driving badly, butthis made no difference whatsoever!
True Crime: Streets of L.A. tries to be a jack of all tradfes but isclearly master of none. And there’s also an appearance by self-confessed bad-boyrapper Snoop Doggy Dogg, yet he’s just a complete wuss with little talent tokeep him going, but there’s enough mugs out there to buy his tat.
SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC
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Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.