ic-games Review - True Crime: New York City - Reviews, Previews and Interviews for PC, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3 and Wii

ic-games Review - True Crime: New York City - Reviews, Previews and Interviews for PC, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3 and Wii ic-games Review - Home - Review, Preview and Interview for PC, Xbox,Xbox 360, PS2, PS3 and Wii

True Crime: New York City

Information
Reviewer: Ian Stanway
Developer: Activision
Publisher: Activision
Reviewed: PS2/Xbox
Genre: Action/Adventure
UK Release: 25th Nov 2005
Article Date: 07th Feb 2006
Difficulty: Medium
Retail Price: 34.99
Price Comparison:
0

Score Breakdown

Experience:
Game Play:
Graphics:
Sound:
Overall Score: 65%

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Pros

Great music

Some good free roaming fun to be had

Cons

Buggy

Slow framerate

Screenshots

18 of 20

Getting over the fact that True Crime: New York City crashed during the intro the first time I played it, if first impressions are anything to go by, in True Crime: New York City we’d have an editor’s choice award on our hands simply from the intro music alone. We’re treated to some cool hip hop from the likes of Jay Z, and a cruise around a true to life New York City. As the sequel to the pretty good True Crime: Streets of LA, I was hoping for bigger and better things and was looking forward to the hotly touted ‘dynamically changing neighbourhoods’ (more later), but unfortunately after listening to the intro music for a minute or two and actually getting into the game, things took a turn for the worse.

True Crime: Streets of LA was the ‘good cop’ to Grand Theft Auto’s ‘bad cop’ appeal, putting you on the right side of the law in an open plan, free roaming city, and it didn’t hide the fact that it took its inspiration from the technically better and more enjoyable GTA. A couple of years later and we have True Crime: New York City, where you play as Marcus Reed, a likeable young gangster-turned-cop who is the newest member of the Organised Crime Division of the NYPD.

As Reed it’s your job to work your way up the rankings and make a name for yourself cleaning the scum off the streets and cracking some of the city’s big crime syndicates. The first level is set back in 2000 when you’re still a street punk with a vendetta against a guy that betrayed your father, and an Uzi ready to waste him and his cronies. After icing them all you meet a detective from the Organised Crime Unit of the NYPD, your friend as it turns out, and the game fast forwards to present day, when you learn that you’ve turned good, worked your way up the NYPD ranks and are about to be promoted to the Organised Crime Division and become this guy’s partner. Unfortunately this mentor is blown to bits in a big explosion on your first outing together and you spend the rest of the game trying to figure out who killed him and why he was killed, and of course cleaning up the Manhattan neighbourhoods. TC:NYC has the roots of a great storyline then, but this is ruined by some bad writing and downright hammy acting.

The controls take some getting used to as there’s a lot to take in initially. During the first tutorial mission on the streets I was supposed to chase down a man on foot and dive at him to get him to stop. I had to pause the game while I laughed myself silly, as when I’d managed to run up behind him and took a dive, he stopped and ducked down and I went sailing past and did a roll. He got up and ran the other way. A little later on in my first real mission I was set the task of breaking up a street brawl and had to arrest several men scrapping it out on the street. I got attacked by a policeman (I was wearing plain clothes) as I couldn’t remember how to flash my badge or fire a warning shot in the air, I attacked an innocent bystander and then spent a minute wondering why a guy I’d forced to the floor was doing nothing until I realised I needed to then cuff him. It was all very bewildering and confusing, especially as there’s no way to find out any of the controls whilst in-game.

This pretty much sums up my general incompetence and confusion over the game’s controls, for the early part at least. When things get going you cruise around in your car and are dispatched to random crimes that are happening in your nearby vicinity. This is all the while you have the other, main missions investigating the detective's death and busting the 4 cases the game comprises of. Each one goes like this: beat up the purps, interrogate their boss, find information on more purps, beat them up… and so on. If you want to however you can also walk up to random people on the street and frisk them for contraband, finding things like guns, drugs, obscene photos – you know, all the general stuff that the average NYC citizen conceals about their person.

The game makes a big play on how your law enforcement decisions affect the Manhattan neighbourhoods: let crime go unchecked and “the crime rate will soar as the streets fill with trash, potholes and unsavoury characters while buildings and foliage deteriorate … clamp down on crime in a neighbourhood, not only will crime rates fall, but visual improvements will indicate their progress as well”. So, completing the random crime events helps to decrease crime levels in the neighbourhood you’re in at the time, and this makes the neighbourhood pretty. To be honest though I can’t say I really took the opportunity to use this feature to its full potential as the random events happen far too frequently whilst you’re re on your way to the next story mission and they break up the flow of the game and you just don’t have time to be everywhere at once.

The combat system is at heart pretty simplistic and easy to pick up. You have an auto-target feature which makes clearing gangs of thugs easy, a little too easy in fact. To liven things up instead of just standing and auto-targeting everyone you can do a variety of neat things such as back up against a wall for cover and peer round the corner to shoot, or take a gun-dive whilst on the move. Hand to hand combat is more fun though and you get to beat up perps or the general public in a variety of ways getting more fun as the game progresses and you learn new tricks.

TC:NYC also makes big of the fact that the NYC layout is recreated very realistically. This is all well and good but it’s more than can be said for how the vehicle physics handle. For a game that’s models NYC down to the last detail, I’d expect the vehicle handling to be a little more realistic, especially as you spend so much time driving around the city. The handbrake turn is a joke as it’s far too sharp; I spent much of my time early on hand braking and completely over steering, nearly ending up facing the direction I just came from. GT4 this is most definitely not. You can pull off some crazy manoeuvres though and at times feel complete satisfaction when you do something like rounding a corner on two wheels in a high speed pursuit.

Graphically you’re sort of in for a treat. As mentioned the cityscape is realistically reproduced and if you were to just cruise around and take in the sights you’d be left feeling very satisfied. The character models move well and are detailed, as are the textures. Effects such as litter blowing about in the wind and weather effects are magnificent, but unfortunately the games suffers chronically from slowdown. At times the framerate is painful, which is just plain unacceptable. Just watch the intro video for a minute or two to see what I mean. The clipping is often poor too with body parts appearing through scenery or the floor. The blend between speeding around the city in your car and sauntering along the sidewalk is excellently done, however you then have Marcus who seems to be stuck on permanent slow-mo however and just doesn’t blend well with the environment around him.

The audio is one of the game’s high points. Featuring some top-drawer names from the hip hop world, there’s a multitude of songs and you can set them all to various star ratings to affect how often they come on when you’re pimping out round the ‘hood. The voice acting is pretty poor and hammy, although this is down to bad writing rather than talent which includes both Christopher Walken and Laurence Fishburne voicing main characters. This is an 18 game and swearing features prominently; I don’t think it’s over used at all and think the realism would have been degraded had it not been so, as this is a ‘realistic’ game of guns and crime on the streets. Sound effects are pretty standard right through from gunshots to heads smashing to engines revving. Oh, and I love to hate the elevator music.

Finally, and most inexcusably, the game suffers from some horrible bugs. As mentioned at the beginning of the review the first time I played the game it crashed during the intro. The music got stuck into a loop and as the city fly-by progressed the models became more and more glitchy. A quick restart and things were ok. But periodically throughout the game inexplicable things like that happen. Definitely the sign of a not quite complete game rushed out before being finalised.

Sadly then, True Crime: New York City just doesn’t cut the mustard. There are a lot of good basic concepts and ideas that unfortunately lost their way in the development process. If you like the genre, it’s a definite rental. Unfortunately, it’s nothing more than that I’m afraid.

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