True Crime: New York City, thug life...ouh shut up....did i hear GTA?.... thought so..
Not to be deterred by their past experience, Luxoflux sends you back to the academy once again in True Crime: New York City (TC: NYC), which does manage to improve on certain aspects, but the overall experience does leave you craving for one San Andreas.
In TC: NYC, you'll play as Marcus Reed, the son of criminal kingpin, Isaiah Reed who ends up being the target of a mob hit. Your father escapes, but ends up getting incarcerated and you're taken under the protective wing of Detective Terry Higgins, your mentor with the help of whom you become a cop. On a routine mission which by the way serves as a training level, Detective Higgins is killed and you seek vengeance against the killers. Since you're a cop you'll be entitled to certain privileged information that could help your case, but at the same time you'll have to live within the law.
The game takes place in New York City, which was probably chosen because of the criminal and seedy vibe it exudes. As a cop you'll have to prevent crimes and restore peace in various neighborhoods or the surrounding organizations like supermarkets, dojos, garages, etc will be shut down. These shops are useful for upgrading your skills, obtaining health or fixing your ride so make sure you keep the area clean. The cool part here is that you don't always have to be a good cop. I mean sure you can solve problems peacefully and subsequently arrest perps and be the cop your mom always wanted you to be. Why would you do that when you can blast the perp to oblivion with your trusty firearm, a la Dirty Harry? In many of the enemy encounters you'll have to shoot first, question later. Information can be extracted from certain seedy characters after you **** slap them a bit in a Punisher-esque interrogation technique. Go too far with your bad cop tactics and you'll have the entire force gunning for your blood; play like mama's boy and you'll probably get a promotion.
The game's missions are divided into two parts; career and free-roaming. Career missions will obviously help your progress through the story while free-roaming missions will allow you to earn extra cash and increase your statistics or buy better weapons/cars. You'll have a plethora of cars to choose from, so navigating NYC shouldn't be a problem, right? Right... The car handling in this game is as painful as a game of Ragnarok. In fact, the driving segments are so bad, you'll cringe every time you approach a vehicle and God help you if you have to race around in it. Car physics are ridiculous, steering isn't responsive (you'll have to literally break the analogue stick to navigate through traffic) and controlling your car is the most horrible task known to mankind. You'll constantly find yourself spinning uncontrollably towards the sidewalk even when you so much as brush another car. As a result, you end up killing at least ten pedestrians and earn some much unwanted bad cop points. Lame!
At this point you're probably thinking if the cars are so bad why can't I navigate the city on foot? For the simple reason that the city is so goddamn big, it'll take you nearly seven to eight minutes to drive from one part of New York to another. Hella Lame!
Regrettably the bad parts don't stop there. After a while, (say half an hour to an hour) missions get extremely repetitive and boring. By the time you finish say 10 percent of the game, you'll have already stopped 100 gang fights, or arrested 100 drug peddlers or solved at least 100 cases pertaining to domestic disturbances. Now I haven't been to NY, but tell me something Luxoflux, is ever second person in NY a genetically cloned carbon copy of each other? No, right? So here's an idea, use some more variety in character models. At least this way, I don't feel I'm in a Star Wars movie.
Wait, there's more... If repetitive character models and tedious gameplay wasn't bad enough, the enemy AI is so god damn retarded that enemies will wait and watch, while you get down from your car, (probably even grab something to eat) walk up to them and kick their ass. WTF! True ****
At this moment, you're probably thinking that you are never going to buy this game, which wouldn't be such a bad idea, but still it's my duty to tell you that the game does have a few (remember FEW) redeeming factors. Armed and ranged combat have been implemented well. Marcus can kick some serious ass courtesy of street fighting and some nifty martial arts moves which can be learnt throughout various dojos scattered around NY. If your hands can't do the job, bring out the merchandise (and by merchandise I do mean your gun). You'll have a respectable amount of weapons to choose from which not only can be dual wielded, but can also be mixed, so you can go around NY blasting the baddies with a pistol in one hand and an Uzi in another. Sweet!
TC: NYC manages to improve character controlling and has implemented a much better camera unlike TC: Streets of LA, where the camera looked like it was at least a hundred miles behind your character.
NYC has been recreated credibly, with all major landmarks including the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Madison Square and more making their virtual appearance. Even though the city is massive, it looks fugly, especially on the PS2. Textures look bland, blurry and uninteresting, and cars and character models (which are repeated way too often) look very mediocre.
Luxoflux apparently has spent a lot of time and money in the sound department. There is a good variety of licensed music which covers quite a few genres like rap (duh!), metal, trance, etc. They've also hired some top notch Hollywood talent like Laurence "Morpheus" Fishburne, Mickey Rourke (Sin City), Christopher Walken (Catch Me If You Can) and Traci Lords (Private Fantasy a.k.a. porn) to lend their voices to the game.
Even though the game has a few plus points, it's still a mediocre experience. Play it without comparing it to GTA series and you may enjoy it for a while, compare it to GTA and you'll probably send the developer death threats.