international nut of pastry - I think this lines mostly filler.

Developer: Luxoflux
Distributor: Activision

Welcome to 240 square miles of LA streets, crime and stupid drivers. Oh, and it's a video game now as well. You are Nick Kang Wilson, part of the freshly created E.O.D. The Elite Operations Division, a fancy new Police division that has authority over all of LA. No boundaries for you... Well, except for boundaries that stop you from leaving LA.

So, with all that space you'd have the impression that the game play would be long lasting and try to move out around most of the LA landscape. Well, an attempt to so this was made but, well... Let's see me explain this and see how many spelling errors that come up along the way.

Story/Missions:
The story is what a big name Hollywood production could be made on. That isn't to say it's great, but it could be entertaining if it was a movie.
As I said before, you're Nick Kang Wilson. A cop that likes to colour outside the lines and is on the hunt of Russians, Triads, crooked cops, street scum and at one point some sort of sewer creatures. Oh, and you're also looking for what happened to your father, who was also a cop... He went missing.

There are 12 episodes, with a number of missions per episode. Some missions are alternative missions that you see if you fail a previous mission though, in an attempt to bring some more non-linear aspects to the game. Did I mention that the game has 3 possible endings? Yeah, well, it does. The three endings are based on how much you find out about your father, and much of the crime syndicate you ruin.

The problem with alternative missions (the ones you get if you fail certain missions) is that you never see them. Almost every mission is at the same difficulty and believe me, they're not hard. The only time I found challenge in a mission was when fighting the final boss in two different endings.

Gameplay:
When looking at this game, you wouldn't be blamed for thinking this game was Grand Theft Auto 3, or Vice City. And it's clear that Luxoflux don't care about the similarities and add a bit of humour to the situation by a billboard that shows up every so often that changes the Rockstar logo to a Jock Strap one.

Controls are very much GTA-esque, with driving controls slightly changed and confuddling at first if you've come from GTA. The improvement in this game is hand to hand fighting. It's like a mini fighting game, only when you get fed up with blocked punches and missed kicks - you can whip out your pistols and finish them off in a more bloody fashion.

A feature they tried to push on you is Matrix/Max Payne style "bullet time". Only they managed to bugger it up as every so often you'll start running after some street scum only to find the game slowing down to a crawl, only to eventually have it go back to normal speed. And the bullet time itself is useless. There wasn't a time when I used it to help in some part of a mission. It was only used for fancy tricks, for a few laughs.

There isn't a wide variety of cars for you to - ahem - borrow, and their abilities are all too close together for it to really matter what car you get into.

Final Opinion:
True Crime is a fun game, skipping the cut scenes means nothing to the missions that follow it, so quick and dirty fun is possible. The few problems that I spoke about aren't major, just sometimes annoying. The game did lock up on me 4 times during the course of me finishing it (which was rather quick because of the lack of mission difficulty). Many of the issues lead me to think that this game went through very little testing and was rushed out the door. Actually, a few more things lead me to think that as well.

If you're driving fast down a street and happen to hit a solid wall, sometimes you'll find yourself going through it. This happens when driving down the highways as well, hit the cement barrier hard enough and you will explode in a plume of flames.

This game is a buyer, but not at its full price. I got it for $75AU, instead of $97AU, and I believe I got my money's worth with this game. If you see it marked down, you might feel the same as me.