True Crime: New York City Review

Gameplay

Where True Crime: New York City starts to hit some snags is in the actual core gameplay itself. It is a driving game, a shooting game, and a beat-em-up all wrapped into one but it doesn’t do any aspect particularly well. The driving (which was one of the better aspects of Streets of LA) just feels awful this time around. There is no sense of speed at all and the cars are very floaty and the physics for the cars just feel off. Hand-to-hand fighting is okay and you can learn a few different styles of fighting but it isn’t really anything special. The Warriors and Path of Neo both did fighting and melee combat a heck of a lot better than what you get here. Shooting thugs with the various guns available in the game has also been done better elsewhere this year. Even though you have a precision aiming option available at the press of a button, it isn’t necessary for 99% of the game. The rest of the time you just lock onto enemies and pull the trigger until they are dead. That isn’t a bad thing, but it just isn’t very satisfying. The gameplay isn’t all that bad other than the horrible driving, really, but we have just seen and done all of this before.

Glitches and Bugs

The biggest problem with True Crime: New York City is the huge amount of glitches and bugs and just plain bad design throughout the game. You can fall through the streets to your death, textures get screwed up (I once drove from one end of the city to the other with a huge crosswalk texture stuck under my car …), scripted sequences can bug out and not work right so you can’t finish missions, faulty collision detection, and sometimes the game will just up and freeze on you. There are other little things as well such as the fact that you see the same handful of character models for pedestrians used over and over and over. The framerate is also a big issue when you are driving around because the game chugs along and stutters every three or four seconds. This is a game that clearly wasn’t done but was rushed to market.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics are okay, but True Crime: New York City isn’t a pretty game. The textures are bland and the characters have a definite blocky look. Also, the cars lack detail and the framerate issues just kill the driving sections anyway. The lighting and reflections looks pretty good, though, and little details such as trash blowing around in the streets is pretty cool. This is another area where Streets of LA was better than NYC.

The sound is pretty good when it works correctly. It has a tendency to cut out along with the framerate while you’re driving. The sound effects for everything are pretty good and the voice talent (including the great Christopher Walken) does a great job. The game also features a great licensed soundtrack while you’re driving around.

Bottom Line

I actually liked True Crime: Streets of LA quite a bit so I was looking forward to TC: New York City. Instead of improvements made to the handful of problem areas in the first game I instead find something that is considerably worse. The gunplay and fighting isn’t too bad and the story is better this time around, but the driving is horrible and the game is marred by technical glitches and bugs that really ruin the experience. This is one of the most disappointing games of the year so I can’t recommend it. Rent it if you are desperate, but you are probably better off skipping it entirely.