True Crime: New York City
Added December 11th, 2005 by LibThorne
Introduction:
True Crime: New York City is akin to a diamond in the rough. I know, I know, the ad campaign had me fooled, too. "Thug sentenced to life as a street cop" isn't exactly the kind of plotline you’d expect from a modern day game, but I took it in stride, remembering the ninja presidential kidnappings of yesteryear. What I found, underneath all the trappings and hype and stereotypes and production values, was a fundamentally fun game. I was, I'll admit it quite shocked, as I had expected a GTA clone with some cop trappings, but developer Luxoflux has delivered something unique. It has a fitting soundtrack, featuring some CBGB's groups, good graphics that display a meticulous attention to detail on the developers' part, and essentially fun gameplay. Why the 7.2 you ask? Read on to find out.
Gameplay:
The game casts you as Marcus Reed, son of a major New York gang boss, who goes on a rampage after a failed attempt on his and his father's lives. Luckily, a cop friend of his father's manages to keep Marcus clean, and straight. Four years later Marcus, now a member of the NYPD, is promoted to the Organized Crimes Unit. Just as things are looking up, a close personal friend is murdered. This forces Marcus to lose his position and get caught up in a cloak and dagger plot as he tries to uncover why his friend died, battling powerful New York crime syndicates along the way and finding help in some very unusual places. This was the first surprising aspect of the game, for me. I had been dismayed by the advertised storyline, but what was actually offered was much better, and at least a little more fitting with modern video game storytelling.
True Crime: New York City is akin to a diamond in the rough. I know, I know, the ad campaign had me fooled, too. "Thug sentenced to life as a street cop" isn't exactly the kind of plotline you’d expect from a modern day game, but I took it in stride, remembering the ninja presidential kidnappings of yesteryear. What I found, underneath all the trappings and hype and stereotypes and production values, was a fundamentally fun game. I was, I'll admit it quite shocked, as I had expected a GTA clone with some cop trappings, but developer Luxoflux has delivered something unique. It has a fitting soundtrack, featuring some CBGB's groups, good graphics that display a meticulous attention to detail on the developers' part, and essentially fun gameplay. Why the 7.2 you ask? Read on to find out.
Gameplay:
The game casts you as Marcus Reed, son of a major New York gang boss, who goes on a rampage after a failed attempt on his and his father's lives. Luckily, a cop friend of his father's manages to keep Marcus clean, and straight. Four years later Marcus, now a member of the NYPD, is promoted to the Organized Crimes Unit. Just as things are looking up, a close personal friend is murdered. This forces Marcus to lose his position and get caught up in a cloak and dagger plot as he tries to uncover why his friend died, battling powerful New York crime syndicates along the way and finding help in some very unusual places. This was the first surprising aspect of the game, for me. I had been dismayed by the advertised storyline, but what was actually offered was much better, and at least a little more fitting with modern video game storytelling.
The AI, while usually fine, is laughably bad in some circumstances. When fleeing buildings, they will cluster around the exit way and run into walls, clogging it thus making leaving sometimes difficult. Luckily it's relatively easy to muscle your way through when necessary.
Players can dual wield a variety of weapons, from standard issue police firearms to flamethrowers and assault rifles to smaller weapons such as pistols and sub machine guns can be dual wielded. Close combat attacks are possible with all weapons. Unarmed, players can choose from a variety of martial arts moves to lay the smack down on opponents from Tae Kwon Do to weapon styles like the bo staff. Surprisingly, the game's physics engine holds up to the task. You can smack perps' heads into cars and watch the metal bend. You can also throw opponents through tables, then pick up pieces of the table to beat them with. You can grab a weapon out of an opponents hand mid-swing, grapple and throw opponents to the ground, kidney punch enemies and generally rough them up. Close combat combos are simple to perform, three button strings that incapacitate and are sometimes much more useful than simply using one of the many guns the game provides. You can dive over a table, a shotgun in one hand and pistol in the other, blazing away in a scene reminiscent of Max Payne, as True Crime too employs a version of Bullet Time. Location specific damage is implemented as well, in a Virtua Cop like fashion. Disarming shots earn you good cop points, headshots earn bad cop points but do reward the player with an impressive amount of gore.
All in all, True Crime: New York City offers up a fun and varied combat system that keeps the gameplay fresh. Besides the combat aspect, there are multiple things to do throughout the city. You can stop by gun shops to acquire weapons that aren't available at the police department, martial arts dojos to learn new fighting styles and techniques, garages that can alter how your car looks and handles, as well as getting new haircuts and clothes for Marcus at the various shops around the city. Conveniently, police booths are stationed around the city, enabling players to do all the things that they do normally at the police station (besides accepting promotions). Subway stations take you to various points all across the city, as do taxis, notable because you can not normally carjack a taxi, unlike in Grand Theft Auto.
Graphics:
The graphics, too, serve their purpose, capturing the ambience of New York City. Times Square glows with the screens that make it famous. Players can walk through the tree-lined streets of Central Park. Steam rises from manhole covers in a very Law & Order fashion. Rain splatters on the ground in fierce rain. What amazed this reviewer was the quality of the people walking around New York. Each has their own identity, and it is expressed very visually. After some time spent, you can even identify the suspicious thugs from the tourists. You can also change your outfit, though this reviewer preferred the beat cop outfit. The skyscrapers, especially around Wall Street are all impressively large, towering over the player much as they do in many films. Shadows change in real time, another impressive feat. Also outstanding are the indoor environments. Offices, restaurants, the police precinct, each environment feels and looks unique, and alters depending on the action. Tables get blown apart when shot, or shatter when someone is thrown into them. Bullet holes and dents appear in cars, depending on the kind of damage being done to them. Vehicles display an impressive amount of damage modeling as well, from smashed windshields to missing doors, trunks hoods flying off if they sustain enough damage, to eventual explosions. Driving a motorcycle is immensely entertaining, though missed turns and inexact driving are punished far harder on a motorcycle. Many times this reviewer sent flying off his bike.
Players can dual wield a variety of weapons, from standard issue police firearms to flamethrowers and assault rifles to smaller weapons such as pistols and sub machine guns can be dual wielded. Close combat attacks are possible with all weapons. Unarmed, players can choose from a variety of martial arts moves to lay the smack down on opponents from Tae Kwon Do to weapon styles like the bo staff. Surprisingly, the game's physics engine holds up to the task. You can smack perps' heads into cars and watch the metal bend. You can also throw opponents through tables, then pick up pieces of the table to beat them with. You can grab a weapon out of an opponents hand mid-swing, grapple and throw opponents to the ground, kidney punch enemies and generally rough them up. Close combat combos are simple to perform, three button strings that incapacitate and are sometimes much more useful than simply using one of the many guns the game provides. You can dive over a table, a shotgun in one hand and pistol in the other, blazing away in a scene reminiscent of Max Payne, as True Crime too employs a version of Bullet Time. Location specific damage is implemented as well, in a Virtua Cop like fashion. Disarming shots earn you good cop points, headshots earn bad cop points but do reward the player with an impressive amount of gore.
All in all, True Crime: New York City offers up a fun and varied combat system that keeps the gameplay fresh. Besides the combat aspect, there are multiple things to do throughout the city. You can stop by gun shops to acquire weapons that aren't available at the police department, martial arts dojos to learn new fighting styles and techniques, garages that can alter how your car looks and handles, as well as getting new haircuts and clothes for Marcus at the various shops around the city. Conveniently, police booths are stationed around the city, enabling players to do all the things that they do normally at the police station (besides accepting promotions). Subway stations take you to various points all across the city, as do taxis, notable because you can not normally carjack a taxi, unlike in Grand Theft Auto.
Graphics:
The graphics, too, serve their purpose, capturing the ambience of New York City. Times Square glows with the screens that make it famous. Players can walk through the tree-lined streets of Central Park. Steam rises from manhole covers in a very Law & Order fashion. Rain splatters on the ground in fierce rain. What amazed this reviewer was the quality of the people walking around New York. Each has their own identity, and it is expressed very visually. After some time spent, you can even identify the suspicious thugs from the tourists. You can also change your outfit, though this reviewer preferred the beat cop outfit. The skyscrapers, especially around Wall Street are all impressively large, towering over the player much as they do in many films. Shadows change in real time, another impressive feat. Also outstanding are the indoor environments. Offices, restaurants, the police precinct, each environment feels and looks unique, and alters depending on the action. Tables get blown apart when shot, or shatter when someone is thrown into them. Bullet holes and dents appear in cars, depending on the kind of damage being done to them. Vehicles display an impressive amount of damage modeling as well, from smashed windshields to missing doors, trunks hoods flying off if they sustain enough damage, to eventual explosions. Driving a motorcycle is immensely entertaining, though missed turns and inexact driving are punished far harder on a motorcycle. Many times this reviewer sent flying off his bike.
The graphics are plagued by niggling problems, however. Pop up is ludicrously severe due to the draw distance being so large. Entire buildings would pop into view. It was quite a shock when a fifty story building suddenly appeared on a corner I was turning around. Explosions are also somewhat weak, lacking real oomph unlike the explosions in True Crime's rival series Grand Theft Auto. It's also somewhat disconcerting when an entire crowd of people appears sixty to seventy feet away. Graphical bugs, more noticeable than just the draw distance issues, occurred as well. An enormous gray wall appeared while I was driving, but went away as I drove through it. Once, a killed enemy lost all texturing and was just a black polygonal model. These bugs make a mockery of the immersive environment the game so meticulously recreates. Problems like these severely hinder True Crime, and are indicative that it could have used a few more months of testing.
Audio:
The sound is good as well, with a diverse array of songs and a good amount of voices. Voices vary from Japanese to Chinese (kudos to Luxoflux for differentiating the two) to Spanish, to accented English and various European languages I couldn't identify. All of which add to the spice and feel of the game. Music too is a strong point of True Crime: New York City. Bands from Danzig to the Ramones, to rappers such as Fifty Cent and Redman adorn the game's star studded soundtrack. This is surprisingly strong but sadly underutilized, as music isn't heard outside of vehicles and the options menu. Unfortunately, the sound loops early on, resulting in some unintentionally funny situations. Hearing "What about... my kids? *death rattle*" a dozen times in as many minutes becomes annoying and grating, especially as it's delivered in the same voice no matter who had been talking earlier. Though it is funny the first time you hear it. Small niggling issues like that exist, but it's never more noticeable than when reloading a weapon. Shotguns, SMGs, Pistols all have the same reloading sound effect, which does quickly become old. The major complaint with the sound is a pretty significant sound bug. The sound cuts out at random intervals, a problem solved only when a conversation was started, after which the sound would inexplicably return. Many times I would be running through a massive rain storm when my ears would notice that the sounds of thunder, of my feet hitting the wet pavement, of beeping horns was just gone, completely annihilating the immersion.
Controls:
The game's controls remain a problem, like they were in the previous True Crime: Streets of LA. Marcus can do a variety of things, from climbing fences to throwing grenades, to various martial arts moves, to shooting out of a car, and frisking suspicious looking people. Problem being, it often feels that Marcus is moving through molasses. You get very little sense of speed when running, or even when driving a car going at full speed. And that brings us to another problem area for the controls: cars. Each car controls different. Muscle cars are not motorcycles are not sedans are not vans are not Hummers are not SWAT vans, etc. However, controlling this myriad array of vehicles proves troublesome, far more troublesome than in the much better known Grand Theft Auto series. Turning is imprecise and challenging, leading to many difficulties while pursuing enemies (and chase missions in vehicles appear quite frequently), as well as many bad cop points earned when you accidentally slide into pedestrians. It's frustrating when your vehicle takes damage from turning. Driving through oncoming traffic is particularly onerous. In contrast to the problematic vehicle controls, the combat of True Crime: New York City is smooth, in and out of vehicles. The on-foot gameplay in general controls better than the vehicle segments. Locking on to enemies is a simple matter, as is shooting them with whatever weapons may be at hand. Close combat controls are equally simple, yet yield spectacular results.
Replay:
Due to the free-form nature of the game, the replay value is stupendous. Walking along Wall Street or Fifth Avenue, or down Central Park is enjoyable in and of itself, not to mention buying cars and weapons, learning new martial arts styles, getting promoted within the force all offer extremely fun diversions from the main story mode. Customizing Marcus' appearance is fun too,with the buying of various clothes and hair styles to personalize him to your own style. Besides that, there's the job of cleaning up New York City, one precinct at a time. Busting perps, arresting joyriders, stopping gang wars, and saving fellow cops all help to add enormous replay value. Then there's the fundamental difference between good cop and bad cop styles of play. Make a run through the game as one side, then switch to the other, and the experience is dramatically different.
Audio:
The sound is good as well, with a diverse array of songs and a good amount of voices. Voices vary from Japanese to Chinese (kudos to Luxoflux for differentiating the two) to Spanish, to accented English and various European languages I couldn't identify. All of which add to the spice and feel of the game. Music too is a strong point of True Crime: New York City. Bands from Danzig to the Ramones, to rappers such as Fifty Cent and Redman adorn the game's star studded soundtrack. This is surprisingly strong but sadly underutilized, as music isn't heard outside of vehicles and the options menu. Unfortunately, the sound loops early on, resulting in some unintentionally funny situations. Hearing "What about... my kids? *death rattle*" a dozen times in as many minutes becomes annoying and grating, especially as it's delivered in the same voice no matter who had been talking earlier. Though it is funny the first time you hear it. Small niggling issues like that exist, but it's never more noticeable than when reloading a weapon. Shotguns, SMGs, Pistols all have the same reloading sound effect, which does quickly become old. The major complaint with the sound is a pretty significant sound bug. The sound cuts out at random intervals, a problem solved only when a conversation was started, after which the sound would inexplicably return. Many times I would be running through a massive rain storm when my ears would notice that the sounds of thunder, of my feet hitting the wet pavement, of beeping horns was just gone, completely annihilating the immersion.
Controls:
The game's controls remain a problem, like they were in the previous True Crime: Streets of LA. Marcus can do a variety of things, from climbing fences to throwing grenades, to various martial arts moves, to shooting out of a car, and frisking suspicious looking people. Problem being, it often feels that Marcus is moving through molasses. You get very little sense of speed when running, or even when driving a car going at full speed. And that brings us to another problem area for the controls: cars. Each car controls different. Muscle cars are not motorcycles are not sedans are not vans are not Hummers are not SWAT vans, etc. However, controlling this myriad array of vehicles proves troublesome, far more troublesome than in the much better known Grand Theft Auto series. Turning is imprecise and challenging, leading to many difficulties while pursuing enemies (and chase missions in vehicles appear quite frequently), as well as many bad cop points earned when you accidentally slide into pedestrians. It's frustrating when your vehicle takes damage from turning. Driving through oncoming traffic is particularly onerous. In contrast to the problematic vehicle controls, the combat of True Crime: New York City is smooth, in and out of vehicles. The on-foot gameplay in general controls better than the vehicle segments. Locking on to enemies is a simple matter, as is shooting them with whatever weapons may be at hand. Close combat controls are equally simple, yet yield spectacular results.
Replay:
Due to the free-form nature of the game, the replay value is stupendous. Walking along Wall Street or Fifth Avenue, or down Central Park is enjoyable in and of itself, not to mention buying cars and weapons, learning new martial arts styles, getting promoted within the force all offer extremely fun diversions from the main story mode. Customizing Marcus' appearance is fun too,with the buying of various clothes and hair styles to personalize him to your own style. Besides that, there's the job of cleaning up New York City, one precinct at a time. Busting perps, arresting joyriders, stopping gang wars, and saving fellow cops all help to add enormous replay value. Then there's the fundamental difference between good cop and bad cop styles of play. Make a run through the game as one side, then switch to the other, and the experience is dramatically different.
Summary:
Bugs are where True Crime not only stumbles, but falls flat on its face. It is riddled with bugs, so much so that playing the game itself becomes a problem. In the introduction chapter (the aforementioned slaughter of the people who tried to take Marcus and his fathers' lives), the game locked up twice, forcing a restart both times. It locked up once on the next two missions, as well, forcing the same solution. The bugs stand as a prime example of why many games go through rigorous playtesting, an area that it appears Luxoflux may have skimped on with True Crime: New York City.
So, where does that leave us? It leaves us with a tragic example of potential unfulfilled. Walking through Central Park, standing in Times Square, walking the beat in Spanish Harlem and Chinatown, the mood that pervades the game is addictive and infectious. You can't help but have fun as you dive tackle a famous rap star, throw him into his SUV and then handcuff him, chasing down his equally famous girlfriend and sending her to Riker's too. Diving around a weapons warehouse as bullets fly over you, crushing someone in a street race, True Crime recreates a living, breathing New York City. If I could judge solely on its authenticity to the source subject, it would rate a much higher score The inner game, too, is just undeniably fun and entertaining. Whether you play as a good cop or a bad cop, fun will be had, and that's really what it comes down to when you play a video game. It is the crippling bugs and sluggish controls that drag this game down and pound it, leaving nothing but a shattered body behind. They annihilate the mood and inconvenience the player. They force often saves, hoping to keep progress before the game crashes. It is such a noticeable signal that the game was rushed out the door that it really is a shame. True Crime: New York City is tantalizingly close to being a great game that adds something new and fresh to the free roaming genre, only to fall short.
Bugs are where True Crime not only stumbles, but falls flat on its face. It is riddled with bugs, so much so that playing the game itself becomes a problem. In the introduction chapter (the aforementioned slaughter of the people who tried to take Marcus and his fathers' lives), the game locked up twice, forcing a restart both times. It locked up once on the next two missions, as well, forcing the same solution. The bugs stand as a prime example of why many games go through rigorous playtesting, an area that it appears Luxoflux may have skimped on with True Crime: New York City.
So, where does that leave us? It leaves us with a tragic example of potential unfulfilled. Walking through Central Park, standing in Times Square, walking the beat in Spanish Harlem and Chinatown, the mood that pervades the game is addictive and infectious. You can't help but have fun as you dive tackle a famous rap star, throw him into his SUV and then handcuff him, chasing down his equally famous girlfriend and sending her to Riker's too. Diving around a weapons warehouse as bullets fly over you, crushing someone in a street race, True Crime recreates a living, breathing New York City. If I could judge solely on its authenticity to the source subject, it would rate a much higher score The inner game, too, is just undeniably fun and entertaining. Whether you play as a good cop or a bad cop, fun will be had, and that's really what it comes down to when you play a video game. It is the crippling bugs and sluggish controls that drag this game down and pound it, leaving nothing but a shattered body behind. They annihilate the mood and inconvenience the player. They force often saves, hoping to keep progress before the game crashes. It is such a noticeable signal that the game was rushed out the door that it really is a shame. True Crime: New York City is tantalizingly close to being a great game that adds something new and fresh to the free roaming genre, only to fall short.
