True Crime

Activision made their first attempt to capture some of Rockstar's territory with True Crime: Streets of L.A. from Luxoflux (at the time best known for the Vigilante 8 titles) back in 2003. While it never had the charm of the Grand Theft Auto series and a main character that was as vanilla flavoured as they come, it was still an entertaining game at the time. The sequel, True Crime: New York City, came out two years later and was more of train wreck, that sent the developer spinning in a downward spiral that ended with Activision closing them down recently.

But Activision had far from given up on the franchise. They realised a total reboot was needed, a new developer, a brand new start, and that's where they were two and a half years ago. They contracted Vancouver based start up United Front Games to reinvent the series, a developer that took most of its talent from local studios such as EA Black Box (Need for Speed series), Radical Entertainment (Scarface, Prototype) and Rockstar Vancouver (Bully). Soon all their efforts will be scrutinised and compared to what is being billed as the most expensive game ever made - Grand Theft Auto IV.

I didn't really know what to expect when I walked into the hotel room to meet some of the team from United Front Games and have a brief look at True Crime. First of all, the team has done some things right. They have thrown out most of what True Crime was. They kept one interesting aspect, the fact that you are an undercover cop, something that allows you to be bad, yet still be a hero. Another thing they did right was to go for Hong Kong as the backdrop to their game. Los Angeles and New York are not as vibrant and suited for gameplay, especially if you are going for a realistic representation. And the Hong Kong you are going to visit in True Crime isn't the Hong Kong you may have seen in real life - it has been designed with gameplay in mind.

The look and feel of the city is one of the things that I was truly impressed by during the demo. The main character Wei Shen, is an officer at the Hong Kong bureau for Triad affairs. He is trying to infiltrate an organisation called Sun On Yee, and the beginning of the demo saw him taking on a mission from a bratty gangster who is trying to make a name for himself while not angering the higher ups too much. Wei's mission is to take out a warehouse, while saving a key individual who the bratty gangster's uncle/father/boss cares about.

The ride over there is rather nice. The narrow streets of Hong Kong make for an interesting drive, and some of mission details are divulged while you drive by your fellow thugs. So far the city has impressed, the cut scene that set up the mission failed to impress me. It felt contrived and the voice acting didn't hit the spot. Perhaps it's not a final version, but United Front Games have a long road to travel if they mean to challenge Rockstar in this area.

Then developers explain that they wanted to identify a few areas where they could be the best in the competitive segment and the on foot combat was one of these areas. And it must be said that this is an area where there is room for improvement in the GTA series. United Front Games have taken an "let's do everything" approach to the on foot combat. There is of course shooting where you can lock on to individual bodyparts to incapacitate or disarm people instead of killing them outright.

There is free running that allows you to move quickly and make use of the environment to deliver kicks and punches. You can also use the environment in attacks such as slamming people into a wall, or dump them into a dumpster or slam a fridge door close across their forehead. Everything is context sensitive. There is also a system where you hold and wrestle with your enemies and you can for instance hold their back and break one of their legs or shoot them if that is what you want to do. Lots of freedom, lots of possibilities. But everything looks rather half-assed to put it bluntly. The dull warehouse doesn't make things better, and it all just looks bland and without flow.

I had the chance to play another game in the same genre, Mafia 2, later that afternoon, and they have opted for a more focused approach with a cover based combat system similar to what you find in Uncharted or Gears of War. It is of course all too early to tell, and perhaps this warehouse didn't show the combat in the best of light, but I feel as though this game would have been better off with a more narrow approach to combat. It just didn't give off a great first impression.

As Wei Shen flees the destroyed facility he is chased by the cops, and now he's double role comes into play. He can't just shoot his way out of this and we are given a short tease about what that will mean as he jumps over an exploding barricade.

At this time I'm not convinced about United Front Games' reboot of the True Crime franchise. There are some things about it that impress me, but overall I was a bit disappointed by what I witnessed.