True Crime: Streets of LA - RELOADED

As video games become more and more complex and realistic-looking, game developers are starting to look toward other media for inspiration.
No longer is game creation as simple as inventing a character, creating a world, and plotting out a mess of sprites. With the increased power of
today's platforms, game developers have to consider the best way to keep players immersed in a game's world--a process that touches everything
from the gameplay to the graphics to the soundtrack. This sort of suspension-of-disbelief approach to design is something that moviemakers cope
with every day, so it's really only natural for game developers to, at least, glance in that direction for a pointer or two. Activision and
Luxoflux did more than simply take a glance with their latest game, True Crime: Streets of LA. The game itself is merely a vehicle for a premise
and a plot that could have--and practically has been--done as a modern day action movie, full of cliches, catchphrases, and leap-of-faith twists
and turns. Unfortunately, the game's transition from console to PC wasn't handled as smoothly as you might have expected, thus leaving a game
that was already a little uneven feeling a little broken in some spots.


With his smarmy and annoying chatter, Nick Kang is a pretty annoying protagonist.

OK, action movie aficionados, stop us if you've heard this one before. In True Crime, you take on the role of a Los Angeles police officer,
suspended indefinitely for unspecified infractions that have you classified as a "loose cannon" that no one else on the force wants to work with.
But when the triads and the local Russian gangs start working together, you--and your tough, reckless take on everyday police work--are the
LAPD's only hope. After quickly offending your new female partner by calling her a secretary and asking her to get you coffee, you take to the
streets to set about solving this crime "your way." Along the way, you'll uncover some deep conspiracies, attempt to rescue your kidnapped
brother, and even find out the truth about what happened to the father you barely knew--who, of course, was also an LA police officer who
happened to vanish while investigating a particularly tough case. By the end, you'll have caused several things to explode, engaged in high-speed
car chases, and shot holes in or broken the necks of just about every hardened criminal in the City of Angels. The story writers have managed to
create a fairly genuine, albeit somewhat generic, take on the B-rate action movie plot.

In this action movie script, you'll play the role of Nick Kang, a recently reinstated cop. Unfortunately, the story's first problem surfaces
almost immediately: Nick is almost completely unlikable. His alienation of his partner doesn't come across with the same happy-go-lucky-go-crazy
nature of, say, Lethal Weapon's Martin Riggs. Instead, Kang just comes across as an unnecessarily cocky jerk from start to finish. His dialogue
is stale, cheesy, smarmily delivered, and, in many cases, ripped from other movies. The way the character leans on catchphrases that aren't his
(expect to hear him say such lines as, "See this? This... is my boomstick!" or "'Tis but a flesh wound!") takes you out of True Crime's world and
is, in a nutshell, really dumb. That said, Kang's own one-liners aren't really any better at keeping things moving, and, overall, the lame main
character is one of the game's larger problems.

While on the surface True Crime appears to be touching the same territory as Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto games, Luxoflux's game really has a lot
more in common with Gathering's story-driven genre-crosser, Mafia. All three games give you wide-open spaces to drive around in. In fact, True
Crime models 240 square miles of the Los Angeles area with a pretty high level of accuracy--except for the traffic, which is practically
nonexistent. However, like Mafia, True Crime doesn't really lend itself well to aimless driving unless you're interested in seeing if your own
personal Los Angeles landmarks have been included in the game. The game always gives you a place to go, but the story unfolds in a branching, yet
ultimately linear, fashion. You'll receive one of three endings upon completing the game's final chapter, and, if you're really crafty, you can
even unlock Snoop Dogg as a playable character with his own mode, or you can unlock a series of characters from other Activision games, like
Pitfall Harry, Rikamaru from Tenchu, Officer Dick from the Tony Hawk series, and so on.

The different endings depend on how well you perform and what sort of cop you've been. A counter swings back and forth to keep track of your good
cop/bad cop rating. Completing missions and properly solving the random crimes that pop up when you're driving from place to place makes you a
good cop. Running down pedestrians and killing everyone you come into contact with makes you a bad cop. The random crime feature is a cool
addition, but you'll start to see the same crimes (street fights, illegal racing, domestic disputes, and so on) over and over again. Also, the
game's sense of justice is (commentary on the LAPD's occasionally controversial tactics aside) pretty insane. You can break up street fights with
your pistol, but as long as you're only shooting people in the leg, you're still a good cop. In fact, you can even solve a lot of these crimes by
simply driving up and running the perpetrators over. If you hit them too hard, you'll kill them, which makes you a bad cop. Hit them a little
softer, and they'll just be knocked unconscious, which makes you a good cop. To be fair, you're given a lot of different options, such as firing
warning shots in the air and flashing your badge, but a little bump from the front end of your car is really all the persuasion most small-time
crooks need to let you arrest them. There's just something a little weird about stopping drunk drivers by shooting their cars until they either
stop moving or they explode--that's all.