True Crime: Streets of LA (PS2)

November 16, 2003 | 0 Comments

Well, I just had a chance to play this. It's basically a game in the vein of Grand Theft Auto style (free roaming, hijack any cars, etc). This one is quite different though. Because instead of playing as a thug, you're actually playing as a cop. So there are certain things that you can't (or can, I suppose, if you want to be a 'bad cop') do such as...well, shooting/hit & run too many of those poor pedestrians walking around inside the games. But don't worry about it not being fun because like I said, you do have the option of becoming a 'bad cop' if you choose to do so.

Okay, admittedly The Getaway has done something like this as well (it includes a level where you get to play a vigilante cop role). But I really detest the shooting engine of The Getaway. It feels very stilted and difficult to pull off. The shooting engine of True Crime, however, is very good and easy to use. There's even precision shooting available for use. I also like that you can do hand on hand combats with your enemy. And there's the ability to upgrade your fighting skills/shooting skills. So in a way it's like a combination of RPG/free-roaming game.

As far as graphics go, they're okay. The city of LA don't look that impressive (I do wonder how this will look on GameCube or XBox though. Maybe I should have bought the GameCube version instead - oh well, too late for that) but the character model looks good. And oh, this game uses one of those John Woo's bullet-style action scenes where your character is capable of leaping sideways while shooting with 2 handguns at once. It looks pretty cool once you master how to do it. Here are some videos/screenshots from IGN.com if you're interested:

http://media.ps2.ign.com/media/481/481884/imgs_1.html

Posted by Garten

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