Game: True Crime - New York City
Console: Sony Playstation 2 (also featured on Xbox, Gamecube and PC)
Developer: Luxoflux
Release Date: 25th November 2005
True Crime - New York City is a sandbox game where you play as Marcus, a cop in and around New York City, investigating the circumstances of another officer's death, which is dealt with in the majority of the main mission based gameplay. On the whole the plot isn't held together particularly well, and there are far more redeeming features to be found in other parts of gameplay, as with most sandbox games. The main missions in the game involve the player usually shooting their way through some kind of criminal den to find an informant with knowledge linked to the main case. There are some missions that involve driving, or shooting on the road, but there's not a whole lot of variety past this.
There are side missions also, in the game in which Marcus can infiltrate underground street racing, and fighting rings by beating the participants at their own sport. Doing so will allow them to face the boss of the ring and so take it down from the inside. These are a welcome distraction from the tedium of the main missions. Another semi-mission based feature is the option to respond to crime reports from around the city, and apprehend the suspects as the crimes are committed. A marker will flash up on the map and encourage Marcus to get there and neutralize the suspects by either arresting or killing them. Responding to these crimes is optional, however.
Whether you choose to arrest or kill a suspect gives you "good" or "bad" cop points respectively, which only really determine which game ending you will get, unless you accumulate a lot of bad cop points within a short time, in which case you will become a "rogue detective". When this happens the other police officers around the city will hunt you down in an effort to bring you into the station for your crimes. Other ways to get bad cop points include killing pedestrians with weapons or cars, killing police officers, extorting shop staff and planting evidence.
As the player has Marcus apprehend suspects for various crimes, he also ears career points which will advance his rank in the police force, allowing him to gain access to all sorts of new weapons and cars from the police force. Supplementary to these there are weapon shops and car dealerships scattered around the city to widen your arsenal. There's a good selection of melee weapons and guns in the game, some more useful for causing absolute chaos than solving crimes, but you expect that in a sandbox game of this type.
Also scattered about the town are dōjō where Marcus can learn various martial arts, which can be switched between in combat, and music shops to augment the game's soundtrack. An interesting feature of the game's music is that rating it in the menu influences how often a song comes up on the in car radio when it's on shuffle. With a wide variety of in-game music, there's bound to be some things you want to listen to more than others, so this works well. The original soundtrack to the game, which plays when solving crimes outside of vehicles is dramatic and serves to add to the feel of the game overall.
Driving is an interesting experience in this game, past a certain speed the controls feel as if everything is on ice, and things can be a little buggy; especially the edges of pavements, and the crash mechanics. Although it is tolerable, this is where the game falls down in comparison to GTA: San Andreas and other games of this type. Walking is a fairly slow process, so driving is an integral part of travel in the game. Other ways of getting around the city include a subway system and taxis (which unlike SA, you are actually able to ride in as a passenger).
The selection of cars in the game is pretty wide, although they don't feel too different from eachother. It's as if there's a couple of general car classes; Banger, Sport, Luxury, 4x4, but apart from this the choice is purely aesthetic. Other than this, the game has a good sense of realism with a lot of nice little touches that other games of the time didn't include. When fighting, if a parking meter is dislodged from its place on the street, it can be used as a weapon (this goes for a lot of other breakable stuff too), and there are a lot of building interiors that you're able to explore.
Graphically the city looks good, with many famous landmarks and areas. Although the buildings have a tendency to look somewhat like cardboard cutouts at times, the weather and day/night cycles bring the scene to life. There's always pedestrians about, and the bright lights of the city set the scene well.
There is an accessible debug mode which can be used unlock all weapons or change specific game features to suit whatever kind of fun you're attempting to have, although it does increase the chance of the game doing odd things or freezing. The sandbox experience in this game is probably its best feature; being able to walk down the street and impale a spear into their back rates highly on my to-do list. There's a lot of freedom and a lot to explore. Even just playing as a cop and responding to alerts around the city has its merits.
True Crime New York City succeeds as a sandbox cop game, with a nicely rendered version of New York City to explore, and although the missions feel like just going through the motions, the side missions and randomly assigned crimes have much more merit to their play. There's a lot of nice features in gameplay and a large choice of cars, weapons and songs to go with them, and in a sandbox game, that's really what it's all about.
Rating: 81/100
Grade: B
nice review
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