Darwin
11-09-2003, 10:18 AM
I've put in about 4 hours total into the new True Crime. The overall impression I'm getting is that this game is better than average, but certainly not great. It's got some good ideas, but it's lacking in variety, pacing of the story, and slow control response.
The overall feeling of playing True Crime is that it's clunky. It doesn't flow well, neither the game's progression nor the controls (or, the response of Nick to your controller input). First of all, the story is really broken up between loading screens. The actual story events are short lived (at least from the first two chapters I've played), leaving you little time to really understand or even care about what's happening. And the story elements aren't linked together in a nice way. For example, you drive to this location, go to the triangle icon, it then loads the little scenario inside. You then fight one guy and hear a few lines of dialogue ... then loading screen again.
The controls are also clunky. With most actions, there is a small delay between pressing the button and Nick performing the action, especially with fighting. This makes the fighting aspect of the game pretty weak. Also, there are some small collision detection issues when fighting ... sometimes Nick won't make contact with his opponent, especially when trying to use the X button (the grappling maneuver). Collision detection issues come up again when trying to cuff some perps, as you'll find yourself realligning Nick to finally get him to do the cuffing animation. Getting in and out of vehicles is slow and delayed ... and it takes several seconds for Nick to finally get moving after he's gotten out of the car, which is really annoying when you need to get out and chase a perp on foot.
There is also a lack of variety to your actions in the game. You have two main things you do: drive and fight. Within an hour, you'll start to see how all the Random Missions are really just an assortment of a few types of crimes, recycled over and over. Even the events in the story line are the same thing that you're doing in random missions.
To it's credit, True Crime does have a rather sophisticated control scheme and it's well done (at least in theory). Rather innovative in that you can switch stances on the fly (fighting, shooting, and normal mode). The problem is the delay in the controls ... getting Nick to do what you want in a timely fashion.
The driving is very arcade like. Cars demonstrate a lot of understeer and are kinda hard to turn (the opposite of Grand Theft Auto's oversteering, hyper-responsive cars). There are a good variety of cars, and they each have different handling characteristics. But since there isn't much incentive to drive around and explore, all this space seems to be wasted. The actual car chases are rather shallow, with AI demonstrating horrible driving abilities. I guess this is to always allow you to catch them. But even then, the car chases are monotanous. Chase car till within shooting range, game autoaims, you shoot with infinite ammo till enemy car is weakened, the perp gets out, and then either runs or gives up. You then get out and chase on foot. There seems to be no other way to get the enemy car to stop other than shoot it.
Add to this the annoying auto-save system. Nope, you cannot save whenever you want. It is only at certain spots in the game. Oh, and I've gotten run over by traffic so many times, it's really starting to piss me off (which incidently doesn't hurt you at all).
Rent before buying is my advice.
The overall feeling of playing True Crime is that it's clunky. It doesn't flow well, neither the game's progression nor the controls (or, the response of Nick to your controller input). First of all, the story is really broken up between loading screens. The actual story events are short lived (at least from the first two chapters I've played), leaving you little time to really understand or even care about what's happening. And the story elements aren't linked together in a nice way. For example, you drive to this location, go to the triangle icon, it then loads the little scenario inside. You then fight one guy and hear a few lines of dialogue ... then loading screen again.
The controls are also clunky. With most actions, there is a small delay between pressing the button and Nick performing the action, especially with fighting. This makes the fighting aspect of the game pretty weak. Also, there are some small collision detection issues when fighting ... sometimes Nick won't make contact with his opponent, especially when trying to use the X button (the grappling maneuver). Collision detection issues come up again when trying to cuff some perps, as you'll find yourself realligning Nick to finally get him to do the cuffing animation. Getting in and out of vehicles is slow and delayed ... and it takes several seconds for Nick to finally get moving after he's gotten out of the car, which is really annoying when you need to get out and chase a perp on foot.
There is also a lack of variety to your actions in the game. You have two main things you do: drive and fight. Within an hour, you'll start to see how all the Random Missions are really just an assortment of a few types of crimes, recycled over and over. Even the events in the story line are the same thing that you're doing in random missions.
To it's credit, True Crime does have a rather sophisticated control scheme and it's well done (at least in theory). Rather innovative in that you can switch stances on the fly (fighting, shooting, and normal mode). The problem is the delay in the controls ... getting Nick to do what you want in a timely fashion.
The driving is very arcade like. Cars demonstrate a lot of understeer and are kinda hard to turn (the opposite of Grand Theft Auto's oversteering, hyper-responsive cars). There are a good variety of cars, and they each have different handling characteristics. But since there isn't much incentive to drive around and explore, all this space seems to be wasted. The actual car chases are rather shallow, with AI demonstrating horrible driving abilities. I guess this is to always allow you to catch them. But even then, the car chases are monotanous. Chase car till within shooting range, game autoaims, you shoot with infinite ammo till enemy car is weakened, the perp gets out, and then either runs or gives up. You then get out and chase on foot. There seems to be no other way to get the enemy car to stop other than shoot it.
Add to this the annoying auto-save system. Nope, you cannot save whenever you want. It is only at certain spots in the game. Oh, and I've gotten run over by traffic so many times, it's really starting to piss me off (which incidently doesn't hurt you at all).
Rent before buying is my advice.