True Crime: Streets of New York (Xbox)

(Luxoflux/Activision)

Following in the criminal record of True Crime: Streets of Los Angeles, True Crime: New York City is the latest Gangsta game from Activision. The first game in the series suffered from a few control issues but was still sold, can TCNYC fix these niggles and become the made man of the series?

Story
Five years ago some thugs tried to put a cap in you and your old man’s ass. Your old man was a player in the game and these punks want to take you both out and take over his turf. The game begins in the bad guys hideout and you must kill everyone in sight and get out. Fast forward to the present and things have changed. Your old man is behind bars and you are a cop. Despite this odd introduction, the plot tends to flow pretty well. As a cop you investigate the death of a family friend who helped you five years back and run into drug dealers and the mob along the way.

The storyline is a great improvement on TCLA, with much more logic and reasoning behind characters actions. There are still a few “What the?” moments when you might go off and meet with a rival gang for no reason. I however come from the GTA mould of crime games so I can let this slide. Plenty of random street crime calls for your attention and fits in well with the main and side missions. There is also a raft of undercover work requiring you to enter fights and street races. These aren’t just inserted in, but are integrated with your police job so they feel like a solid party of the game. Usually you will be assaulting a building in a manner more like Assault on Precinct 13, and this is much more repetitive than, say, GTA. The manner of the main missions is such that you really don’t feel they are repetitive, but they don’t have much replay factor (although the side missions distract you plenty from any repetitiveness settling in).

Graphics
In a word the graphics are safe, they don’t make you go “WOW”, and neither do theyhave you bitching. Some areas are far less detailed than I would have liked, but I can live with it. The cutscenes are particularly great and the pedestrians and draw distance are well done. Little signs by the road are a nice touch.

Sound
Voiceovers feature Christopher Walken, Mickey Rourke and Laurence Fishbourne to name a few, and you won’t be disappointed in the quality and dialogue. The cars sound suitably car-ish, and the swearing and gun fx are solid.

Gameplay
The game easily recreates Manhattan for your driving and policing pleasure. Driving from one side to the other will take you a good ten minutes even in a racing car. The subway or cabs are quick shortcuts around the city and you will need them. This is fantastic and a great achievement. The buildings aren’t super detailed or different, but hey, that’s NYC.

The shooting controls are a blend of GTA style target locking and freelock shooting. This works well and is a big improvement over the original game. Well done to Luxaflux on this improvement. Likewise the fighting controls are improved a bit, with a smart lock-on system that more than remedies the frustrations TCLA had when punching and missing opponents.

In a bunch of missions you need to interrogate a major witness or criminal. This is done by a combination of pistol whips, asking them nicely and sticking your gun to their head. A little meter records the targets stress level and you have to balance the interrogation for each target. This is neat, but dead easy to do and no challenge. Even if by some miracle you fail an interrogation (like you go to get a drink during a crucial moment) you can just do a side mission to get the information. This is disappointing and could have been made much tougher.

There are upgrades to be had throughout the story, like new fighting styles to learn, driving moves and shooting skills. You can buy these with cash or by gaining a certain police rank. This contrasts with the “tests” of TCLA which were a bit frustrating.

The good cop/bad cop points from TCLA are reduced and have much less effect on which branch of the story you take. This makes the story more cohesive and lets you be a bit more of a bad cop (which we all secretly want to do… right?).

Summary
With many improvements over it’s predecessor, TCNYC has a lot going for it, but like any sequel, it could be accused of not being adventurous enough. It’s almost more of an upgrade to TCLA than a whole sequel, this is ok, but there are a lot of other, more technological advanced and fun action games out there. Overall a solid crime and police game. If you like crime, swearing and violence you will like it, but if you are all GTA’d out, this one will be a miss for you.

Overall 4/5

You need to be logged in to add comments... Login Now

There are 0 user comments