True Crime: Streets of LA Impressions

True Crime is the upcoming third-person action adventure game from Activision and developer Luxoflux. The open-ended game puts you in the role of Nick Kang, a former police officer who is tapped to help when trouble brews in Los Angeles. The brash ex-cop, dismissed from the LAPD for excessive use of force, is recruited by an undercover division to solve some of the city's more brutal crimes. While we've seen the game--on and off--for the past few months, we've actually gotten hold of a near-final version of the game that is much more polished.

The game's story, while basically linear, unfolds via a nice mix of cutscenes and scripted events that are tied to the game's action. True Crime's basic mission-based structure is pretty typical of the genre. However, Luxoflux has thrown in an impressive twist. While you'll have to participate in a series of missions, both scripted and random, the game won't penalize you if you're unable to complete one. Instead, the story will progress, thanks to a unique structure featuring a variety of branches that are accessible if you happen to fail at something. If you fail your objective, you can either re-play your mission or continue. This ensures that the story unfolds in unique ways.

The game splits your time between racing around town, by car, to locations on your map and going around, on foot, completing various missions. While the gameplay owes more than a little debt to Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City, it does feature several unique elements that help keep it from being a straight clone. As you make your way around the meticulously re-created sections of LA, you receive alerts regarding crimes in progress near you. These crimes actually show up as red dots on your map, which you can choose to follow up or ignore. How you handle these challenges will affect your karma and will eventually have you labeled as a "good" or "bad" cop.

True Crime also features unique combat and targeting systems that give you a number of options as you play. The combat system features a simple, but accessible, attack system that supports modest combos and supermoves. Nick's repertoire of moves can be increased, as you make your way through the game, by visiting dojos and passing tests. As you complete the various tests you'll learn new moves which prove to be vital later in the game.

When fists aren't enough, True Crime provides you with a nice assortment of guns to whip out. The guns feature a precision targeting system that lets you take out your foes with pinpoint accuracy. This is especially useful when engaged in firefights while driving a car. If you're pressed for time, it's much more efficient to take out your foe's tires and get them off the road.

As far as the graphics go, True Crime is shaping up well. The PlayStation 2 cranks out a high level of detail and impressive effects that help recreate L.A. very nicely. The replica is so exact that we expect natives to navigate the streets like pros while everyone else is likely to be stuck following the onscreen radar.The various character models in the game are well done and sport generous polygon budgets. The animation is pretty well done, overall, but comes across as stiff in a few places. The rest of the graphics are almost the same quality, but, given the scale of the game, the city's polygonal budget is managed a bit more carefully.

The audio is good and helps set the urban tone the game is striving for, thanks to an eclectic mix of artists. The voice acting is good and is lent a bit more weight, courtesy of a cast that includes several well-known actors like Russell Wong, Christopher Walken, and CCH Pounder. The rest of the game's audio is rounded out by amusing sound bytes from people on the streets and assorted effects for explosions, gunfire, cars, and pedestrians.

From our time spent with the game so far, True Crime looks pretty promising. Despite the obvious GTA III influences, the unique gameplay elements and style are looking pretty cool. The only hitches we've found involve load times and an inconsistent camera, neither of which appears to be terribly damaging. True Crime: Streets of LA is currently slated to ship this fall. Look for more on the game shortly.