True Crime: Streets of LA

"Aw diggity damn I gotta go" A game I first discovered years ago on my dads ps2 and had fairly great memories of it. Coming back to it in my 20's, I'm finding out a lot of this game was fogged up by my nostalgia. While yes, I enjoyed this game a lot, and found all 3 storylines fun and exciting, I also found that this "open world" doesn't feel very expansive or even interesting. The only thing you can do, side mission wise, is finding random crimes (which I should mention, are recurring and don't have any ounce of story of completion). Now, the reason you want to do these is because you get reward points, and after 100, you earn a badge which you then can use to get an upgrade of your choosing (weapon, fighting, or driving). It's pretty boring ngl, especially since the open world is kinda big, just absolutely nothing to do in it. So in that aspect, the game feels pretty linear, which isn't the worst, but not great either. The poor ending was kinda lame, but the average and good endings were fun stuff, although the story doesn't get memorable until near the middle/end of the game. The missions were fun for the most part, I even enjoyed trying out the alternative missions too. Got like 93% of my upgrades until I beat the game all the way through, so I'd say I did a pretty thorough job with this game. In all, I can't say True Crime: Streets of LA held up my expectations for it, but it's a very fun if maybe slightly average game that feels different enough from GTA to feel like it's own thing. Recommended.