True Crime: New York City [PS2]

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.