Reviewed by
Greg Mueller
Review date: 11/23/05
Release date: 11/15/05
Shortly after Grand Theft Auto III set the gaming world ablaze in 2001, one of the first games to attempt to emulate that game's gritty style and open-ended gameplay was True Crime: Streets of L.A. The game left a lot of room for improvement, but it at least laid a foundation that could be built upon in future installments in the series. Somehow, though, with the follow-up, True Crime: New York City, the series has taken a huge step backward. True Crime: New York City is so riddled with problems that it feels like it was rushed to make it to store shelves in time for the holidays or was just a lost cause that got shoved to retailers in the hopes of recuperating some of the development costs. Even if you forgive the flimsy story, cliché characters, and derivative gameplay, it's impossible to look past the myriad of game-stopping bugs, frustrating glitches, and glaring technical problems that plague this game.
You can clean up the streets of New York City as thug-turned-cop Marcus Reed.
Before we get to the laundry list of problems with this game, here's the basic setup. You play as Marcus Reed, a young gangster-turned-cop who is out to clean up the streets of New York City with his own brand of off-the-books justice. Reed is the newest member of the Organized Crime Division in the NYPD, and he's eager to make a name for himself by taking down the biggest crime syndicates in the city. There are four major cases to solve, and each one involves taking down the same kind of stereotypical thugs and mob bosses you've seen in countless cop movies. Each case is broken down into several smaller missions that follow the same basic pattern. You get a tip about a bad guy, locate that bad guy, waste all his henchmen, and then interrogate him until he tells you about yet another bad guy that you have to bust. You then head off to do the same thing all over again in a slightly different location. The missions are extremely easy, and it doesn't take too long to complete each one. Since there are only four cases, you can easily beat the story part of the game in just a few hours.
If for some reason you feel like spending more time with this game, there are some side missions to keep you busy. You can meet up with informants who give you tips on various crimes going down around the city or who ask you to do a bit of dirty work for them. These missions are pretty quick and easy, but completing them is a good way to make a little extra cash. There's a madam who sends you on errands to take care of her girls, a cabbie who needs an extra driver from time to time, and more. Aside from the informant missions, you can join an illegal street racing circuit or put your fists to work in an underground fighting tournament. As you cruise around the city, police dispatch will inform you of random crimes that are happening in your vicinity. If you want to, you can go arrest or kill the perps. If that's too much work, you can simply walk up to people on the street and frisk them for contraband. Sometimes you'll find things like gun parts, stolen license plates, obscene photos, or drug paraphernalia. When you collar a criminal, you earn career points, and you can turn in collected evidence to the precinct or sell it to a pawn shop for cash.
Career points are rewarded every time you solve a crime. Once you have enough career points, you'll be promoted within the police department. There are five ranks to achieve, and at each rank you can earn a couple of new driving or shooting skills. If you play by the rules, you'll earn good-cop points. If you use unnecessary force and terrorize the public, you'll earn bad-cop points. These good-cop and bad-cop points don't have much effect on the game unless you reach the extreme on the bad-cop side of the scale, which will cost you a rank within the department.
The basic gameplay mechanics are pretty simple in True Crime: New York City. You can run around, climb on obstacles, shoot enemies, commandeer and drive cars, trucks, and motorcycles, and use a few different styles of melee combat. Each of the three console versions of the game play similarly, but the GameCube version definitely suffers from not having enough buttons. As a result, on the GameCube you have to push two buttons to perform various actions like opening doors and climbing fences, which isn't at all intuitive.
You can be a good cop or a bad cop, but either way you'll be playing a bad game.
Once you play this game you'll realize why nobody in New York drives. It's just not worth the hassle. You can flash your badge or fire your gun into the air to get a driver to hand over a car, and you can also purchase various cars if you're so inclined. The cars are all based on real-world vehicles, and you'll recognize them as such even though none of them are licensed. The vehicle physics aren't realistic at all. Cars seem to float around at times, and they don't ever feel like they have any weight to them. You can perform some fancy moves, like driving on two wheels and performing a pit maneuver to spin out a fleeing suspect, but these tricks look and feel awkward. The pit maneuver is especially goofy, because all you have to do is lightly tap the rear quarter-panel of any car and it will instantly spin out, regardless of what type of vehicle it is.
3 out of 10 - Poor This game could have been so much more.
I wanted to rent this game on my GC but none of the video stores had it. I found a ...
I wanted to rent this game on my GC but none of the video stores had it. I found a copy at Target and since I loved the first one I figured I would buy it.
It took me a few hours to get used to playing this game because the video is so laggy. Eventually, you can get used to it to a degree, though.
I have noticed many of the bugs mentioned in the main review and my game has locked up on me several times (requires a power cycle on the GC). The original True Crime locked up on me once or twice and had its own share of bugs, but not nearly as bad as this sequal.
I have both driven and fallen through the street. I have tried to open doors to go into a building required to resolve a street crime and been unable to enter the building.
I have been interrogating a suspect only to be crashed into by police cars and killed.
The audio has stopped on me several times (which is almost a blessing at times since it is so bad).
I have also, on at least two occasions, had the video lag so slowly that I have gotten about .3 frames per second. Yes, you read that right, it would move a single frame about every three seconds.
Activision believes that my problems will all be resolved by exchanging my game for a new copy. I don't see how that could be the case.
I wrote them a letter about my dissatisfaction with the game, but it apparently fell on deaf ears.
They were on to something good with this game... many new aspects of the gameplay were added since the first game which I think are GREAT. However, not a single one of them was put together the way it should have been.
This game could have been so much more.
Oh yeah, by the way.. so much cussing, but it's to a point where it is comical and ridiculous.
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by JackDoyle (see profile) -
November 28, 2005
9 out of 10 - Spectacular This is one of the greatest games I have ever played
This game is one of the best games iv ever played. This game has great fighing in it the moves ...
This game is one of the best games iv ever played. This game has great fighing in it the moves are beast better than any gta fighting even 4. The meele is in a large varity and are cool.The gunplay is awsome it has so many guns and yuo can duck, dive shoot,hug walls shoot around corners and prisision aim which is for aiming for a spacific body part. The driving is controlableb includung drive buys and drifts.The freedom is also outstanding you can walk in al most any bulding or store or place you pass.you can take over gang territory arrest people tackle people give them tickets and still be G.I think this game is better than GTA4 they should make a third version too
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by S.U.G. (see profile) -
May 23, 2008
2 out of 10 - Terrible The game that has many problems
True Crime New York City has a problem with saving. I have tried to save the game with four different ...
True Crime New York City has a problem with saving. I have tried to save the game with four different memory cards and non of them work. It tells me that if I save the game and load it later, that I would start at the beginning of the mission.
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by castrogermy (see profile) -
December 22, 2005
2 out of 10 - Terrible Does nobody bugtest anymore?
I spent a whole day looking for a store that had a copy of this game, and I now consider ...
I spent a whole day looking for a store that had a copy of this game, and I now consider that to be a day completely wasted.
To begin with, it's quite fun. You go through the very simple training mode, then you get to go out onto the streets and clean up. You can frisk people, fight people, shoot people, generally you're quite free in what you can get away with. However, things start to go wrong once you try to do anything more difficult. The gamecube doesn't seem to have enough buttons on the control pad for all the games functions. You have 5 different sets of controls (driving, fighting, shooting, stealth and melee weapons), which is fair enough, but the controls are so badly designed that the simple action of opening a door or picking up an object requires a combination of 2 buttons (Z and A). This may sound like me being nitpicky but when you're trying to do several things in quick succession all the 2 button combination commands don't help, especially if you hit Z+B by accident and it sends you into precision aim mode, or Z+Y so you stand there and hold up your badge.
Driving Driving is a pain. There's just something about the way that the cars handle in this game that doesn't seem right. For a start, if you tap the accelerator button once from being stationary the car will drift forward at a constant speed, tap the brake/reverse button once while stationary and it will drift back in the same way, never slowing down or stopping until it hits something or you push the other button. Also, when you're driving and hit something, the other vehicle flies off faster than the speed you were travelling when you hit it. You get to buy certain maneuvers once your rank increases, but they're not exactly easy to pull off. Whether I want to do a 90 degree turn or a 180 degree spin, I always pull off the 180 degree spin, because the controls are virtually identical. The manual seems to be wrong as well, as it says the down arrow on the pad works the horn and the siren, and the right arrow switches to the next song, whereas the down arrow actually toggles the siren and the right arrows is for both the horn AND the next song, although the horn only seems to work half the time anyway. Getting into and out of cars takes too long in my opinion. Your character even bothers to close the door nicely behind him when you leave the car to chase a criminal, which wastes some time and sometimes means they get away.
On foot AI controlled cars are lethal in this game. When you're pursuing a sriminal other police cars will often ram you out of their way, and despite having your siren on other cars will still decide to pull out in front of you. They aren't just a pain when you're driving yourself either. I've been ran down while arresting someone, been crashed into and then backed over by the same car, and even on 1 occasion I'd just come out of a building after making some arrests, only to have a police car mow me down while I was still stood on the pavement. Another annoying thing is that a car barely has to touch you at a slow velocity for it to send you flying.
Language Yes, there is swearing in it, but the developers seemed to have thought something along the lines of "It's an 18 rated game, so we can swear in it, so lets swear in every other sentence!". I don't find swearing offensive, but frankly it seems childish to include something as often as possible just because you can.
Bugs Then there are the bugs. I've had the game lock up completely on more than one occasion. More frequently occurring though is that I'll enter a building, except the game won't bother to load any graphics other than the display (your life meter and your mode indicator). You'll hear sounds and be able to walk around, but you won't be able to see anything at all, not even yourself.
All the other bad points are almost acceptable as I can live with them, but the freezing not loading of graphics means I'll be taking this back for a refund next week. Avoid this game, we don't want games manufacturers to think they can get away with making games that are full of bugs and clearly haven't been properly tested.
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by AshUK2006 (see profile) -
December 3, 2005
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