The only other game to be this stunt-casted is also sitting next to me. Both DRIV3R and True Crime: Streets of LA got roughly the same results when released in 2003 and ’04, respectively. Rockstar was on a high with the release of III and Vice City in the years prior and San Andreas on the horizon. As a result, this was the genesis of the many open worlds we see today, aptly named GTA-clones. Sure, the year before Vice City had Ray Liotta, Dennis Hopper, Burt Reynolds, Danny Trejo, and Gary Busey, to name a few. True Crime started with Gary Oldman, Christopher Walken, Michelle Rodriguez, Michael Madsen, and Ron Perlman, to name the voices behind the biggest characters.

The ambition was the greatest downfall in 2003. Set out to topple the giants, Luxoflux and Activision’s new title on the block had all the ideas and all the chemistry to make it work. Yet despite a sequel two years later, the series never took off. Instead, Streets of LA would live on in the internet culture by crook rather than success, as all those memes the kids were posting a few years ago of a hand holding a gun comes from Nick Kang’s cover profile to the game. It wasn’t the random frisking that stayed in the minds of players, it was a rough Photoshop job.

From a fundamental standpoint, everything is there and before it would become the standard with morality systems in nearly every title, the branching path story would prove to be an interesting choice. What befell the release, however, was the copious number of issues (mostly technical and graphical) alongside a protagonist that was as likable as a black trash bag with a frowny face drawn on it. A rarity at the time, the apathetic Asian-American cop on a path of destruction following the death/disappearance of his cop dad 20 years prior wasn’t capturing many hearts.

It more accurately portrays the city of dreams and coffee shops filled with those dreams being smashed to pieces under a high-speed chase featuring a brown drop-top. Luxoflux’s detail is more similar to that of L,A Noire‘s faithful attempts than the counterparts of San Andreas as seen in both 2004 and 2013. Sometimes I’d just drive around the streets of Bel Air, the hills, Downtown, Santa Monica, and Venice, but this is skipping over one of the biggest blasts from the past in my return: Not only the product placement in general but product placement of Motorola on the map. Those old enough to remember the 2000s can remember the so-called meme “Hello Moto” and Francisco Tárrega’s “Gran Vals” for Nokia.

You’ll notice that I’ve not exactly spoken about the gameplay all that much, and there is a reason for that. We’ve all played an open-world game and True Crime is very much an attempt to repeat Grand Theft Auto, Saints Row later on, and even Spider-Man 2 from the year following this with its general mechanics. Much like the open worlds of those games, the sandbox offers the ability to travel around the city that can’t afford anti-aliasing but can get a new nose job. In your travels, you will have random crimes to stop. The resolution you pick to solve those crimes will decide the outcome towards the civil unrest meter going up or down and points towards or against being a good or bad cop.

Under civil unrest, uniformed officers will come and shoot a minority in plain clothes without defusing the situation. If you want to complain to me about that comment, take umbrage with the game which makes blatant references to Rodney King’s famous arrest and countless others many years later with the revolution of phones that were not made by Motorola. From your arrest of others to a speeding LAPD car with the intent of your death, being a cop isn’t entirely the point of this world or this story. Russell Wong’s Kang is the son of a murdered father and husband to a non-existent wife, he will take his vengeance, generally being Blandius Characterus Africanus.

The bit about the wife was made up to fit the quote, but the point is that you are a cop in the name (you have the badge, at least) but in action, you are no different than Aiden Pearce. He is a bit quippy in terms of the lines you’ll hear the most. There was an attempt to make Nick Kang someone humorous but like all action heroes on that very 80s-90s Rush Hour, Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Beverly Hills Cop, and Bad Boys archetype, there is a fine line between smug and a good character who’s a cop in a bad situation. Roger Murtaugh is a bit funny, John McClane is funny and in a bad situation, Lee is, well, he’s Jackie Chan doing entertaining things. Sadly, Nick Kang is boring like all bravado types.

True Crime: Streets of LA‘s humility comes from the tongue firmly planted in the cheek nature of some of the additional lines mostly from Daran Norris (Team America‘s Spottswoode). Additionally, there is a collection of outlandish crimes to stop or general voices seemingly being mixed up for humorous effect (or technical issues), such as an escaped cannibal or an old white woman saying a stereotypically outlandish slang term presumably meant to be used by Black male characters representing gangs or pimps. The trouble is, none of it is actually funny in retrospect.

Then comes the copious number of bugs, glitches, or otherwise dated problems of the now nearly 20-year-old game, the latter of which is most prominently the controls. At one point in my recent return (which I got on video), I had to abandon a case due to someone that got into a fight, attempted to evade arrest, stole two cars, and led me on a chase for a couple of blocks because despite disabling his second escape vehicle, the game thought the man outside the car was still in it. I couldn’t arrest him, I couldn’t pull him out, and I couldn’t kill him despite a strong attempt to: I shot the car so much it exploded and he still wouldn’t die.

The reason we have accessibility at the forefront of the majority of our minds now is exactly this case. X was used to drive, square and circle for reverse and handbrake, L1 to get in and out of cars, triangle to look back, and R1 to fire weapons. No, you can’t customize controls. How about solving that bug? Nope! Downloads won’t actually come into mainstream effect to update and sort console games (for better or worse) for another 3-4 years post-release. If True Crime: Streets of LA came out now, 6-months to a year from now it would be fixed and enjoyable.

We’ve lost these moments in time when a bad or broken game stayed broken, an example of hubris being the downfall amid crunch culture. That’s not to say True Crime: Streets of LA was prone to crunch (I don’t have evidence for that) or that it is an exceptionally bad game, there have been worse. It was a heavily flawed release back in 2003 and only made worse with the advancement of time. Hardware and other limitations hold it back even in rose-tinted visions of being a child and frisking up women randomly in the street.

Ultimately, we all have those games we played when younger than do not hold up, even in memory. True Crime is the entire series of that. About the only thing that has held up in time has been the soundtracks: Ice-T, Megadeth, Snoop Dogg (also featured in a secret mission), N.E.R.D. (Pharrell Williams a decade before “Happy”), Parliament, Alice in Chains, The Donnas, and a few others. This was back when you could have hip-hop, rock, funk, and metal on the same soundtrack and it was normal. It is just a shame an interesting concept like this in a city I love didn’t add up to its ambition.

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True Crime: Streets of LA

4

Score

4.0/10

Pros

• All the pieces are there.
• A cast of who's who is a great drinking game.
• An attempt at a faithful LA.

Cons

• Nick is very unlikeable.
• Very buggy and full of issues.
• Controls that are unfixable 20 years later.