True Crime: New York City

Nov 28, 2005

During E3, Activision held a contest at their booth awarding a car to one of whichever participants could correctly guess the newest city for the sequel to True Crime: Streets of LA. Most people guessed that it'd be a rugged urban locale with a combination of driving, walking, and shooting, like Chicago, perhaps. Maybe a city like Detroit? New York just seemed so stupidly obvious that no one thought they'd go for such an easy target; that Luxoflux and Activision would try for something edgier. Nope. It's probably a bit low to say that True Crime: New York City is the sequel that no one asked for, but suffice it to say that had anyone known it'd come out the way it has, they probably would have just let sleeping dogs lie and not attempted to turn a slightly above-par GTA clone into a sub-par franchise.

Players take on the role of Marcus Reed, a street thug turned street cop for the PDNY (the real NYPD didn't take kindly to the game, hence the disclaimer that appears to quickly printed out and inserted on the inside flap of the case). The game starts out during Christmas 2000 in New York with a bloodied Marcus rolling up to someone's house inexplicably wearing a wife-beater in the midst of a blizzard. He proceeds to kill damn near everyone in the building before being stopped by Terry Higgins, his imprisoned father's best friend and a father figure for him. With Terry's persuasion (and the promise that he won't clean up after Marcus ever again), Marcus becomes a cop.

Now, normally, there'd be a bunch of stuff about how the game uses a variety of voice talents, including Laurence Fishburne, Mariska Hargitay, and Christopher "The Bruce Dickenson" Walken (although the irony of "Don't Fear the Reaper" on the soundtrack cannot go ignored), but that would be regurgitated crap from the press release, and frankly, it'd be a disservice to the readers to do that. I could go on about how there's new hand-to-hand combat and new driving maneuvers and how players can travel all over Manhattan in different ways, but that'd be a smokescreen. Ultimately, the biggest problem with True Crime: New York City is that it's Streets of LA in a bigger sandbox.

Now, there may be some of you out there thinking, "Hey, but I liked the last True Crime," but ask yourself: did you like the fact that certain versions completely crashed mid-shootout on certain levels? Did you like the numerous bugs that plagued it from the minute some unknown West Coast rapper started talking about "True Crime" til the credits rolled? Did you like the fact that the same five people were walking down every block that Nick Kang patrolled? If so, scroll back, stop reading this review, and carry on with your day. Maybe your fifty bucks grows on trees, but for most people, it doesn't.

It'd be easier to completely eviscerate this title with extreme prejudice than to extol its virtues, but that's unfair, because it has its merits. The developers have managed to take subtle elements from the first game and build upon them, like the shooting, although the cooler ones are the kind that will probably go ignored under the hype surrounding cars, martial arts, and the soundtrack. Since the influence of GTA on this series lingers over it like a shadow, one of the elements that it curbs from San Andreas effectively is the idea of environmental upkeep. Just as CJ had to keep gang territory under a degree of maintenance prior to going to San Fierro, Marcus must maintain a certain level of law enforcement around New York, or the areas will completely deteriorate and businesses, such as dojos, auto shops, and other customizable centers won't be available for Marcus to upgrade fighting, driving, and shooting skills. Also, it's evident that Luxoflux put a lot of work into recreating New York, as I drove Marcus around a variety of landmarks that I personally visited when I was in NYC last year on vacation. It almost feels as though in spite of the mediocre graphics, the team put more into recreating and individualizing as much as possible in comparison to Streets of LA.

But the graphics are still fairly mediocre. Even though building structures are fairly true to form, textures still look rather drab and plain, and the draw distance looks blurry and uninteresting. It's not hard to recapture the look of a corner bodega or a local record store, but it seems that it's much harder to capture the soul of what makes something that's so every day for New Yorkers feel real in a game, at least, perhaps, for Luxoflux it is. And worst of all, it really feels as though the development team failed to capture one of New York's most distinctive traits: the raw humanity of it all. For anyone who's ever lived in or been to Manhattan, it is truly a city that never sleeps. There's always someone out there on the streets. Sure, there are some people on the streets in TC:NYC, but in comparison to the real New York, True Crime's Times Square feels pretty damn close to the one that Tom Cruise dreams of in Vanilla Sky. Also, the framerate has a knack for chugging. Considering it's a console and not a five year-old PC running this game, it's unacceptable. Out of nowhere, the framerate will completely bottom out while Marcus patrols the streets.

The physics can be pretty out of whack, too. When there aren't bugs, there are annoyances. I lost count of the number of times that collisions threw my car onto the sidewalk where I'd accidentally kill five or six pedestrians before regaining control, yet a bus could smash my totaled car, send it flying nearly a half block and with a tap of L2 mid-air, Marcus was standing several feet away from the car. And where there are bugs, such as when a motorcycle-riding Marcus pops a wheelie on the outskirts of Central Park, hits a ramp and flies all the way up to a rooftop or where David Blaine-inspired pedestrians float above the entrance to a subway station, a player can't help but to think how demeaning it is to have dropped their hard-earned money to beta test a truly unfinished game.

The controls are still a mixed bag. The hand-to-hand combat is okay; they've gotten rid of the annoying slo-mo before unleashing a combo on someone that dragged down the fighting in the last game. Marcus can upgrade to several fighting styles, although while working through a sizable chunk of the story, I found that I'd rather spend my money on bigger guns than anything else. It's still a pain in the ass to tackle fleeing suspect on the street to arrest them, just as much as it's still a pain in the ass to not kill a hostage during a stand-off. The precision targeting seems to be an oxymoronic statement on more than one occasion while playing. You can tag baddies with a wounding takedown instead of smiting them with hot lead injections, but it's really more trouble than it's worth, especially at the risk of taking too much health damage.

Aside from that, though, the shooting system, which has always felt like it was biting from the best elements of Dead to Rights, is still the best part of True Crime. Running into a room and blasting everyone is still a fairly exhilarating rush, even if the scenarios border on the preposterous -fighting a woman driving a giant fire-breathing dragon in the middle of an opera performance is almost as weird as a Triad crime leader turning into a dragon. To spice up the action, Luxoflux has also incorporated a new mini-game (similar to one in the upcoming 24: The Game) in which Marcus interrogates a prime suspect by either smacking them on the back of the head or pressing cold steel against their temple to get information out of them. It's amusing to watch him bitch-slap someone on the neck repeatedly until they tell him that they're about to crap their pants. Again, in spite of the janky on-foot controls, shooting is the one thing that's really fun about True Crime: New York City. Transportation, however, is not.

The driving system has some new upgrades, but they feel more like additions than improvements. Again, there are the aforementioned gripes with physics, and it almost seems as though the sole reason why anyone would drive in the game would be to experience the soundtrack, which has a ridiculous license of classic East Coast hip-hop anthems, legendary punk tunes, a few alternative and indie rock songs, and disappointing dance tracks. It makes one think that had Activision and Luxoflux put less money into the soundtrack and more into development, they could have made a better game. Like GTA, players will have to hunt for the sorts of vehicles that are truly good for navigating traffic (ie: motorcycles and sports cars). Or, they can do what millions of New Yorkers do every day: take the subway. It doesn't seem that there's much of a tutorial for catching the subway, so the first ride might be as confusing to navigate as the real New York subway system. However, the subway system proves to be a handy warp point around an intimidating-in-scope city -if Marcus isn't killed while boarding by one of the bugs that cause him to fall into black space for ten seconds. There's also the option to take taxis, but it starts adding up and taking away from Marcus' earnings.

Complete with more bugs than month-old flypaper sitting outside a slaughterhouse, True Crime: New York City is utterly mediocre. Sure, it's got its moments, such as exciting and twitchy shoot-out action, but the on-the-street combat is as broken as the last title, driving is a nightmare, the graphics are drab, the framerate chugs, and the overall experience is just plain bad. Unfortunately, there are going to be lots of unwitting beta testers out there this Holiday season who will buy this game in spite of the bugs. Don't be one of those people who makes that expensive mistake.