I wish gritty realism was like this

Thursday, July 29, 2004


So I figured I'd rent True Crime: Streets of LA.  Hey, I live there, maybe I could drive by my apartment and shoot at it or something.

I played Grand Theft Auto, so it only seemed natural to play this next step in the crime game evolution.

Okay, sure, you're a cop who's almost kicked off the force for being too hardcore, your dad was a cop, there's an FBI guy who tries to take over and just screws everything up, and they kidnap your brother.  Your partner doesn't like you; you're a lone wolf. 

Great, whatever.  The Russians are involved, yeah.  Basically a story ripped off from every cop movie or television show ever made.  Well, ever made by humans.

Even with all that, it was a solid game.  Driving, shooting, sub-plots, optional crimes you can solve or ignore, even a good cop / bad cop thing.  Kind of neat.  I was having a pretty good time playing along.  As cheeseball as the story was, I didn't care, cause I got to be the guy who was actually nailing those bad guys!

But honestly, I should have seen it coming.  I kind of thought the thugs in that dungeon looked a little like zombies.  I should have seen my descent into the underworld.  I missed it right up until the appearance of the 300-year-old chinese sage who wrangles the Force like my mom wrangles a yard sale.


And then appear the flaming demon heads.


They shriek that easily-identifiable T-Rex trumpet from Jurassic Park, and then lapse into the most simplistic big-boss pattern-attack since I last played Contra in 1980-whenever.  It was a simultaneous dissolution of story and gameplay.  If I wanted a boss pattern-attack game, I'd pick up Super Mario World.  At least that game realizes what genre it's in.

Fortunately, my LAPD-issue .38 revolvers seem to work just fine on these flaming demon heads.  Good thing, too, cause I hadn't yet collected the Proto-Pack Supernatural Entity Weapon upgrade.

I simply must ask-- were flaming demon heads really necessary? Is it so difficult to come up with a cop story that gamers will buy that you have to whip out the humungoid fire-breathing dragon? Especially in a game that touted its gritty street realism.  Was there absolutely no other resolution possible to the dramatic quandries they wrote themselves into?

"Shit, man, I truly don't think we can end this tale of sacrifice and noble bravery without the supernatural."

"I was kind of thinking the same thing, but you know, I just wasn't sure if gamers are ready for such a drama-heavy plot twist.  Will they be able to handle it?"

"We're breaking new ground with this story, Max.  Let's be bold.  Fire-breathing dragons!"

The Cop Movie and Cop TV Show are staples of the entertainment industry.  Hollywood knows that as long as you have a pretty cast, decent action, and pepper the screen with ass every twenty minutes, you'll make your money back.

Those hundreds of films successfully conclude themselves, yet still manage to remain in the realm of mortals.  Especially as Hollywood's involvement in video games increases every year, I would expect perhaps a *little* of that might have rubbed off. 

  



perfectly acceptable in a police-themed video game.



suspension of disbelief may have gone too far.



De Niro would have been less intimidating with a sidekick.

I did manage to find some a rare behind-the-scenes photograph from the set of Heat, though. 

posted by Scotty 2-shots at 4:00 PM