Despite all the haters and all the flaws this game has I think its a pretty damn fun game!!
I am glad I did it was a pretty sweet game. I think it has SOME cool mechanics. I can also see why other people hate it as it does have some flaws..
Lets see...where to start....Well I guess with the controls. Your left stick is movement, your right stick is looking, You have a punch button, a kick button, a grab button. The directional buttons control your inventory and weapons, You can run and jump. Pretty similiar to most other free-roam games.
Your guy has a health bar and a super bust bar. You can arrest people commiting crimes by grabbing them and initiating a bust but if you beat on people you fill up your super bust bar and when its full you can take down people hard with wrestling style moves. Its pretty freaking cool. You can do a free standing super bust, a standing grapple bust, and a ground grapple bust.
The super busts really really make me wish other games had something like it. I wish you could learn new super bust techniques and then get to choose which ones you use. Think of all the cool wrestling moves you would want to use like Sting's reverse DDT or Scorpion Deathlock. I could go on and on about this but lets continue on.
Melee Combat is pretty awesome to. Because you get two attack buttons you have a nice variety of moves. You can also squat down and do an uppercut or a sweep. You can also guard. So I think the melee combat in this game is way better than GTA. You cant do a whole lot with grapple, you can punch and knee people while in a grapple but more often than not they will freaking throw you. Towards the end of the game grabbing people is a waste of time.
Unlike True Crime or GTA you dont get huge sprawling cities to explore and you do not get to drive any vehichles. You have to run every where but you wont miss it for the most part. You can run and run and run and your guy will not get tired and you wont have far to go anyways.
All the different ways to arrest people is my main reason for liking this game. it all goes down hill from there though. There is like zero character improvement/customization in this game. Your aim never improves, your weapons never do any more damage, you never get extra life or armor, or anything. You can get money by busting perps and you can buy some heavier firepower from a swat van but those can be taken away.
Wait let me backtrack a second, I really like the aim/zoom mode on weapons. If you take your time to aim you can head shot all crap henchmen or do serious damage to boss guys. In GTA performing headshots is all about just getting close to people which doesnt take any skills.
Ok next up we have the offensive music. Offensive because of the lyrics and offensive because of how the music gets played. Each section of the city is assigned a song and its the only freaking song that gets played while your in that section and it gets extremely annoying. You can turn off the music and towards the end thats exactly what i did lol. The music is comprised of the worst most vile garbage rap. Every other word is the N word. That kind crap only appeals to real criminals and they are to busy getting arrested to get a job to afford a video game console. Its just offensive and a really huge negative against the game.
While playing the mission you switch between two cops. One is a detective and one is a federal agent. After completing enough missions you leave one city and goto another and after a few more missions you beat the game. Sadly this is where another huge negative comes from. There isnt a whole lot of missions to begin with but when you do complete them all and you beat the game you ARE NOT allowed to keep playing. They roll the credits and then you either reload your last save file or start over (with nothing from your previous game), not that you actualy had anything.
So you end up with a game that has great melee and gun combat but hardly any missions, offensive music, no improvement/depth, and close ended.
I think this game is a pretty awesome game for a once through. But due to the lack of replay value I really cant recommend you buy it unless you can get it for like 5$ or less.
Personally I think this game deserves a second chance from Midway. Get some killer music, blow up the cities and introduce vehichles, make it open ended, and put in some character improvement/depth/customization and it may not rival GTA but I think it could become the next best thing. I think it would easily crush True Crime.