True Crime

Several years back there was a game called True Crime: Streets of LA developed by Luxoflux. Basically it was a Grand Theft Auto game except you were a cop instead of a criminal. It's always nice to see the station from the other side of the bars. Anyway, that was back when I had first started playing video games, well seriously playing them. I had a Nintendo Gamecube back then probably because it was the cheapest out of the PS2 and Xbox. I didn't really catch onto PC gaming until much after did I discover that it was a lot easier to have everything you wanted (games, school, work, etc.) all on one machine. Did I get off topic again? So True Crime was my very first M game and I'm going to be honest here, I wasn't 17 at that time yet. But I really wanted to play that game because you were allowed to be a cop. I've always wanted to be a cop when I was a kid. It always seemed fascinating watching the cops chase down criminals in movies and on TV so obviously, I started to get influenced by it.

Nevertheless, I managed to get my hands on a copy of True Crime. Boy was it money well spent. I still have fond memories of it from a special appearance with Snoop Dogg to how difficult it was to get your hands on a squad car to the very accurate map of Los Angeles. Well the map wasn't super accurate but for a video game made in 2003, it was very good. Essentially, you could explore almost all of L.A. through a video game provided that you get used to seeing the same buildings and the same pedestrians and cars.

It was the first video game of its series and just like any other video game, there were areas that could be improved or fixed. A.I. is probably the most obvious one given the fact that this game was made in 2003. But a good chunk of these improvements were installed onto the next game in the series: True Crime: New York City.

Now TC: NYC would have been a great improvement over TC: SoLA if it weren't for the fact that it was rushed to stores. TC: NYC implemented a monetary system (just like many video games at that time) and as a player, you could purchase cars from various car dealerships or clothing to customize the protagonist Marcus Reed. The number of cars you were allowed to own was greatly expanded from the standard Ford Crown Victoria to a Nissan 350z to even a limo. All of these cars can be given a "police upgrade" which essentially adds a small light bar at the back of the car (or front in some cases), gives it a siren and adds a reinforcement bar at the front of the vehicle. This effectively made turned your civilian car into a police one and you could go around pulling over drivers checking for contraband or issuing bogus traffic tickets.

Both games allowed you to randomly frisk pedestrians for illegal weapons or contraband. It's always pretty fun watching the animation as your character cuffs the suspect and trips him onto the ground. TC: NYC also gave players the option to turn in the evidence to the evidence locker at the station or sell it at a pawn shop for some extra cash. This would affect your character has he completes his deeds in a good way or a bad way. This lead to different endings depending on whether you wanted to be a bad cop or good cop.

I never did got to the part why TC: NYC was so bad now did I? The biggest reason for it was because it was rushed thus a lot of bugs were not found nor removed. This really surprised me as anyone who played the game for 30 minutes would soon notice the frequent crashing or the inability to use the scope on a simple sniper rifle. The game was still very fun but the bugs really ruined it.

Fast forward to 2011. I was very disappointed to find out that True Crime 3 was canceled by Activision as they wanted to focus more of their efforts on Call of Duty and other mainstream titles. Now I haven't really paid attention to the gaming news lately so when I walked into EB games today, I noticed a game called Sleeping Dogs. The cover was what had captured my attention and as I picked it up, I got this strange feeling of familiarity. The back cover had the usual pictures of showing some action but I thought these pictures looked really familiar. Reading the description also told me that the player would be playing as an undercover Hong Kong police officer. Now things were starting to get really familiar and I decided I would remember the name and research the game when I got home.

As it turns out, Square Enix had bought the rights to the game and finished the development of it. I am really excited to see how this will turn out and also I really wanted to play a video game that took place in Hong Kong; my home city.

I'm feeling really tired right now so I'll just paste the usual picture and go to sleep.