12/19/05 >> True Crime: New York City (GameCube)
Genre: Action
While the premise of putting all of Manhattan Island into a videogame may seem like a great idea, True Crime executes it horribly and teaches us all the importance of beta testers. This game has more glitches than anything I have ever played. In fact, I returned True Crime NYC to the video store and asked for a replacement because I thought my copy was defective, but when I popped in the new copy, I got the same problems. Anyhow, point is, it has a TON of glitches that take away from the game greatly.
Gameplay
The gameplay is just average, and it’s nothing that we haven’t seen before. You have a large arsenal of guns to take down your opponents. Hold down L to lock on and hit R to blast away – it’s almost too easy. But, if you want to be a good cop, you’ll have your hands full deciding who to shoot, who to spare, and how to go about handling crime. Pull out your badge, and some guys won’t be intimidated. Fire a warning shot, and they might return fire, give up, or take off, though even the size of the gun matters. The good-cop-bad-cop system allows you to build up points for each type through your actions, which would be neat if the system actually had an effect on anything. It just gives you useless points. Overall, if you’ve played Grand Theft Auto or True Crime L.A., expect nothing different here. The game is FAR from revolutionary and completely relies on elements stole from other, more original games.
Story
The story is so boring and unimportant, you’d be better off just skipping through all the cut-scenes. You play the generic role of a gangster-turned-cop who fights crime with style, unconventional means, and a smart-ass potty mouth. There’s really nothing interesting about it – you go from contact to contact, get a humorless and unoriginal dialogue like “take down that drug dealer” or “get me my money”, and go.
Control
As far as the Gamecube version is concerned, the controls are extremely poor. Because of the many different moves that you can do, there's a whole lot to be memorized. For much of the early game, and even during the action later on, you'll find yourself accidentally tossing your nightstick away instead of hitting with it, punching a surrendering perp instead of arresting him, and driving into a wall instead of pulling a 180 degree turn. Speaking of which, a majority of the cars handle like shopping carts. But the worst part is that it's simply so difficult and forces you to really work your fingers. For example, to enter a car, you'll hold Z, then press A. To reload a gun and block a punch, Z+L. The Z+something schematic dominates the entire game, and it really is annoying. The clunky controls mean that you’ll be skipping many skills altogether. I understand it’s hard to set up controls when there’s so many of them, but this really is slipshod work that could’ve done much better. The controls only earn the extra point because it's not as awful once you get the hang of it.
Replayability & Length
If you enjoyed True Crime NYC, you'll have a blast with the replayability of this game. The game churns out an endless supply of crimes for you to solve, and there’s an interesting system where you “clean up” police precincts – they deteriorate and get more crime problems if you don’t fight crime often enough in the area. The only problem with replayability is that these missions can get repetitive. You’ll solve the same crime very often.
Graphics
On the surface, the graphics are simply average. Nothing special - it's the same explosions, blood, car crashes, and gunshots you’ve seen since GTA3. The cut-scenes look the same as the game. And every single street in the gigantic environment looks exactly the same, which makes you wonder why they put all of Manhattan in this game in the first place. But graphics it loses two points because the majority of the glitches in this game are in the graphics. You’ll often find yourself driving over invisible bumps, walking through hills, sticking your hand through walls, watching pedestrians sticking halfway out of cars, getting trapped inside walls, walking through walls, getting thrown up into the air by an invisible obstacle, looking at the inside of your head, receiving a punch that goes through you…the list just goes on and on.
Music
Once again, a pity point is awarded. This time, it's because I don't know your taste in music. True Crime NYC has a selection of music from artists such as Redman, A Tribe Called Quest, The Ramones, or (*shudder*) My Chemical Romance. Unfortunately, this selection is very limited and to marginally expand it, you're forced to stop by "music stores" and pick out some new tunes. How cool! - Except that each song costs nearly nothing and each of the stores holds about three songs. There are very few stores and they're spread out all over Manhattan, and therefore music hunting is more like a chore, and not something fun to do.
Sound
The sound is beyond horrible. Normally sound wouldn’t interfere with a game, but this is just so annoying and pathetic, it would’ve been better off without any sound at all. You'll hear the pedestrians uttering out the same garbage, and unlike TCNYC's Grand Theft Auto counterpart, all of it is completely crude and not funny. This is hardly a matter of opinion - the pedestrians are limited to the same range of 10 to 20 catchphrases including "Jesus!," "Holy ****!,” "**** you mother****er!," “Oh, this ****ing guy,” “You ****ing cop!,” “You ****ing ****!,” “**** you!,” and, well, you get the idea. Way to promote the rude New Yorker stereotype, Activision. When they’re not cursing, you won’t get much variety either. Be prepared to hear the same lines over, and over, and over, and over…
Final Recommendation
Don't touch this game; it's not even worth a rental.
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Game Score: 4.9
Reviewed By: Contributed
