True Crime: New York City

by ACTIVISION

Product Features

• access almost everything in the environment that will help them defeat enemies
• pulling off stunts on motorcycles or in a variety of vehicles
• high-powered police issue weaponry
• Dangerous situations involving multiple NPCs -- avoid shooitng fellow officers and innocent bystanders or you'll become a fugitive
• Your actions will affect each of NYC's districts - The environments will change drastically to showcase the current crime level

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0009Z3HXI
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches ; 1.6 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: October 4, 2005
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,207 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #81 in Video Games > PlayStation 2 > Adventure

Product Description

Platform: PlayStation2 | Edition: Standard

Players wield the ultimate power as a rogue street cop in True Crime: New York City. Gamers assume the role of Marcus Reed, a former criminal turned cop, and use and abuse their authority to hunt down the murderer of Marcus' mentor while also cleaning up Manhattan neighborhoods from Harlem to Chinatown. Undercover investigations weave players through a murderous web of gangs and deceit as they battle crooks, Marcus' past and everything else the city throws at them.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars If you can get past the bugs, it's a good game, February 12, 2006

By 

Forest Law (Lakewood, NJ) - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: True Crime: New York City (Video Game)

Chapter II in the True Crime series takes us to New York City, which focuses on Marcus Reed, a reformed street thug who becomes a patrolman. There are a decent amount of cases to investigate which provide the most involving action of the game (along with cutscenes where you find out more about Reed and the situation at hand). These cases are at times quite lengthy and challenging - at times you may get frustrated that there aren't save points within them.

After you complete basic training, you are taken to the borough of Manhattan, where crime is running rampant. In order to clean up the city, you are dispatched to answer a variety of crime tips, which range from stopping burglars, kidnapping victims, and closing down sweat shops, among others. You'll also find some other side missions in the game as well, such as racing and fight arenas. To improve your abilities in the latter, you can train in dojos to learn new martial arts and fighting skills. Now, let's weigh out the pros and cons:

Pros: This series is often compared to the Grand Theft Auto franchise. While it's a very tough act to follow, having a police officer as the main character (including the whole good cop / bad cop element, which all comes down to whether you perform your job ethically, or decide to kill unarmed criminals and sell crime evidence to pawn shops) along with the aforementioned crime tips are a nice unique touch to True Crime: NYC. You'll also find a very accurate Manhattan (right down to the street names and traffic directions) with all the sights and sections that it's known for (Chinatown, Little Italy, Hell's Kitchen, Harlem, etc.). This game offers a distinctive targeting system (including lethal and non-lethal gun shots), lots of indoor environments (you can find lots of businesses and homes to visit on pretty much every street), a nice assortment of weapons and guns, a great soundtrack with lots of good punk (Misfits), metal (Hatebreed), indie/alternative (Interpol), and hip-hop (Sugar Hill Gang) songs and a voice cast which includes Christopher Walken and Laurence Fishburne, among others.

Cons: The bugs in this game will turn off many gamers out there, and indicate that maybe Luxoflux (the game's developer) and Activision should have spent more time working out the kinks of the game instead of rushing it out for the holiday season. At times you will walk through a wall, or just completely freeze up. The mechanics of the game are also off - you can ram a commercial truck off the road with a motorcycle! The pedestrians are not as fleshed out as the ones you'll find in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - they have a limited amount of dialogue, which for the most part consists of words that I can't type here on Amazon. Finally, the controls of the vehicles lack fluidity - they're not smooth and tend to accelerate or brake too quickly. Even after playing for months, I still get frustrated with the operation of the vehicles.

In summary: True Crime: New York City is not for those without patience, but those who have it will find it to be an engaging and entertaining game, despite its flaws. Of course, one wonders what this game could have been if a little more time was spent on improving the controls and reducing the bugs. It's still a game that I would recommend to any fan of the free-roam action genre, though nothing could ever top GTA:SA - definitely pick that one up if you haven't already.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun, but falls to GTA, June 27, 2006

A Kid's Review

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: True Crime: New York City (Video Game)

Ok, you could assume without much information that GTASA is a better game than this, though since this is sort of an imitation of it, it makes it less worth while. That's just a foreword: this game is decent.

The graphics aren't great or anything, but they don't do a bad job of portraying NYC. The building designs aren't so great, they have the neighborhoods down and know where to place key structures (like churches or synagogues or famous food places, not just Statue of Liberty, Ground Zero, or Empire State). That said, the human model graphics are somewhat mediocre, but they're not as bad as the grand theft auto ones, and the building graphics are decent, and vehicles look fair.

The controls hold up pretty well. Compared to a lot of games, the combat engine is nice. Melee isn't anything special, but shooting holds up well, I just wish you could get weapons more easily (there's an armory that you can get as you go up in rank as an investigator, but it seems nearly impossible to be able to actually use them, unless I'm seriously missing something huge).

The gameplay itself varies. There are the neighborhoods of Manhattan that have different crime rates, and you can temporarily 'clean' them up, but they'll decay as time goes on, and you can help this decay, the engine of 'rotting buildings' is rather amusing. As Game Informer cited: The stores will slowly close down on the streets where you randomly punch people in the face. Basically, there are repeatable crime scenarios (there are many, so you don't end up using too many) and several routes to resolving the issue. The only problem is, when the violators are getting intensely violent (to the point of guns) and you need to shoot them, other cops who are helping to arrest them will sometimes shoot at you, and flashing your badge generally won't work, in which case you need to flee or shoot them, which will eventually lead to demotion. There are story missions as well, of course, in which at first you're chasing down what appears to be a run-of-the-mill drug ring, which evolves into a more complex storyline, but the storyline missions really aren't very entertaining.

In short, this game is a good effort, is generally entertaining, and has a decently good sense of city geography (central park is actually done alright, as is morningside. Riverside, like in spiderman 2, has shops on it which are illegal, there are no key spots.... well if you consider the actual meeting scene of The Warriors a key zone, and the park itself is just an intensely narrow strip. They have some buildings that are well-known, like Saint John's Cathedral, which is to an extent somewhat realistic). Basically, the subway system is done well, and it's a good free-roam game, but the storyline is mediocre.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not too shabby if you have realistic expectations, November 29, 2005

By 

sporkdude "sporkdude" (San Jose, Ca United States) - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: True Crime: New York City (Video Game)

When the first True Crime came out, it was the first real competition for the GTA series, and it was pretty good. Technically, this is a slight downgrade though. By trying to recreate the New York city feel, it becomes too bogged down and too slow.

Basically, it's like all the city immersive games out there. Nothing really new. Again, like the first True Crime, the streets are real, but the buildings and scenery are just generic. Speaking of generic, you start off with a horrible cliched storyline. The same one sided characters and cheesy dialogue that has plagued every game that has anything to do with crime. So, I tried to get into it, but after ten minutes of pure unadulterated boredom, I just stopped caring and skipped all the FMVs.

The gameplay itself is decent. Nothing great, but very playable. If you don't want to get involved or frustrated (like what is required for GTA: San Andreas), this game is perfect. Driving is annoying, but after you discover the Subway and Taxis, you can move throughout the city with very little driving at all. This leads to the missions. The missions themselves are indoor third person shooting missions. Nothing complicated here. L2 to auto-aim, and shoot. They tried to add stealth, but it's absolutely pointless to try. That's about it for the major missions.

There are some minor flaws, like one example would be if you don't have the proper weapon (happened to me twice), you can't leave the mission to get that weapon. You have to reload and sometimes repeat a couple of missions to get to where you need to be. Also, selecting and picking up guns is not quite correct. For example, you'll pick up a carbine, but when the ammo is done, it will sometimes bring you to the stun gun. Valuable seconds are wasted switching to your .38 (which is the only weapon with unlimited ammo).

There are side missions that you can do (the major missions only yield 25% completion rate), they've eliminated the need for extraneous and useless combos, and even though some missions seem to drag on, it's nothing like the half hour borefests for the "Dragon" missions in True Crime: Streets of LA.

Finally, people say there are tons of bugs. I haven't see any except for the slow frame rate. Heck, GTA: Vice City and Prince of Persia: Warriors Within had a lot of bugs that were easily identifiable. If there are major bugs in this game, I didn't see them.

The game looks a little dated, and there is really nothing new except for the Subway and Cabs, but it's fun, never frustrating, and a good solid rental.

Pros:
Actual streets of New York.
Not frustrating at all.
Taxis and Subways rule!
Don't have to learn combos.

Cons:
Cliched story.
Dullest beginning ever.
Driving is a chore.
Framerate problems.
Some missions get really dull.

Frustration Level: Low

Difficulty Level: Low

Hours to Complete: 10 hours (major missions only)

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