Summary
Although L.A. has been done so many times, thebest games set in Los Angelesdo more than rely on stereotypes passed on by other media. Great L.A.-based games have to do at least one of two things: create a Los Angeles map that feels familiar to residents, or capture the culture, vibe, and/or history of the city.
Luckily for gamers, dozens of games have recreated virtual versions of Los Angeles that feel authentic to residents. Maps may not be 1:1 recreations of areas, but they’re accurate enough to do tours with. Also, they have the L.A.je ne sais qoithat is unique to the location and history.
Metacritic
82% (Based on 39 critic reviews)
People in Los Angeles are quick to point out thatNeed for Speed Underground 2’s L.A. is more of a hybrid between their city, San Francisco, and Vancouver.NFSU 2’s L.A. is more than that, as it has a few more features borrowed from other cities. Still, it is unmistakably L.A.-coded, with wider streets and a hell of a lot less traffic to actually make street racing viable.
Fidelity aside,NFSU 2is remembered fondly forintroducing cool new car modelsand focusing on tuner cars. Hydraulics and nitrous boosts were also present, as well as an extensive tuning system reminiscent of mods used in street racing at the time.
Directed like an action movie,True Crime: Streets of L.A.can be surprisingly goofy at times. Its shooting missions transformthe open-world sandboxinto an on-rails shooter, complete withTime Crisis-like reticles. Fighting, stealth, and driving missions also feel wholly different, and failing any of them will branch the story into an alternate continuity.
In terms of being true-to-L.A., this game did surprisingly well in condensing the city and recreating landmarks. Staples Center, Chinatown, and Figueroa at Wilshire, among others, got in with some streets that should be familiar to commuters.
Accurate Depiction Of What L.A. Looks At Night
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
Vampire®: The Masquerade-Bloodlines™ delivers a new type of RPG experience-one that blends all the core elements of a traditional RPG with the graphical richness, immediacy and brutal combat of a first-person action game. The game plunges players into the dark and gritty vampire underworld of modern-day L.A. as a creature of the night. Players will develop their character’s powers, interact with other characters and embark on story-driven quests as they battle mortals and other vampires with an incredible array of vampire powers and weapons. Powered by Valve’s Source Technology, the game is based on White Wolf’s popular Vampire: The Masquerade pen-and-paper RPG series and its official clans.
Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines, of course, can’t be relied on to navigate real-life Los Angeles the way people can withDead Island 2. Plumbing the depths of L.A. at night and witnessing whatthe clans’ various holdingslook like gives players a different look at the city.
The World of Darkness is probably what residents think about when asked what’s the worst thing about L.A. Homelessness, dodgy street corners, and clubs that would fail a health inspection crowdVTM:B’s street corners. Yet it has an alluringly dangerous, Toreador-like charm that will likely carry over toVampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2’s version of Seattle.
Tony Hawk’s UndergroundandTony Hawk’s American Wasteland’sstory modes are general send-ups to teen dirtbag movies and 80s-to-00s skater culture.Wastelandtakes afterUnderground 2’s goofy mood and goes full teen movie, complete with an eclectic art direction that made L.A. look vibrant and grimy at the same time.
Wasteland’s Los Angeles took the city’s iconic locations and turned them into skate havens. These areas, save for the fictional ones, were beloved to skaters in the period and critical to the SoCal scene.
One thing gamers can’t fault Rockstar for is their capability to sometimes add unnecessary fidelity to a game map.Midnight Club: Los Angeles’free roam L.A.is bigger than the previous game’s three cities and has dozens of landmarks worthy of snaps in the game’s photo mode.
Naturally, the older game isn’t perfect and is a few years out of date, even in the year it was made, but it brings to mind that games likeMidnight Club: Los Angelesmake their maps years before release. What matters is its accurate enough that driving from LAX to Rodeo Drive in-game feels familiar to real L.A. residents.
Brand deals are difficult even for big-name studios, soDead Island 2can be forgiven for swapping some names for generic replacements. What it didn’t settle for is its fateful recreation of the L.A. skyline and hit locations. Although the Beverly Hills Hotel is Halperin Hotel in Hell-A, its location on the map and facade are almost 1:1 in accuracy.
Aside from the map and facades, the vibe of a zombified Los Angeles is also pretty accurate. Even with braindead zombies milling around, the attitude, feeling, and sheer detail made Hell-A a damn good map to take withseveral legendary weapons.
Fallout
FalloutandFallout 2were iconic and had a different tone than what the games would be known for later. Their Los Angeles, knownas the Boneyard, had been swallowed up by nuclear destruction and desertification. Still, survivors breathed new life into Hollywood, Irvine, Santa Monica, and other pre-war sites, far removed from their glamorous past.
The TV series expanded on whatFalloutandFallout 2couldn’t show due to limitations. The Griffith Observatory became the New California Republic’s stronghold following Shady Sands’ annihilation, Santa Monica became the crux of three major vaults, and the entire city became the site of a functional cold fusion reactor.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreaswas, at the time, ground-breaking for the amount of work put into recreating a 90s Los Angeles. Rockstar went above and beyond to include Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Northern California in an already packed map. Gamers would spend months, and even years, unpacking the map because of its intricacy.
With bothSan AndreasandGrand Theft Auto Vin the rearview,San Andreascan be said to have ahistorical place in gaming. Photo accuracy wasn’t enough anymore, as cities needed to feel alive, filled-in, and cultural-accurate, likeSan Andreas’ bustling towns.
L.A. Noire’slasting legacy as a gameis its digital recreation of historical sites. Although obviously not a perfect, street-to-street recreation of post-war L.A., the landmarks Team Bondi chose to perfect were stunning. Grauman’s Theater, Los Angeles Public Library, Los Angeles Union Station, and Chinatown, among its 30 or so landmarks, brought old wonders back to digital life.
A recreation ofL.A. Noireis a fever dream now with Team Bondi’s shutdown, but as information preservation becomes more of a concern, having an accessible resource likeL.A. Noirecan’t be debated. This level of fidelity also works on a gameplay level, as triple-A connoisseurs always want living, authentic cities in their open worlds.
It might seem excessive to includeGrand Theft Auto 5andGrand Theft Auto: San Andreasin the same list, but each game represents a different era of L.A. Obviously,San Andreasis a nostalgia trip, featuring locales that have been stripped down or changed drastically since its release. Meanwhile,Grand Theft Auto 5is faithful to theappearance and vibesof Los Angeles in the new 10s.
Grand Theft Auto 5’slittle details, like streets and intersections that only locals know, feel comfortable to residents, especially people who lived in the area around the game’s release. Crafting the game also made Rockstar develop new tech to simulate a living city, and not merely create an imperfect doppelgänger. It’s this level of immersion they hope to bring toGrand Theft Auto 6’s Miami, the Everglades, and the rest of Florida.
