While everyone is waiting for GTA 6, one of the best GTA games out there has been making quite a splash for over 10 years!

Game news While everyone is waiting for GTA 6, one of the best GTA games out there has been making quite a splash for over 10 years!

True crime, comeback?

In 2002, Activision announced that its studio Luxolux (co-founded by Peter Moriawik, creator of Comix Zone and Sonic Spinball) was developing an entirely new game called True Crime: Streets of LA. First introduced as “an original racing game inspired by Hong Kong action films,” the title was first revealed in May of the same year during E3, the great bloc of video games. Highly ambitious, the adventure diversifies experiences (beating, racing, shooting, fighting, etc.), offers twenty missions with story branches and promises an accurate reproduction of the City of Angels. Activision promises: Players will be immersed in a Los Angeles city that screams realism!

Summer passes and the fever surrounding the title does not subside, but it does subside in December when the publisher reveals that the map area has been reduced from 1,036 square kilometers to 777 square kilometers. That’s a loss of 100 miles (400 to 300 miles). Regardless, the ambition is still there and the developers have used satellite images and done site scouting to recreate a city full of details, reproducing all the major areas (Hollywood, Santa Monica, Marina del Rey, etc.). Supported by a great cast (Russell Wong, Gary Oldman, Christopher Walken, Ron Perlman, among others), True Crime: Streets of LA was released on November 4, 2003, and its 240 square miles (622 square kilometers) area was received by most Gamers, although some critics are more lukewarm, especially after the media wave of the first 3D GTA game, called GTA 3.

True crime legacy

Although controversial, True Crime: Streets of LA is the culmination of many months of work and the implementation of amazing tools designed by the developers. Activision decides to give Luxolux another chance. The studio pulls out all the stops and, with the support of experienced developers and a former NYPD inspector, produces True Crime: New York City. Once again, the cast is absolutely insane (Mickey Rourke, Laurence Fishburne) and the title does not lack ambition. Unfortunately, the reception was more mixed, due to the somewhat bland production and lack of percussion. What’s worse is that the game is full of bugs and there is no possibility, as there is today, to include patches. The series is slowly dying without anyone really regretting it. Except for Activision.

At the end of 2007, the American publisher approached the small studio United Front Games. Completely new in practice, the small entity, then consisting of only about a dozen employees, embarked on a massive project to create a new true crime ring. To create this title, we allocated a budget to employ… 180 people! This studio, too sprawling and heavy for such a studio, would never work. After an intense wave of layoffs (losing 120 employees), United Front Games is restructuring and receiving support from the new shareholder, Square-Enix. The old true crime rules: Hong Kong (that’s its name) are then restored for a complete remake. The game has been renamed Sleeping Dogs, and is the culmination of hard work from the studio that will see its popularity increase. The fruit of extensive reconnaissance in Hong Kong (20,000 photos, hundreds of hours of video, etc.), interviews with former Triad members and police officers from the Anti-Triad Unit and various inspirations, Sleeping Dogs was released on August 14, 2012. It received a warm welcome from the press and gamers . With its immersive city, colorful characters, and dynamic battles, Sleeping Dogs is an amazing game! Although several sequels were cancelled, the United Front Games title was still the subject of an enhanced version in 2014 and a film with Donnie Yen would still be in the works.