GENRE
	Action/Adventure
	DEVELOPER
	Luxoflux
	PUBLISHER
	Activision
	NUMBER OF PLAYERS
	1
	CONNECTIVITY
	no
	BUY NOW AT

I lived in New York for a time, enjoying the sights and sounds while working a great internship that afforded me a four day weekend to explore the city. I certainly don't know it as well as a native, but I know my way about Manhattan. I really like the city, so I was glad to see a mostly accurate depiction of the city on a purely geographic basis.

I'm also glad that not every game making the Grand Theft Auto series its foundation making criminal activity mandatory. Playing good cop actually worked really well, and I appreciated the fact that I wasn't penalized for being on the up-and-up. Also, the voice talent in this story is top shelf Hollywood talent.

So, what's not to like? Sadly, everything else detracts from the experience. The graphics stutter, the control scheme and interface are counter-intuitive, and mission structures are poorly balanced. But hey, when's the last time you got to cruise down the wrong side of Broadway with the pedal to the floor?

visuals

You know, there's some justice in the graphics here, because normally the GC version gets stuck with graphics that are bad in comparison to the other consoles. In this instance, all of the versions are bad, so GC owners save face. Bad pop-up and an inconsistent frame rate hinder the title in more than a purely cosmetic way. The draw distance problems concern me the most; you slam into cars that you see way too late.

The city's here, though the developer couldn't license all of the things that adorn its streets. Buildings have cosmetic facelifts and most statues and landmarks are changed, but the geographic layout is fairly consistent with real life. Everything's really dirty, though. I guess in a game like True Crime, painting the city as a utopia would be counter-intuitive, but some cleaner textures would be helpful as you cleaned up the city. New York gets a bad enough rap from Midwesterners and suburbanites as it is.

Once on foot, things are better, which is to say average. There are too few civilian models in the game, but the indoor environments are somewhat interactive and the engine prattles along with ease.

The less said about the cutscenes, the better.

audio

Our protagonist Marcus voices his thoughts often, and his dialogue is diverse enough (though at times cheesey) that you don't mind it. What you do mind is the lack of audio consistency between NPCs walking down the street. If you're going to have a stereotypical Brooklyn accent, then keep it for the next time I frisk you, capiche?

To be fair, I don't typically play a lot of games where celebrity voices are a selling point, but I love me some Christopher Walken, even when he's given incredibly hackneyed dialogue to work with. In fact, the same can be said for the rest of the voice cast, which is pretty good despite the script.

Speaking of voices, I know this is a "rated M for Mature" game, but with the subject matter, street tunes and violence sufficiently establish the setting without a need for swearing. I'm all for using that sort of language when it helps convey a point, but overuse breeds complacency.

gameplay

The best compliment I can give True Crime is that while it borrows a lot, it also tries to do a lot. There's more crammed in here than expected, but it doesn't play out as well as it should. Given the sequel status, flaws magnify themselves.

You can pursue the narrative and be confronted with several different mission types and a few nifty boss fights. As you might imagine, these get increasingly harder-- they almost seem to exist mostly to justify the presence of Walken. The free-roaming stuff is honestly a lot more fun, because the random assignments that pop up are a lot of fun, or would be if the same missions didn't pop up over and over.

Marcus, the game's protagonist, can buy a lot of stuff using legitimate funds from his paycheck or illicit cash from the black market, but either way he's flush with choices. Cars, clothes, kung-fu, weapons, music and auto maintenance are available if the shop is within reach. Some materials are restricted to ranks, so a lot of perps will need to be brought down to get the baddest set of wheels or a ridiculously overpowered weapon. This is a strength of the game, but aside from the novelty weapons, everything feels too similar, and weapons and tools are difficult to access using a confusing menu structure.

Our star detective can't be blamed for running over civilians with the atrocious driving system in place, but the game will ding you for it anyways. Vehicles feel too loose and sometimes lack any sense of inertia at all. It's much easier to take a cab and after a few promotions you can easily afford the minor fee they charge.

Finally, the movement and battle systems: combat generally feels pretty good, and it's satisfying to sneak up and choke a guy. Shooting is accurate as far as those things go. More troublesome are the mundane movement options, many of which make use of the heinous Z button in combination with other buttons as an excuse for not having as many controller buttons on the GC pad. A context sensitive button or two might have made things a lot easier, but expect to feel awkward during the entirety of the game getting used to the setup.

multiplayer

N/A

overall

This game isn't an aberration, but it should still be avoided. True Crime: New York City is bad for entirely different reasons than expected: the graphics are awful, but the scope in certain ways outstrips its GTA ancestor. Not recommended unless you're desperate for a sandbox game fix and don't have access to other consoles.

4.5/10