Players take control over Marcus Reed, a street thug who turned to the police department after his father, Isaiah’s imprisonment, and the subsequent fall of his father’s criminal empire, when former friends tried to take advantage of the change in power from father to son. Saved by his father’s friend Terry, Marcus is asked to join the NYPD in order to be left out of criminal proceedings. After serving out a trial period on the streets, Marcus is asked to join the Organised Crime Division of the NYPD, to work alongside Terry. Unfortunately, Terry and Marcus’ professional relationship does not last long, after the former is killed while the pair following up leads. Marcus is contacted by Gabriel Whitting (voiced by Christopher Walken, who provides an excellent performance), an agent of the CIA who fills Marcus in on just what Terry was doing, and how Marcus must now pick up where his mentor left off. At the same time, Marcus has been re-assigned to the street crime unit under his former boss Deena, who needs Reed to assist in cleaning up the rather scummy streets of New York City.
The first thing players are going to notice in True Crime: New York City is the change in presentation. Whereas Streets of LA was light-hearted, with a very rushed plot and shallow characters, True Crime: New York City has a much more gritty feel, with a far more interesting plot and cast of characters. Particular note should be given to the cast that Luxoflux has created; players are actually given a reason to like or dislike these characters as the game’s plot develops. The cast of actors that have been brought in to the game should really be given a lot of credit for their performances – particularly Christopher Walken, who gives Whitting all the charm and bizarre sense of humour that have earned Walken a dedicated cult following. Marcus’ attitude can get a little annoying at times (he hasn’t dropped that “gangsta” personality since becoming a cop), but often provides comedic moments, be they intentional or not.
New York - light pollution capital of the world?
Luxoflux have outdone themselves in terms of accurately reproducing a city, with the entirety of Manhattan island digitally recreated for True Crime: New York City. This is both a blessing and a curse; while the size of the city is certainly impressive, it takes a long time to get anywhere – a problem that affected Streets of LA. Fortunately, the developer has countered this problem by offering public transportation options like the famous New York subway and taxis, which let you zoom to any chosen point on the map. You’ll have to put up with a 15-30 second load time, though it’s probably better than the 10 minutes it takes to drive across the island – mind you, the game manages to do a reasonably good job of streaming the massive area without too many glitches. One other major improvement that Luxoflux has made to the city is that there’s a lot of life – plenty of traffic and pedestrians, rubbish flying freely across the streets and so on – the place really feels alive, unlike the cities in many other Activision published free roaming games.
Marcus can also enter just about any building in the city, from apartment complexes to a variety of shops to the NYPD offices – many of these places are just regular buildings, while others are shops which will allow you to purchase items such as cars, music and firearms, and alter Marcus’ clothes and hairstyles while you turn in evidence and collect your paycheques while at the PD. The upgrades from Streets of LA make a return, but no longer require the player to complete a mini-game – in fact, they’re tied to your rank. Get the required police rank, pay a small sum of money and the upgrade is yours. Unfortunately, there aren’t quite as many upgrades as the previous game. For example, you’ll only ever be carrying Marcus’ standard issue .38 pistol – you don’t get to upgrade it with special sites, increased firepower/speed or expanded the magazine.
Speaking of gunplay, Luxoflux has changed True Crime’s aiming system to allow for a variety of gun pointing methods. For the unskilled or lazy, there’s a lock-on system using the L button. For the dual-stick wizards, the R stick can be used to move the targeting reticule. Finally, the bullet time assisted Precision Aiming feature is back, which allows for one shot kills and non-lethal takedowns. There’s a fairly large arsenal of weapons available – many different types of pistols of varying calibres, automatic, pump action and sawn-off shotguns, and about a billion different types of automatic rifles. Dual wielding returns, though it has been tweaked so that Marcus can only use matching types of weapons and can’t use unrealistic combinations (whereas Nick could use an AK47 and an M16 carbine at the same time, and be completely accurate). Guns purchased at the precinct or at the gun shops around the city can be stashed in the trunk of your car, allowing for a wider arsenal to be available at request.
...He pulled it out, and it was THIS BIG
Hand to hand combat was one distinct advantage that Streets of LA had over the GTA games. In True Crime: New York City, Luxoflux has chosen to streamline the combat a little, but at the same time offers a number of different styles for Marcus to use. Each of the different styles is weak against one other style, but strong against two others – similar to the element system from Pokemon. Instead of punch, kick and jump-kick buttons, players now have a quick attack, heavy attack and grapple button. There’s no real combo system in the game now – you do get a finishing blow meter occasionally, but it doesn’t offer the number of finishing moves from the first game, which is a bit disappointing. The variety of standard moves is a lot better, as is the environmental interaction – you can tackle running perps and pound them into the ground, slam their heads into walls and so on. Melee weapons have been increased in number too, with new weapons such as katanas and pole-arms, (which can hack limbs off) as well as the ever useful police baton. Many other objects can be turned into weapons too, like parking meters and various other bits of debris.
Driving was something of a hazardous experience in Streets of LA (until you got a few upgrades), due to the narrow roads and bizarre handling of the car. Sadly, New York City isn’t a friendly place for a motorist, with the city being comprised of a massive series of ring-roads, filled with stupid drivers – after a few minutes of trying to drive through Manhattan, you’ll begin to see why the subway is so popular. The car weights feel a little better than they did in Streets of LA, but players will find that there are some bizarre occurrences while driving – invisible gutters, cars popping up out of nowhere, and cars flying through the air and spinning around as though you hit them at 200km/h when you just clipped them. Car damage plays a bit more of an aesthetic factor than a gameplay affecting one, but players should notice that the cars are much quicker to damage than they were in the previous game – it’s particularly annoying when you count in the fact that you have to pay to get Marcus’ police issue cars fixed. Shooting at a car doesn’t seem to be very effective any more either – taking out tyres is somewhat more difficult despite improved aiming, and you rarely get a shot through on the driver, which is particularly annoying when trying to prevent a multiple perp getaway. Motorbikes have been added to the game, and while they pack a heck of a lot of torque, players are going to find that they can't take a lot of damage, and Marcus has a tendency to fly off them at the most innappropriate times.
True Crime: New York City has a much more straightforward mission structure than its predecessor, having abandoned the branching story and ability to progress in the event of a mission failure. It’s disappointing to see that Luxoflux haven’t really added any variety to the main story missions, with the average mission just requiring Marcus to drive someone, shoot up a bunch of thugs and then interrogate a suspect (through a very simplistic mini-game). Fortunately, there’s a lot more variety in the game’s side missions and random crimes. Side missions are given out by informants, such as Marcus’ father, a crazy Indian taxi driver and so on. You’ll be required to do relatively routine tasks, but they earn you a solid wad of cash. There are also two circuit missions; street racing and fight clubs – both of which are fairly fun to tinker with, but are ultimately repetitive.
Marcus applauds the immaturity of Matt's last caption
Street crime has really seen a lot of attention during the development of the game, with a much wider variety of random missions. At random points in the game, Deena will inform Marcus that there has been a rise in a certain type of crime, and you’ve got to put a stop to it by following various leads – it really makes the whole system a lot more meaningful than it was in Streets of LA. Solving these street crimes is the best way to accumulate career points, which assist in getting Marcus his paycheques and promotions. Street crime also affects the look of the city – if an area has a particularly high rate of crime, it’s going to look pretty scummy, and there’s going to be a lot of uncouth folks roaming the streets. Solving enough crimes in a particular location will result in that place being cleaned up – clean up every precinct, and you’ll get a nice bonus.
The good cop/bad cop system has been given a little more depth, but ultimately still falls short of having any dramatic impact. Basically, killing civilians, extorting store clerks and planting evidence on people are going to make you unpopular with the police – too much corrupt activity will have the boys in blue on your back. The system also comes into play with regards to street crime – too many bad deeds will increase crime in the area.
So, it all sounds pretty good so far – there’s no doubt that Luxoflux set out to improve on their previous game in every possible way. There’s just one big glaring problem with True Crime: New York City – it’s full of game destroying bugs. Stupid pedestrian and traffic AI, invisible gutters, targeting problems, randomly disappearing citizens, randomly appearing vehicles, falling through the streets, crashes, dirty disc errors, cutscenes not triggering, characters falling off their mission path forcing you to restart a mission, aiming problems, framerate issues, disc streaming issues, camera problems and more – expect to see all of these within the first hour of gameplay. The underlying game is still somewhat playable, but the entire experience is almost destroyed; you can really tell that Activision pressured the developer to have the game ready for Christmas, but ultimately, this will prove to be a bad move.
Hey, I'm shovellin' here!
It’s a pity that True Crime’s gameplay is so buggy, because the game is actually reasonably attractive, graphics-wise. There’s a few ugly portions left over from the previous game (such as the pitiful fire effect), but the city’s sheer size combined with the finer details such as reflective surfaces, shadowing and bump mapping make the game look quite good. The game’s main characters are also well constructed and animated, though the same can’t be said for the regular pedestrians, despite being improved from Streets of LA. Vehicles have a lot more detail to them, with many more damage decals present when your car gets trashed. Unfortunately, the game’s framerate can be a real hinderance, especially when you’re travelling at high speed, and trying to steer through the game’s hazardous traffic (if you ever wondered why people don’t drive in NYC, here’s proof) – it doesn’t help that you can sometimes go too fast for the game’s streaming abilities, and run into objects that haven’t appeared yet. True Crime’s sound is arguably its greatest asset, with a massive soundtrack with a variety of genres (where Streets of LA was mostly limited to West Coast rap), a laundry list of Hollywood voice talent including Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix), Mickey Rourke (Sin City), Christopher Walken and Mariska Hargitay (Law & Order: SVU), with a few voice acting veterans such as Phil LaMarr and some excellent sound effects.
It’s a real pity that True Crime: New York City turned out the way it did – the game had everything it needed to stand well above its predecessor, yet the sheer amount of bugs in the game puts it on the verge of being unplayable. There’s no doubt that this is due to Activision’s need to push the game out for the holidays – a move that is likely to cost them dearly. With a few extra months of polish, True Crime: New York City could have been one of the last big name, high quality titles on the current generation of consoles, but as it stands, it’s one of the biggest disappointments of Christmas 2005.
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