Mugwai makes a great crooked cop
Publisher: Activision
Tue, 24 January 2006
by: Mugwai
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Hey we're in New York. I've gotta gun, let's go to a Broadway show. True Crime: New York City is the latest game to ape the genius that is the GTA series, capitalizing on the free roaming, do anything you want gameplay. But does does it have the kahunas to play with the big boys?
Story wise we are given the Hollywood (Jerry Bruckheimer) script treatment, you play the b-boy gangsta, one step away from becoming another statistic. After smoking some punk ass bitches, a cop friend of your father's cleans up your mess and steers you in the right direction. Flash forward present day and you've just earned your detective badge, now it's time to hit the streets, trouble is your mentor just got iced and a mysterious Federal Agent wants you to investigate just what he was into. All told in rather stylish cut scenes, it's not half bad; hey they got Christopher Walken for voice acting so it's gotta be cool right?
 | | "I love Buttonhole this much!" |
Once you're through the obligatory tutorial level it's time to hit the streets of the Big Apple and take on your garden variety street trash. We're talking pimps, ho's drug dealers, kidnappers, gangstas, hired goons (hired goons?), carjacker Willy and every Stroke-like band that has been inflicted upon us. You can make arrests (all side missions are alerted to you via P.I.G FM), chase suspects, shake down suspects regardless if there innocent or not and smoke anyone you feel like. If you want to go down Fazz and my own favorite dream profession, you can be "on the take", aah sweet corruption. To improve your cash flow (so you can buy that dope ride and matching bling) you can take the dirty cop option; shakedowns plant evidence, extortion, and protection or sell evidence rather than turning it in.
Unfortunately none of this is rewarding or essential to the game, which can be easily completed if you just complete the story missions, and the problem is the game just isn't exciting enough to even bother with and side missions or exploration. Sure the city is vast, well recreated and explorable it's just that after a couple of hours you won't want to explore it at all. Areas are difficult to locate, the GPS is widely inaccurate, entry to restaurants, brothels, gambling dens and Nike sweat shops are barely identifiable. It's just plain frustrating at times, and don't even get me started on vehicular control. Herbie Fully Loaded this ain't, Herbie Drivin' Like I'm Loaded might be closer to the mark. Aside from the unintuitive button assignment, car control is over responsive and just plain uncontrolled to boot, it's impossible to navigate from point A to point B without unintentionally crashing into every third car and every fourth pedestrian.
Combat wise there are plenty of moves at your disposal, light and heavy punches and kicks, restraining, disabling and choke holds and the always respectable "givin' 'em a bit of a kick in" when they're down. There are plenty of weapons lying around just waiting to be inflicted on the local hoods or even better, mimes. We got Billy the Baseball Bat, Charlie the Crowbar, or the police issued Black Love Truncheon. Waving your badge or firing a warning shot can also disperse or pacify the rabble, allowing you to cuff 'em, beat 'em or frisk 'em, just a shame there's no full body cavity search move. A few problems can arise with the combat system though, sometimes when going for a sneak hold then trying to apply a more passive takedown move, you'll find yourself performing a more fatal neck snapping move. Even worse when attempting to smoke motherf*$ers like it ain't no thing (in the excessive cop manner of course), local law enforcement just decide to open fire on you, not cool.
 | | Some times those Jackass dudes go a bit too far |
Gunplay tends to be a little more fun, playing a little bit like The Punisher, and wasting homeboys with twin Uzi's is a blast. All the standards are there, pistols, shotguns, grenades, machine guns plus the obvious more devastating weapons. Two modes of fire are available, your standard third person sight, where you can auto lock and scroll through each enemy with just a button tap and a more precise first person type system (although you remain immobile in this mode). Problems with this mode soon become apparent though, it's just way to easy to just cycle through and take out every enemy in ten seconds, suffering minimal or no damage whatsoever. First person aiming is also just way too erratic and loose to eradicate anything with precision; you just won't utilize it unless you have to.
It's kind of hard to recommend True Crime when the game it's directly inspired by is still its superior rival, still if you want to bust heads Bad Lieutenant style check it out. Me I'll be back in San Andreas with my Ho's Biatch!
Versions of True Crime: NYC are also available for PlayStation 2, Nintendo Gamecube and PC.
by: Mugwai
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