An definite improvment over the previous title, and a good attempt at a gritty cop drama, but it simply falls short.
Interms of graphics, True Crime : NYC is quite good. The character models look decent and the cars are quite believable. Also, things like the reflection of city lights from water on the ground look great and very realistic.
Sound is quite a mixed area of highs and lows. If your into rap, your going to love the sound track. There are a quite a few other music genres to listen to, but rap is the main one. The songs are all from major artist, and really fit the whole mood of the game (action packed, and gritty). The voice acting is really good. There are several big name hollywood actors whole lend their talents to the game, and the dialog is decent (above a cheesy cop movie, but not fantastic). On the other hand, the dialog from the pedestrians on the street is horrible. Everything they say has profanity, and alot of the things they say are really quite cheesy and annoying.
The gameplay of TC:NYC is above average. There are some technical bugs that really bring the game down, but not as many as the hype says there to be. In the first week I had the game, it froze on me once, and two times, I found a suspect floating in mid-air not moving. Also, my character did get stuck once. I was unable to move, but the game continued to play (traffic and people still moved around). The frame rate is certainly at a playable level, just not super fast. Walking and driving move at a decent speed, things just seem to take a long time since the city is so huge and points of interest are so spread out. The shooting aspect of the game is quite good. Nothing to really comment on. The driving part is also good, but it's hard to navigate the traffic even if you car has it sirens on. The feature of random crimes is a really cool one. There is a nice variety, and alot of them take place indoors. But, it does get some what annoying some times since you kind of feel obligated to respond to the crimes, even when your trying to do something else (like drive to the store). There are lots of small features in the game that are very cool. For example, you can issue traffic tickets to motorists inorder to gain a few dollars. Also, you have the ability to extort store owners so that they give you money. Another feature that I find really cool, but doesn't really serve a major purpose, is the ability to store weapons in your trunk (nothing like responding to an armed bank robbery, and pulling an M16 out of the trunk of you police SUV).
Overall, the game is quite fun, very ambitious, but not quite great due a few parts that are pretty major factors of the game.