True Crime 360

Humility is a rare trait among game developers. More and more, studio heads and industry figures are playing a game of one-upmanship in the “outrageous sound bytes” stakes in order to develop cults of personality; in order to be heard over the “140 characters or less” din that increasingly composes the daily flow of gaming news.

David Jaffe is “so fucking sick” of “artsy fartsy” attitudes in this business. Gears of War design director Cliff Blezsinski assures a handful of Kiwi press that the Locust and humanity will never join forces to fight the Lambent because “that would be gay.” They’re all bankable quotes sure to get an inch or two of copy, and none of them really matter.

So when United Front Games invites Gameplanet to sit down and humbly proffers something akin to an apology for their individual mistakes in the past, pens cease their scribbling.

The team at United Front have only one game to their name so far, the likeable PlayStation-exclusive ModNation Racers. Composed of developers from EA, Blackbox (Need for Speed), Rockstar (Grand Theft Auto), Radical (Prototype) and THQ (Saints Row), they’re talking us through True Crime, their upcoming openworld action title.

 

Set in Hong Kong, True Crime tells the story of Wei, an undercover agent who is tasked with bringing down a Triad criminal fraternity.

The studio intends the title to play to its strengths – ex-Rockstar for openworld expertise, ex-Blackbox for arcade racing, Radical for action elements, and so on – and have outlined five production pillars that inform True Crime. They hope these tenets will distinguish their title from the pack of “also rans” that trail behind Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto and (now) Red Dead Redemption franchises.

The first is what they call the “on-foot experience.” Where GTA is a game that heavily features vehicles and is somewhat pedestrian when not behind the wheel, United Front wish to recreate the “visceral” chase sequences that feature so heavily in cop flicks like Point Break. Wei will run down criminals by vaulting fences and cutting down Hong Kong’s crowded and crated back-alleys – knocking over cages of live poultry and barrelling through cooks taking a quick smoke break.

 

Once he’s caught up to his target, Wei enters into melee combat that United Front assure us has depth. It certainly appears to. Wei bobs up and down on the balls of his feet in finest Bruce Lee tradition before striking, countering and grappling his foes. He uses the environment to his advantge, slamming heads through glass panes, forcing enemies onto sparking circuit boards and tossing them over railings, breaking arms and legs with a primeval crunch.

The second pillar is “action driving,” one that leans heavily on those studio developers how have joined United from Blackbox’s Need for Speed team. Wei drives trough Hong Kong as if the game were an arcade racer – local police pursue him in a fashion that will certainly remind players strongly of Need for Speed. True Crime also features optional races, hijacking and the use of vehicles as weapons, jumping from a speeding motorcycle, for example, to turn it into a projectile.

True Crime also features a targeting and subtargeting firearms system (without the use of any “bullet-time” function). Using it, Wei can shoot out tires, shoot guns from hands and cripple his targets.

The third pillar is recreating Hong Kong as an openworld. Here, United Front describes items that we think might be the game’s greatest strength and greatest weaknesses.

 

True Crime includes what the studio calls “touchpoints for Westerners to identify with.” Undercover agent Wei has a white ex-pat “handler” who United Front assures us will be a point of identification in a foreign city. Perhaps, but we think it’s unnecessary. If there’s one thing “immersive” openworld games don’t need, it’s pandering to American audiences who might be put off by having to experience a culture outside of their own. As soon as United Front pointed this out, we suddenly and despairingly noticed that everyone, everyone, has an American accent.

True Crime’s Hong Kong is representative of its realworld counterpart. The game’s Aberdeen harbour district is “a fishing village on steroids,” while North Point is a very close reimagining of Kowloon. Most importantly, True Crime’s Hong Kong is bustling. The streets really are crowded, something that feeds back into the “on-foot experience.”

The fourth pillar is a lesson that former Rockstar developers have brought to United Front: A lead character who is a sympathetic sociopath. Games such as this need characters who are sanctioned lawbreakers. Wei, an undercover cop, fits the bill perfectly.

 

Finally, United Front outlined “Face”, the fifth pillar. Face is the projection of social status. It’s not limited simply to what Wei wears and who he dates but also how you play Wei. A high Face rating grants tangible bonuses such as more health.

Rockstar doesn’t just cast a shadow across the production of True Crime and other games like it, it eclipses them. The third instalment in the True Crime franchise (one originally conjured as its publisher looked on covetously at the blockbuster success of Grand Theft Auto III) has several hurdles still to overcome if it hopes to finally shake the moniker of “GTA clone.”

Happily, there’s time and features enough in this latest iteration to warrant our attention as it approaches release.