True Crime: New York City
This game is a true crime alright…
Tags: True Crime: New York City Categories: Reviews, Xbox Reviews
Posted by David Hinkle on Feb 9th, 2006
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| True Crime: New York City (title page) | 1 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
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It’s not like True Crime: Streets of L.A. was a masterpiece of a game by any stretch of the imagination, but it was enjoyable in its own right. Now, about 3 years later, we finally get a sequel and it plays like it was a Alpha for the first game, full of bugs and inconsistent graphical glitches. The game is also brought down by a horrible story, even more horrible voice acting, and boring gameplay. Oh, and the game looks like crap. We really don’t want to be too hard on Luxoflux and Activision, but it’s time they learned from their mistakes.
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The game’s story revolves around one Marcus Reed, former gangbanger, he now rocks the NYPD badge. The game is open-ended in how you use officer Reed’s authority, choosing to either let the ends justify the means, or to follow the book very strictly. You’re presented with 4 cases to solve, each as easy as being told where to go and taking Marcus there. The game doesn’t ever present you with a challenge in regards to advancing the story and closing the books on these cases, so don’t expect that you’ll have to think anything out or do any kind of REAL police work…aside from beating the crap out of perps.
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The weaponry in the game all just about does an equal amount of damage, whether you’re using a pistol or an automatic rifle. Two, three shots tops, and the guy drops dead to the ground, leaving you little reason to ever aspire to gather the best of the game’s available ammunitions. The hand-to-hand combat is better, albeit extremely over the top, allowing you to learn various different combat styles from dojos littered about the city. The hand-to-hand stuff is more comical than visceral, allowing you to hilariously play the role of judge, jury, and executioner as you, a cop, run around snapping people’s necks.
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As for the game’s many bugs, well, they’re just incredible. There are literally over a dozen bugs that made it past the QA guys. Bugs range from small things like mapping the wrong texture onto a building or car to drastic glitches where you’ll fall through the ground for a few minutes until you die. That becomes incredibly frustrating when you haven’t saved for an hour or two, let me tell you. Also, it’s almost like clockwork having the citizens’ dialogue incorrectly loaded. For example, it’s often that you’ll punch a woman to find her cursing you out afterwards with a man’s voice. It’s things like these that show no attention to quality in the game and makes for an unplayable experience.
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As for the graphics, they are just generally poor. Whether it’s the incredibly low-res textures or blocky, horribly animated character models, everything in this game just looks poor. The cars had a chance to define themselves as the one thing that stands out positively in the visuals department, but the fact that there is no variety brings it back down into the depths the rest of the game resides visually. For a game that was in development (supposedly) for almost three years, there should definitely be some stronger visuals, visuals that aren’t in fact worse than the first title.
Avoid this game at all costs, it isn’t worth your time, nor anyone else’s. This is what happens when publishers push a game through in order to meet the holiday sales rush. Bad call Activision.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
| + Move along, nothing to see here... | 2.0 |
| What Doesn't | |
| - The entire "game" | |
| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| Offensive on all fronts, avoid it like the plague. | |
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Tags: True Crime: New York City
Posted by David Hinkle on Feb 9th, 2006 and is filed under Reviews, Xbox Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
