TRUE CRIME: STREETS OF L.A (PS2)


Violence with no direction

By MARTIN KINGSLEY

Guns, kung fu, fruity language, slow motion, copious amounts of blood, high-speed car chases… Yep, it's all here.

Unfortunately, we're missing three things:

1. A character with any, any likeable qualities, no matter how slight.

2. A storyline that actually bothers to have something to do with reality.

3. Something innovative. Something. I don't care if it's peach flavoured wallpaper, just something, for crying out loud.

There are a lot of things that irritate me about True Crime: Streets of L.A, but one stands head and shoulders above the others.

It could be the limited combat engine, it could be the hopelessly over-complicated control scheme, it could even be that a producer has gone to the trouble of hiring both Gary "The Professional" Oldman and Christopher "The Last Man Standing" Walken for voice acting, and then has wasted their talents on what is possibly the most generic script of the century.

However, no; it is not any of the above. The thing that annoys me the most about True Crime is its utter inability to be anything but a derivative Frankesteinian beast, bloated by stupidity and sloth glossed over by a pretty graphics engine.

This may seem a little harsh, but in a fiercely competitive market, TC is simply another shallow clone in the Land of The Duplicates. Let's start with our player character, one Dt. Nicholas Kang Wilson, a sure fire contender for Pillock of the Year, and someone I would gladly deconstruct with a baseball bat and five minutes of free time in a soundproofed room.

Within the space of the first cut scenes, Kang has berated his assistant, acted like a macho moron who couldn't plot his way out of a wet paper bag and has pointlessly shown off by throwing a chopstick into a Triad thug's ear, a feat I find curious considering that most restaurant chopsticks are as disposable as all Hell and have the aerodynamic qualities of a warehouse full of Russian aeroplane parts.

The going doesn't get much better, and every time Kang opens his mouth, it seems it is only to switch out whatever foot was in there previously.

His catchphrases have been pilfered from cop shows, other games, and probably a few cookbooks just for good measure, and those that haven't are really, really, really bad.

Examples:

• Are you scared? You should be.
  
• Life's a highway, and I've got road-rage.
  
• Add two cloves of garlic and bake on high for thirty five minutes.

Well, I lied about that last one, and with that exception in mind, I wish I was making these up. *sobs hopelessly* I really do.

OK. So, we've established that Kang is a complete fundamental orifice. The storyline, or lack thereof, is wafer-thin, and is merely an excuse for our boy Nick to rip around town, tearing up the firmament as he pops caps in bad guys left, right and centre whilst spouting more of the poorly thought out rubbish it seems it is his lot in life to share with the populace of Los Angeles.

A combat system so totally cribbed from Dead to Rights that it's not funny. Dives left and right, triangle button held down for slowmo, akimbo handguns at the ready, with kung fu as a secondary weapon. Only, at least Dead to Rights actually achieved something on this front.

True Crime can't even get that correct, turning what could easily be a user-friendly system into a convoluted mess of hyper-sensitive controls, clunky combos and weird camera angles.

Hell, even the kung-fu itself is stolen off of Shenmue, that wonderfully sharp martial arts adventure on the now-defunct Dreamcast (note: Shenmue II is soon to be released on Xbox. Sega fans, take heed!), but with only about half the charm. Ooh, my head hurts just thinking about all the copyright laws that have been breached here.

Wait, stop the press, I've just discovered something to like about True Crime. No…Yes…Ah, there it is: The sound effects. Can you tell I'm grasping at straws here?

Anyway, the sound is actually pretty good. As mentioned above, there are the vocal talents of Christopher Walken, Gary Oldman, alongside a less skilled panoply of mediocre rappers, and, of all people, Snoop Dogg.

Some might actually consider this a reason not to buy True Crime, but if rap, hip-hop and/or R&B is your thing, then this soundtrack is for you.

Never mind that I personally would play the entirety of this game through with the mute button firmly taped down just so I wouldn't have to hear Kang's annoying whine, akin to the noise made by an industrial turbine going full bore.

Driving is fun, and like with the less-than-successful The Getaway, something close to thirty miles of L.A is faithfully recreated right down to the last palm tree, or so we are told.

Although, come to think of it, what, exactly, is the point of that? I mean, it's not as if this game is actually grounded in real life. At its heart, True Crime: Streets of L.A is not a bad product, just an incredibly mediocre one.

If this game was a food, I think it would be take-away, possibly a hotdog…you know, an overly long, particularly thin something filled with items of suspicious origin and little actual content.

If you must own everything that shamelessly rips off John Woo's 'blood-opera' styling, then, by all means, go ahead and buy True Crime: Streets of L.A, but, should you happen to not fall into the category of the hopelessly addicted fanboy, then steer well clear of True Crime…except, of course, for those times when you're really feeling masochistic and the video-game rental place is closer than the pub.

Note to self: Move next door to pub.

ORIGINALITY 70%
SOUND/GRAPHICS 85%
PLAYABILITY 70%
ENJOYMENT 60%
OVERALL 65%